While running late to work, you call an Uber and not only are you juggling packing-up and getting ready, but now you have to deal with calculating surge costs based on your recollection of how much the trip used to cost — seems like an all too familiar situation? Well, Uber has plans to reduce the mathematics that you have to do early in the morning, by replacing surge pricing with fixed pricing.
Facing increasing customer concerns about drivers not using the correct route and increasing scrutiny from regulatory authorities, Uber’s new upfront cash service was introduced as a preliminary test in some parts of United States of America and India. Backed by what we can only assume are successful trial results, Uber plans to push this service out to more countries as it pushes for global dominance in the transport arena. The precursor to this service was UberPOOL, where passengers were able to predict their travel costs based on metrics from keying in the final destination was much appreciated by users according to Uber. With nearly 20% of global trips on Uber being under the UberPOOL category, there is merit to the feasibility of porting this over to UberX. For fixed pricing on UberX, the company plans to use more comprehensive metrics. It will calculate the cost not only based on distance and stipulated time, but also based on the number of available Uber’s, the density of passengers vs drivers available, as well as the demand. In other words, the same metrics used to calculate the surge pricing — with one difference, it now shows a fixed price instead of a ‘multiplier’ that was traditionally added to the end of the trip. Would you be happier with such a change to the pricing on UberX trip?
