Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Uber Has No Plans to Kill Surge Pricing

Supply and demand price determination survives!

Surge pricing won’t be going away any time soon, according to Uber.

The ride-hailing app activates surge pricing, which increases the fare by a certain multiple, when there is greater demand for drivers. An NPR story Tuesday stated that Uber has “plans to kill surge pricing,” by improving machine learning, but Uber said it has no such plans.

“Uber is always looking for ways to better predict supply and demand in a city. But this story is not accurate: we have no plans to end dynamic pricing. While we understand that no-one likes to pay more for the same trip, it’s the only way to ensure that passengers can always get a ride when they need one,” an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed statement to MarketWatch.

I suspect the bad reporting at NPR came about because of union operatives who are trying to unionize Uber workers.

 -RW

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