Comments on: Uber and the cognitive zone of discomfort

By: sisyphos

sisyphos — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:45:16 +0000

I think Uber should show the current Minimum Fare BEFORE the user confirms his/her pickup request… Then when the ride starts the user should see a running meter on his/her phone app to make the transaction fully transparent.

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:50:11 +0000

Further to my previous comments, take a look at the section in this article headed “Nokia-created apps”:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2 012/04/the-nokia-lumia-900-review.ars/3

This is going to be a game-changer for flexible pricing. All we need now is a semantic web – with an agreed XML format – for the advertising of transportation services…

By: cMcGillivary

cMcGillivary — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:11:38 +0000

Why don’t they just give you the price of the trip before you agree to it. You just indicate on your smart phone where you want to go and they give you a quote. You can take it or get home some other way. If that’s what customers wanted a free market cab system ought to be able to give it to them.

By: dieswaytoofast

dieswaytoofast — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 03:06:29 +0000

This was actually a customer support FIAL.
In an evil way.
The way I see it, the impenetrability of surge pricing is a feature, not a bug.

Drunk people who can’t figure out what the correct price is?

Perfect! Soak them!

But, (!), be sure to promptly and immediately refund / credit / whatever
people who complain. Done properly, you’ll make plenty of money from
people who don’t complain, to more than make up for the rest.

There are plenty of examples of where people do this – Mail-in rebates, mis-labeled prices in groceries, etc.
Ergo, customer support (and/or communication) FIAL.

By: Robes40x

Robes40x — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:05:30 +0000

Uber started in San Francisco and was successful because it fills a need. The taxi situation in this city is a mess. The drivers are rude, usually on the phone, refuse (illegally) credit cards, rarely display their taxi license, and drive like maniacs. It appears that the city has no inspectors monitoring such activity.

It is always a crap shoot if a taxi shows up when you call for one. Yellow Cab has a computerized service that assures you a taxi is one the way but no-shows are common. On big convention weeks there it’s impossible to get a cab. Long lines are noted outside the big hotels with hapless guests trying to get to the airport.

I’m hardly wealthy but Uber fills a void. I was warned on the mobile screen on New Years Eve that surge pricing was in effect (3X normal price). After searching for a cab for about thirty minutes in South of Market, I gave up and called Uber. The car was there in one minute and got me home(for a whopping $70 compared to a cab which would have been around $18). Was it worth it? Yes. Will I avoid putting myself in that position again? I’ll certainly try.

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:19:20 +0000

@DanLondon: I know about that. We have it in Leeds too. There’s a text message service that I’ve used: you ping the server with an SMS containing a code for the bus stop, and it sends you a live list of ETAs for the next 5 or 6 buses expected to pass that stop. It’s been going now for about 5-15 years, hasn’t it?

What I’m talking about here is something different: the next level up from that. Effectively a mathematical search engine that acts as a personal assistant, using a wide array of live data to select the best modes of transport for you (or best combination of modes of transport), taking into account walking, buses, trains, underground, taxis, flights etc. That’s something we haven’t seen yet. You can guarantee that the first-to-market with this will try to apply for patents to cover “their ideas”, even though it’s the obvious evolution of what we already have.

By: DanLondon

DanLondon — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:39:47 +0000

@matthewslyman: this is already being done. London Transports mobile website now can detect where you are and gives live bus times for nearby bus stops. I often check before leaving home and if it’s a ten minute wait for the bus i need, chill out for another 5 minutes.

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:18:59 +0000

p.p.s. One other software-patent-spoiler… We already have head-counters in supermarkets working from CCTV. Location-based transport search/optimization services could also factor in how crowded particular buses/trains are, and how crowded the bus stops/ train platforms/ tram stops are (and so, how likely we are to get a seat on the bus/train/tram we would need for a particular transport route)…

As a side note, I’m sick of software patents. Big corporations are patenting mere ideas that were obvious to me as a 10 or 11 year old boy, to ring-fence and corner entire industries from the outset without too much trouble on their part… They’re wrong. How can we combat this menace?

By: Proxyariesman

Proxyariesman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:15:29 +0000

Sorry for the double post, double clicked by accident.

By: Proxyariesman

Proxyariesman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:14:06 +0000

It’s a neat idea, but Uber is certainly too expensive at the moment for myself. I would love to see Google autonomous driving technology meet with the Uber idea. Knock the driver out and also make the car electric. Now you limit yourself to how far you can go, but if you add Wiitricity charging technology the car itself may be able to charge while it drives, say in a special charging lane. Problem would be, such lanes would have to be set up for this to be possible, meaning possible public works projects. I suppose there are ways around it to make it low cost for the tax payer, to even free (Wiitricity pays for installation, installation costs just get added onto electricity – to the mileage of the car fair.) I’m just rambling however and these thoughts will go unrealized for some time. Either or, perhaps Uber itself will grow in demand and by that would become cheaper and more widespread. It still would be nice to knock out the driver (this also includes knocking out the taxicab drivers, or at least making it so they have to compete with autonomous cars thus finding a way to be even cheaper.)

By: Proxyariesman

Proxyariesman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:14:00 +0000

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:09:28 +0000

p.s. One or two other things that will feed into the kind of location based services I have described… GPS and mobile network access are becoming so ubiquitous now, it’s almost trivial to wire up a bus fleet with transponders showing the control room where they are on their route at any given moment. Many bus, train and underground networks around the world already have electronic signs on station platforms and bus stops showing the real-time ETA of the next buses/trains/trams etc., to various destinations. All we need to do now, is join all of that information up… Join the dots… There’s going to be a lot of consolidation and profit in this industry in the coming years.

By: matthewslyman

matthewslyman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:55:35 +0000

@Felix Salmon:

As a computer scientist, I think you’re partly missing the point. You’re totally right that people don’t think like this. However, you’re overlooking the elephant in the room… LOCATION BASED SERVICES.

I had a dream, over 20 years ago, that one day I would hold a device in my hand that knew where I was (GPS), I would tell it where I wanted to go, and optionally when I wanted to be there and how much money it was worth to me to be on time; and it would run a query on a database of transport alternatives, taking into account, for the various options:
* Travel times
* Financial value of time spent travelling
* Expense of travel (fares charged)
* Probabilities of transport showing up / stopping for me (bus drivers can sometimes drive straight past passengers waiting at bus stops, taxi firms sometimes do a poor job too as noted in your article, etc.) and probabilities of traffic jams (expressed as statistical distributions, parameterized with real-world data).

If I had access to the investment capital and the data, I would start a business providing this kind of search/calculation service.

It will happen… And when it does, THEN there will be a business-case for companies like “Uber” to vary their rates on a more continuous, dynamic basis; at least for example by offering discounts to customers using such calculation/referral services as of the type I have described. This sort of service will be available in some form, in several major world cities, within the next ten years.

===

Aside from overlooking that possibility, excellent article. Your observations have helped me formulate the pricing model for my next product…

By: Lissandreau

Lissandreau — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:33:52 +0000

Surprising that while the world dissolves all these pampered types who rarely walk or take a bus have time to wonder whether $43 is expensive for a ride.

By: spectre855

spectre855 — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:56:25 +0000

@ijrc, josephmartins, and others, I don’t think that most people’s problem is with the cost of the service. It’s a town car service, we get it. The problem is that on nye, this service arbitrarily jacked up their rate from it’s normal pricing scheme and there was apparently no way to get notified of this fact through the normal checkout process.

It would be like getting an abnormally huge gas bill one day out of the blue and then getting told by your gas provider that pricing was quadrupled one day because the weather was abnormally cold. It would be one thing of you knew that was a possibility up front but having no warning at all makes it feel pretty scam-y.