I noticed something strange earlier this month when I pulled up the Uber app and requested a ride.
- I had my monthly $15 American Express Uber credit in my account
- The price for the ride was displayed net of this credit (rather than full price, just showing the Uber credit as a payment method later)
- And the fare seemed higher than usual. It was also much higher than Lyft.
My hypothesis was that Uber seemed to be picking a higher price because I had credits in my account. I might be willing to spend more because my ‘real’ out of pocket cost was less, and those credits were trapped anyway.
I decided to use my Uber credits for Uber Eats instead. That pricing seemed normal. I need to keep my eye on this.
Reader Charles says he noticed something similar.
- He regularly pre-books rides with Uber – between the same locations at the same time of day – and generally finds the price to be stable ~ $20 and a bit cheaper than Lyft.
- He bought Uber gift cards at Costco for a 20% discount to face value. That’s when things got weird.
Loaded first $50 card in my uber account, everything behaved normal. I loaded another $200 before taking Uber to airport, then was surprised to find uber won’t allow payment with uber cash loaded in the account this way for rides scheduled ahead of time.
…then stranger things happened: for same ride I book regularly increased from about $20 to $30! Just as a sanity check, Lyft is still ~$20 for same ride.
He went a step farther and did something I didn’t: he checked Uber prices “with someone else’s phone” who did not have a balance in their Uber account – and Uber was pricing the route at the usual $20 for them.
I don’t know exactly what’s happening here, but something seems strange and – unsurprisingly – not in a customer-friendly way. At the same time, I’m also not the first person to experience (or think they experienced) this. Have you seen anything like it? I’d be curious your experiences, especially once you get Uber credits in your account. My theory, and it is definitely just that, is this is something they’re testing on a subset of users to learn how customers respond.
Remember when Uber brought in Dara Khosrowshahi from Expedia to be their new CEO, to become kinder and gentler and friendler? At the time I figured things would get worse because he was literally in charge at Expedia. But drivers now seem to earn less, even though (because of) tipping. It’s more expensive to customers, too. And there’s no more “surge pricing” – they just charge you higher and higher amounts without telling you they’re doing it.
If Uber charges more for a product of there are cash-equivilent credits that is ripe for a class action or a multi-state AG action. V dumb on their part. No one “likes” Uber as a company so it would be politically popular.
Uber has a robust, academically minded, in house team of economists who are no doubt researching questions of willingness to pay. A small audience of users has probably been chosen as the test group for higher pricing with gift cards.
Uber 100% does this.
Was booking an employee from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando on Brightline. If you book their Premium fare, it includes a $10 Uber voucher to help get you to the station.
Applying the $10 voucher caused the rate to increase $12 (maybe $17) so using the voucher cost MORE than not using it. Total marketing lie.
This appears to be true in my experience. I personally find that if I change the payment option to a credit card and re-price the fare, it becomes cheaper (!) than using the wallet/gift card balance.
I work around it by charging the fare to my credit card, and then having Uber switch the payment method to the voucher after the fare settles. They refund my CC and charge the voucher.
This frustrates me immensely and makes me further glad that we have Lyft as a competing service.
This is not the only cheating that Uber does. They also discriminate heavily on your pick up/drop off location. Try putting in a 5 star hotel and then try setting the destination across the street instead. Almost definitely a big difference.
If you are going to the airport, try different terminals (especially EWR or JFK), the difference can be $30-40.
Uber has basically institutionalized the cheating taxis used to do informally.
My partner has the Amex plat and I always get better pricing then him.
I found that instacart does the same thing; I was regularly getting discount offers and the moment that I bought a gift card at costco, the deals disappeared. Shortly after using the gift card, deals started coming back.
I decided to stop using both apps; they are super shady.
It’s getting so who wants to travel anymore? Hotels treat customers like crap and all too often aadd on phantom service charges. Airlines are constantly stranding passengers. Car rentals have their customers arrested. And now Uber has institutionalized cheating. It’s best to just stay home.
Looks like applying the “credit” made the total fare go up $15.87 from $7.05 to $22.97.
@gary: I have the screen shots to prove it but couldn’t find an email address / other contact point to send them to you.
Ever since Uber eats gift cards showed up at Costco, the slickdeals people have noticed this. In my experience going out on weekends Uber and lyft would be a similar price. Uber sometimes up to $5 cheaper or quicker pickup if the same price. Now that I’ve put gift cards in my account uber is 10% or more than lyft.
It’s called individualized pricing. DL gives a different price to upgrade from economy to Delta One to different people on the same flight at the same time. They base the price they offer you on the data they have collected on you, and basically boils down to how they think you can or will pay. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/08/14/surveillance-pricing-harm-consumers-ftc-data?fbclid=IwY2xjawE3a0lleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHeE7pUaR360nTzuJav61ohT_kuDAjcTvOFBSPyxxcLq1bX3MBxS0xd9bmA_aem_jeTMFT7Wl9OlE9r2Kqrn-Q
Ugh… I just loaded $200 in gift cards to my account. Makes sense now because I always found Uber more expensive than Lyft (where I have no credit balance) for rides, so I would just book with Lyft. Wonder if this also applies to fees they charge on Uber Eats.
I can’t be sure of the timing but I did load a large gift card balance ($350) and found I wasn’t using it because Lyft is so much cheaper.
This is my just deceptive , it’s the fraudulent selling of gift cards which aren’t worth face value directly in them pricing/psymeny algorithm.
Didn’t Uber also charge more if it knew your battery was about to die?
It really need not be said, but Lyft does this exact same sort of price discrimination. Standing right next to my partner with her phone out, my Lyft Pink account that came free a while ago with a Chase Reserve was pricing out at about 15% higher ($35 vs $30) even after “discounts.”
I’ve consistently had worse experiences with Lyft including a driver that took an hour to pick me up from MDW after being told it’d take 10 minutes. Support told me to pound sand when I asked about cancelling and that I’d still be assessed the fee even though the driver was just doing his own thing. Literally any time an Uber driver has tried to pull that scam, Uber support acknowledges it and comps the fee and sends a new driver.
Using my Amex Platinum from my apartment to the airport, I regularly saw Uber fares to be about $15 more than Lyft. Yes, they do it.
That would surely also be against their contract with Amex, right? If they’re doing this, Amex is on the hook for offering a benefit that really doesn’t exist, right?
Not sure about higher pricing when I have credits. However, I have a personal account as well as a business account. The ride to the airport right now is $42 if I select a business trip. If I switch the trip to personal, it applies a “15% flash sale” promotion. I have seen this regularly. I guess the thinking is that people are expensing their work trips and not price sensitive? The $15 Amex credits also only show up on the personal side.
Incidentally this can be avoided by saving the business credit card under the personal account.