Tag Archives for uber.
A friend had given me a tip that if you wait to request an Uber until you’re actually in the garage where you meet your ride, you’ll often pay $20 less for the same trip. That seemed odd, but I decided to give it a try.
The odd thing is that Uber hasn’t told me they’ve extended my status. It’s a great opportunity to capture loyalty with members but the program doesn’t bother to communicate. Which is just another sign that Uber has largely given up and is almost indifferent to its loyalty program. They know they have good customers they want to keep, but they’ve consistently devalued the elite program which was only modestly rewarding to start with.
The Uber credit card was supposed to be the centerpiece of Uber’s strategy to build its own currency, Uber credits, which would become ubiquitous as a payment system not just for Uber products but outside of the Uber ecosystem. The primary way these credits would be generated would be through the co-brand credit card, and they’d hopefully become spendable everywhere at retail.
Just as the refresh was reaching the finish line, Uber laid off a large portion of its marketing staff, including people responsible for the card.
New Yorkers thought that when the city capped the number of licenses for for-hire vehicles ‘to prevent traffic congestion’ they were regulating Uber. The truth is they were doing Uber’s bidding by handing the ridesharing giant a tool to keep out competitors.
In New York there are a limited number of licenses, and those are busy working for Uber. New competitors have a hard time entering the market. Startup Revel thought they found a loophole that would allow them to compete against Uber in New York. But they were shut down by regulators in a bizarre process.
When Uber started letting you order food and eat it at the restaurant it seemed like something out of The Onion. But they saw themselves as a platform for food, and an opportunity (they thought) to monetize eyeballs.
Now they’re introducing a new service that should make Uber’s drivers furious: encouraging customers to book rental cars in the app as a substitute for ride-sharing.
The Uber Visa is no longer mentioned in the Uber app and the application has been removed from the Barclays website. If you go to the Barclays page for current Uber Visa cardmembers and choose ‘not a current cardmember’ you’re taken to a page’s expired,
Here’s the deal.
Uber is devaluing its rewards program, dropping the option to redeem 500 points for $5 cash. This was the simplest and straightforward redemption option.
Though Uber offers a milquetoast statement to explain the move, the truth is this represents a huge change in strategy for the company – walking away from plans to build their own digital currency.
Last fall LAX banned taxis and ridesharing services from picking up passengers curbside. Passengers were bused to an off airport lot where they’d meet their ride. (The lot is actually an easy walk from the Southwest terminal 1.)
Initially after banning curbside pickups chaos ensued but after enlarging the lot and getting better signage the process wound up being merely inconvenient.
I used to get in taxis all the time in New York. But before the driver would let me in he’d (and it was always a he) roll down the window and ask where I was going. He didn’t want a ride in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go, and he certainly didn’t want to drive into an ‘undesirable’ (minority) neighborhood. That’s illegal, but the practice was commonplace.
Uber and other rideshare companies changed all that. You enter where you’re going in an app, the driver accepts the ride, but doesn’t learn the destination until you’re in the car and on the way – and they can be penalized for cancelling rides.
Major tech companies are moving into financial services because they think their ubiquity gives them the ability to succeed in an adjacent space, because they have strong brands, and because their tech focus allows them to appeal to a younger ‘new affluent’ demographic.
For the tech companies and issuers the biggest play is financial data.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
