Surge Pricing: Uber?s Plans to Kill It

Posted by jeenniwill on September 9th, 2016

 

There has been a lot of mumbo-jumbo going about whether or not Uber has any plans to kill the surge pricing feature that has often raised controversial issues. In 2014, there was an article that got a lot of attention on The Wire, about Uber intentionally surging prices.  It alleged that an Uber passenger heard a promotion message on the driver’s phone about Uber refusing to activate new drivers in order to enable the existing ones enjoy the Valentine’s Day rush. In 2015, the last day of the year, which was the New Year’s Eve, was grazed by the hammering hand of surge pricing. In Canada, a particular passenger, as reported by CBC, claimed to have been charged ,114.71 for a ride.

 No matter how long that ride could have been, I believe that it could never have been worth over a thousand dollars. I guess you now understand what I mean when I say that Uber’s surge pricing is seen by many as a problem that needs to be fixed in the Uber Business Model. When the news of Uber working on a way to kick out surge pricing came out, many were quick to believe, embrace and hope the news is true. For some drivers (an uber driver is sometimes called an uber partner, surge pricing is just an advantage they get from time to time – a normal part of the job, but Uber seems to be on the side of the passengers on this one.

Many passengers believe that surge pricing is unfair to them and Uber believes that this is a problem with their service that they must fix. Jeff Schneider, a lead engineer at Uber Advanced Technologies Center, talks about fixing the problem in his chat with NPR reporter at a Silicon Valley insider conference called Structure Data. He says this about fixing surge pricing:

“That’s where machine learning comes in. That’s where the next generation comes in, because now we can look at all this data, and we can start to make predictions.”

What Schneider seems to be saying, is that, since they have all that data about the days when surge occurs the most and they also know that it isn’t difficult to determine and plan for big days like the Super Bowl, it would be easy to absent the surge pricing feature from the next Uber app update. Yet, he explains that beyond what is easy to detect, there are unpredictable days too when drivers just get off the road and there’s an overwhelming level of demand. In his description of such situations, he says that the more difficult thing: “is to find those Tuesday nights when it’s not even raining and for some reason there’s demand — and to know that’s coming. That’s machine learning.”

From details gathered through the rest of the interview with Schneider, he suggests, in a very convincing manner, that fixing surge pricing is one of the major priorities at the moment. Although Techcrunch and Marketwatch have both come out with posts that seem to denounce the fact that there’s such plan in the works, NPR is insistent on the conduct of their interview, and you can confirm that in a video made available to the public. The counter posts have what was reported to be statement obtained from Uber, yet there were no links whatsoever to that credit.

For now, I insist that NPR’s report holds more tangible evidence and agree that, enhancing the whole structure of machine learning can effect a smooth departure from surge remedy to high demands. It will allow Uber premeditate busy times and have a chance to fix it.

It is a really nice thing to know that there is hope concerning this issue and we are sure that you may want to weigh-in on this, so let us know your thoughts in the comment box, we want to learn your point of view.

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-by Ola John and Edited by Kunle Bowale.

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jeenniwill
Joined: May 4th, 2016
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