Uber has received a lot of criticism for the implementation of its surge pricing system, which looks to constantly balance demand and supply between drivers and riders. While there have been a few ways to hack the system to skip out on higher fares due to surge pricing, riders have become generally hostile against the lightning bolt icon that signals surge pricing has taken effect in an area.
In a new update to its app, Uber will be tucking away the surge pricing prompt to replace it with a notification on how much a rider will pay for a particular ride.
To clarify, Uber is not dropping its surge pricing system. What the company is doing is placing the system, and its much maligned lightning bolt icon, in the background, with the app instead telling customers that fares could be higher because of increased demand alongside the cost of the ride.
Uber will still be charging more on peak times for its services, with drivers able to see the areas of the city with higher and lower prices through a heat map that will be displayed through their devices.
"No math and no surprises," said Uber about the new system, as the app moves to showing fares upfront. The upfront fares are calculated using the time and distance expected for a trip, taking into consideration local traffic, the number of riders and the number of drivers near the customer.
The reasoning behind the move is that riders may feel more comfortable with knowing how much they will pay before requesting a ride, compared with having to make calculations on their head based on the multiplier that the previous surge pricing prompt displayed. In addition, with upfront fares, riders are assured of paying a certain amount for a trip, even if the driver would get lost or take a longer route to get to the desired destination.
Upfront pricing was first applied by Uber to UberPool, which is the company's sister service for carpooling. UberPool now makes up more than 20 percent of all requested rides in the service globally, which has exposed upfront pricing to a good amount of the service's users.
The products division of Uber decided to expand the feature into other Uber services, beginning in April with testing done in six cities in the United States, specifically New York City, San Diego, Miami, Jersey City, Seattle and Philadelphia. The feature was also tested in five cities in India, namely Kolkata, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai.
