Uber, Lyft drivers manipulate fares at DCA causing artificial price surges

Post by Marazan » Mon, May 20, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #119

lr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please stop referring to these services as "sharing"? Lyft actually started as a company that coordinated the sharing of rides, i.e., no money was involved. But the "sharing" pretense has long since past for all of these companies.

We need a new word for "taxi companies with cute apps, unsustainable pricing/wages and lots of Silicon Valley venture capital propping them up" to distinguish them from old-school taxi companies if we're gonna quit saying "rideshare". Any suggestions?

Post by thrill » Mon, May 20, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #165

eropple wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By leveraging the supply controls, which are explicitly theirs to use to communicate willingness to take on work , in a two-sided market where you're not allowed to directly set prices? Please substantiate how that is fraudulent. If Lyft and Uber allowed direct pricing, this wouldn't happen. Drivers would set the price they're willing to work for. Instead, drivers--who, once more for emphasis, are supposed to use pri…

The article clearly mentions that this is an artificial and concerted effort to increase prices. To me this does not seem different from taking a longer route to increase the fare. What you describe would probably be fine if that wasn't concerted. But here they all collude to artificially trigger surge pricing.

Post by lr » Mon, May 20, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #119

lr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please stop referring to these services as "sharing"? Lyft actually started as a company that coordinated the sharing of rides, i.e., no money was involved. But the "sharing" pretense has long since past for all of these companies.

We need a new word for "taxi companies with cute apps, unsustainable pricing/wages and lots of Silicon Valley venture capital propping them up" to distinguish them from old-school taxi companies if we're gonna quit saying "rideshare". Any suggestions?

Post by jimbokun » Mon, May 20, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #136

wlesieutre wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a balance to be struck, because part of the ridesharing design's efficiency is that if demand drops they can drop their rates paid to drivers, and the drivers who don't want to drive at those prices will stop. So if Lyft starts to say "we always want X drivers available as a base load, and we'll open up to contractors to fill in the demand spikes" it might make the contractor role too unreliable for…

> Or do they all give in to a more tamper-resistant algorithm and keep driving at regular rates? I wonder if they will change the algorithm to just tell the drivers what they want to hear. To wit - Introduce a new multiplier for drivers based on their behavior. This will factor into the final price, but be obfuscated. Then Lyft can tell the drivers they are receiving a greater surge than what the rider sees, and pays…

Post by j4kp07 » Mon, May 20, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

chrismeller wrote: post #150

wlesieutre wrote: post #12

News flash: if you go out of your way to classify your entire workforce as contractors, you don't get to decide when they work or not. It turns out this has consequences on both sides. If Lyft wants to decide when their drivers are working, there's a process for this: 1) Hire employees 2) Give them a schedule 3) Pay them hourly plus mileage

I find it hard to agree. Hear me out... They are contractors because they do not have any set obligation for time. Rate of pay or overall pay has nothing at all to do with that. According to the IRS they do not have a set schedule and they are contractors (that is 1099, not W2). So they are contractors. What does that have to do with pay? Absolutely nothing. You want x and are willing to pay y. Maybe there’s an oppor…