Taxi Driver Online

...only I don't think it's called surge-pricing these days, and it's a lot more complex than that. But the underlying principle of raising fares so that demand for Uber's services is matched to the amount of people willing to book an Uber is still the same, I'd guess


Why do Uber taxi fares - which operate in Thanet, Medway, Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells - sometimes cost more than double the price of local cab companies?

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/news/opini ... -p-332916/

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I thought the whole point of the taxi service run by Uber was that it was cheaper than its rivals?

That, I felt, was the entire point of its existence; shaking up the local markets in which it is allowed to operate by undercutting its rivals.

It’s why established firms were, understandably, so annoyed. But also why many folk – of whom I count myself among – were thinking ‘oh, that’s handy, I might save a few quid’.

After all, there have been numerous times when I’ve booked cabs with local firms well in advance only to be told five minutes before they are expected they wouldn’t be with me ‘because we’re really busy’. Well that, dear cab firm, is why I booked it days beforehand. But I digress.

So Uber exists across Kent, in places such as Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, Medway and Thanet, to name but a few.

Yet last weekend, after an evening savouring the delights of Margate, the price quoted on the Uber app was not only more expensive, but almost double that offered by the local cab companies.

I understand it, like Ticketmaster, uses the woefully unfair ‘surge pricing’ – a mechanism by which the price increases the more in-demand its services are. Imagine if they operated that in a fish and chip shop if there was a long queue? The board price of £10 for cod and chips escalating to £25 by the time you get to the counter. Madness, but for some reason it’s allowed to happen in some walks of life.

But I would argue that 9pm on a Saturday night is not peak time. Peak-ish, certainly, but surely ‘peak’ is at the start or end of the traditional night out, when everyone is heading out or home. Not the mid-evening period when old folk like me decide to call it a day?

Nor, for that matter, was Margate very busy. In fact ‘quiet’ would be the word I’d use to describe the town. Surprisingly.

It normally costs a smidge over £7 to app-book a cab to get me home from the town centre. Maybe a tenner tops if turning up at a taxi rank immediately after a concert at Dreamland. A few extra quid I’m prepared to pay to avoid waiting for the train.

But at 9.30pm, Uber was offering me an option for about £13. And that with some sort of discount applied.

Suitably put out at the price, I checked my go-to local firm. There it was…£7-something and the cab would be outside my pub of choice in a few minutes. Which, in itself, suggests the town wasn’t swamped with cab requests at that time.

It goes without saying who got my custom.

Uber, it seems, provides an alternative, but that’s about it. It needs to rein in its surge pricing if it actually wants to be a financially viable option. I’m going to stick, in the future, with a local cab company and reliable costs.

Yes, that's what private hire was doing for years before Uber, so what's new?

(And also individual HCs, and HC circuits, in terms of an element of competition and fare discounting, say.)


I'm sure he's never bought anything in the January sales, say, nor taken advantage of an offer at a restaurant, for example. And Black Friday?

And nothing to stop a chip shop varying its prices for whatever reason, but it's just something they tend not to do, for their own reasons and business model. But I'm sure there are examples in that sector of more, er, dynamic pricing etc, but it's just that in certain sectors (like hotels and tourism) it's more prevalent than in others.

And, again, nothing really new in the 'taxi' industry - for a start, there's always been nighttime and festive premiums on HC tariff cards, and also weekend tariffs in many areas, for example. And also an element of that historically in private hire pricing.


Er, but that's not what Uber's pricing model is all about. Although it's maybe a bit more opaque than ten years ago, it's not about the wider market for 'taxis'; it's about demand and supply for Uber cars in particular.

So if everyone's trying to get an Uber, and there aren't many available Uber cars, then the price goes up to stop people booking Ubers, and maybe get more Uber drivers out. Voila, demand and supply is matched, and people don't have to wait hours for an Uber

What's happening in the rest of the 'taxi' market at that time isn't really relevant to Uber's pricing, except to the extent that the availability of other services at that time might affect demand for Ubers.

As, indeed, the scenario depicted by the journalist demonstrates

Because mug punters pay it.

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IDFIMH

Maybe the uber car that is within 15 mies of Margate has 15 dead miles to go for what would be a £7 fare? I doubt there's many uber cars in the Thanet area.

Doubt Uber would have offered the booking on the app if the driver had been that far away, and the driver would have been as mad as a march hare if he had run that far for a small job.

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IDFIMH