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Comment by staticassertion | Hacker News Reader

I'm not advocating for Uber and Lyft or a free market or whatever, but isn't the "free market accounting for it already in the ride price" exactly because they adjusted their prices?

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They adjust their prices by the minute depending on ride demand and how many drivers on the road in the area. There's no reason fuel prices wouldn't already fit into that same calculation. Instead there's a new line item added to the final bill for the surcharge.

So you’re complaining about them being more transparent in their pricing? Interesting take.

I wouldn’t call this transparency. It’s designed to cause confusion. Throwing too much information and too many fees to confuse the heck out of you and hope that you’d say “whatever” and book it.

Fuel was always included in the price. Now it's not, at least not entirely. They're not moving it out of the price out of a desire for transparency; they're trying to raise prices without getting yelled at.

There's not a "driver surcharge" and a "working doors surcharge" and a "seatbelt surcharge", right?

If fuel cost zero yesterday and costs exactly $1 per ride (regardless of length) today then it would be transparency. What they are doing now is advertising a low up-front price and tacking on random surcharges to the final bill.

They're attempting to advertise lower prices than they're charging. If they want to advertise real rates and provide an itemized break down of fees on demand I'd be happy to see the increased transparency. Fees unmentioned until the last moment are designed to leverage people's sunk cost fallacy and say "Well, I'm already so close to booking a ride I might as well."

This is in no way a move to increase transparency and, uh, fuel doesn't have a flat per ride cost anyways. If I book a three thousand dollar uber to take me from LA to NYC it apparently uses just as much fuel as getting an Uber to the bus stop down the road from me.

Yeah, it's so they have a guaranteed return. If they thought the "pure market" was handling things well then they should realize after a short time supply and demand should stabilize pretty quickly with the new fuel prices. No one is going to drive if the fuel makes it unprofitable.

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