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Comment by dvcc | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this should have just been worked into the original price, instead of having it seem like this whole time it was unsafe.

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I agree. I'm a fan of "the price is the price," with all of the various overhead expenditures being factored into that price. There's not a line item for their app developers, nor a charge for their server hosting...

Agreed. Maybe I should offer a "free rides" app, but charge a gas fee, a driver fee, and an administrative fee.

It's not even clear exactly what this fee is supposed to be covering

I think that was called Lyft.

Lyft's ain't free, it just uses the legal fiction of a "suggested donation" as a fairly transparent attempt to avoid taxicab regulations in some cities.

It's probably fine to advertise is as "free rides" with an asterisk "* surcharges and fees may apply". Here are a list of fees you can tack on:

- driver fee - passenger fee - initiation fee (1st time rider) - healthy sf fee - tax recovery fee - safe driver fee

You forgot the payment administration fee,

Not to mention that they send out an email with their recent price cuts, but this is only shown in app. Seems like they are trying to slip it by.

It feels like a "whoops, we cut prices too far" move.

...or a more strategic "cut prices to lock people into our service, and then up the prices". Uber cuts the prices of UberX to attract traffic away from Lyft, Sidecar, etc, and then raises prices and relies on people not having the inertia to go back to other apps/suppliers and shop around.

Agreed. At the very least, this is poor wording.

"I'm going to opt not to have a safe ride."

Right, can I opt out of that fee? There's a link to a new axe design trending on HN at the moment; how about I buy one of those and bring it with me to guarantee my own safety and opt out of that dollar fee?

Line-iteming a fee feels like it opens it up to negotiation.

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