A surprisingly large number of seemingly-unconnected people I know have switched to Lyft. The switching itself isn't the issue, it's that these people come from several different social groups and they are all surprisingly vocal about switching.

The fact that my friends still pile up at Chick-Fil-A makes me want to disagree. No matter how principled people claim to be, they always end up back with what they know and like, in this case Uber.

In this case though, there's a competitor that does exactly the same thing for similar prices.

> Similar prices

Not true, Uber can be 40-60% cheaper. I've stopped taking public transit in the Bay Area because of Uber, I don't think I could do that with Lyft alone. Is there another competitor with cheaper pricing?

I don't know about the US, but in India, Ola offers cheaper prices than Uber (about 30 - 60%) and people are switching to it. Uber hasn't been deleted, but it's losing customers (at least the ones using cab services regularly) to Ola.

I had no idea, that's awesome (for consumers, not uber haha)

I'd guess that a large fraction of people that deleted the Uber app and installed a competitor have not reinstalled. Once you've gone through that there isn't much point in reinstalling Uber. However, I don't know how many people did this vs just uninstalling Uber without a replacement or leaving it installed but not using the app. Those two groups probably had higher rates of people going back to Uber.

I disagree - I've had Uber and Lyft for years, and I check both to compare prices and ETA. For the past 6 months, I've noticed that Uber can be 40-60% cheaper than Lyft. I doubt former Uber users will forget what prices are like.

Uninstalling provides an additional barrier to returning. I mentioned that I expect users that didn't uninstall to return at a higher rate than users that did.

It's also not just about the price. A new benefit to having an Amex platinum card is $200 per year in Uber ride credits. I do not plan to return to Uber to use the credits. In fact, this is making me seriously consider not renewing that card when the annual fee comes up in a few months. I don't want Uber getting money from me, even indirectly.

That's a noble decision!

Call me a cynic, but I think you're in the minority, I doubt most people have the moral fortitude to forego $200 in free Uber credits...

How exactly do you perform this price comparison? In my experience you only find out what the ride cost after it's over. Or do you regularly travel the same routes often enough that you can run a personal A/B test?

UberPool and LyftLine tell you prices up front, before requesting the ride!

Ah, I see - I've never tried those services. Not even sure whether they exist in Seattle.

It probably depends on their alternatives, so cities are probably going to have more viable competitors to use than rural areas.

60% seems extremely high to me. I'm sure it's happening at some level, but it would have a significant impact on Uber's growth and it opens the door for the 2nd and 3rd place competitors to get traction.

Also, the rates will drop every time there's a new scandal, so there's a compounding effect to the waves of bad press they've had.