You’re confusing unprovable and unfalsifiable. It could proven either through a whistleblower or finding an example where two accounts request the same ride at the same time and show a different price. If these sort of anecdotes aren't acceptable to you, you might say it's unprovable.

Unfalsifiable means it's impossible to submit evidence to contrary. In this casem the proposition is that Uber sometimes charges you more based on having credits in your account. There is no way to prove this never happens through an experiment. If an experiment showed that two rides cost the same to users with and without credits, it doesn't show that it never happens.

That example is literally in the article though. Clearly it’s not enough to convince OP.

In the article, the user looks at the price and thinks it seems higher than normal, which is different than comparing prices for identical rides at the same time.

EDIT: There is another account I missed in the article where identical rides are compared, so I take this back

In the article, the same thing is later tried with the user’s phone and the phone of a friend in sequence, at the same time.

I see. That seems like pretty good evidence then.

The point of the OP is that it is impossible to submit evidence that contradicts these anecdotes, because it is impossible to prove something never happens through experiments.

> I see. That seems like pretty good evidence then.

Two data points, one gathered immediately after another for the same route from a separate device, from a provider known to track demande and use "surge pricing"?

Ah, but which phone checked first? I could see the second request coming back with a higher price due to increased demand in the area.

Considering Uber’s stated, implicit and possibly legal goal is to maximize their profits, why do you believe they are choosing to not maximize profits in these situations?

> choosing to not maximize profits

There is a phrase "penny wise and pound foolish". That phrase is a good description of what's being alleged here. Trying to grab a few percent in ways that are likely to bring the hammer down when discovered is not exactly a great idea.

> Trying to grab a few percent in ways that are likely to bring the hammer down when discovered is not exactly a great idea.

DoorDash stole tips and got away with it. The precedent has been set. The "hammer" you're talking about hasn't existed for over a decade.

DoorDash still charges more for items compared to in person prices, charges a delivery fee, and then charges another fee which I can't remember what it was called. Then a tip. DoorDash can get bent. Which is exactly how I feel about Uber

>likely to bring the hammer down when discovered

People would forget a week later and continue to use the app. I think that saying is a bit naive to the post antitrust capitalist world

> Trying to grab a few percent in ways that are likely to bring the hammer down when discovered is not exactly a great idea.

That assumes that there is a hammer that will be brought down and that the hammer actually has some weight behind it.

The reality is that it takes years for governments to react to people breaking or bending the law in novel, creative ways. The fact of illegality didn't stop Uber and a bunch of other competitors to provide taxi services, nor did it stop AirBnB from facilitating the running of illegal hotels world-wide.

Yes, eventually the hammer came down, but seriously, not even a million euros fine and of that, 50% suspended for Uber [1] or a few hundred K for AirBnB [2]... that's a joke, that's pennies for these ultra-large corporations. And so, yes, breaking the law and paying fines until it's actually hitting execs personally is the more profitable option in the mid run. Just change which law you break and you'll get off.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/uber-and-execs-f...

[2] https://www.hotrec.eu/en/policies/_airbnb_fined_on_the_balea...

My comment was about the usage of the term unfalsifiable, which means something specific that was being misunderstood.

I don't know whether they are charging more when users have credits in there account. It seems plausible I guess.

Here are some plausible reasons why it may not be the case:

- If Uber's analysis determined that the best price to charge to maximize profit is independent of whether or not the user has credits

- Because predatory practices would generate bad press and push users to competitors, which would reduce profits

Corporations do not have a legal requirement to maximize profits.

Like in the article?

> He went a step farther and did something I didn’t: he checked Uber prices “with someone else’s phone” who did not have a balance in their Uber account – and Uber was pricing the route at the usual $20 for them.

Free markets depend on a large number of competitors and low barriers to entry. Transparent pricing is unlikely to make much of a difference with Uber.

> Free markets depend on transparent pricing.

I mean, there are no surprise post-ride fees or anything. They're quoting you what the actual price is, and they're free to quote whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. Nobody's forcing you to agree to it. There's nothing stopping you from getting a competitive quote from Lyft by simply switching apps on the phone. Or by calling a cab company. Also there's nothing that keeps you from choosing to wait for a bus.

*Edit: Per Uber's help page there are exceptions to the up-front price quote actually being charged, but they are exceptions. My basic point that it's still a free market stands. "The upfront price you’re shown may change due to a number of circumstances, which may include adding stops, updating your destination, significant changes to the route or duration of the trip, or you pass through a toll that was not factored into your upfront price. In addition, you may incur wait time fees for the time you take to get to the car at the pickup or multi-stop fees for time spent at an on-trip stop."

My latest Uber receipt reads:

> Due to unanticipated tolls or surcharges on this trip, we’ve adjusted your upfront fare to reflect the actually incurred charges. Please see the receipt breakdown for details.

Were there tolls on your trip?

Driver pay gets adjusted this way too. Lyft and Uber. No tolls, traffic jams (at least) can cause this.

Given enough time Uber will just look like an another taxi service I guess.

Yes, except the driver will never have his child in a car seat in the front apologetically. And the passenger will pay in excess, but to the stock market and not the driver.

What you're responding to is market demand for an alternative. Who knows if it'll spring into existence, but the words have been uttered into the universe.

> Free markets depend on transparent pricing.

Specifically, transparent in that I can compare prices, which I can just check with my work phone or Lyft or Waymo, so they are. But when I buy a can of coke from the store, I have zero clue as to why it's priced. The algorithm used there is as opaque as Uber's is. I'd love for Uber to be transparent as to why a ride costs what it does, and how much goes to the driver, but there's no reason for them to do that.

But two people in the same store at the same time will always see the same price for the can of coke.

Not if one of them has a coupon or is in the rewards program.

(Or has food stamps.)

The price adjustments due to coupons, rewards programs, and food stamps are all publicly available (transparent). No hidden algorthms. If the coupon says 10% off, then that's what you get. It's not maybe 10% off or maybe something else depending on a secret recipe like if the temperature is between x and y and you have a name that rhymes with Pobert or whatever else some AI has figured out.

The opacity is that people who don't have coupons generally don't know they exist. Coupons are a kind of price discrimination assuming that people with less time to coupon-hunt are willing to pay more.

The coupons I get in the mail from Fred Meyer (a local Kroger subsidiary) are custom, printed for me based on my purchase history. I can’t guarantee they alter the discount for the same item based on the customer, but it seems logical.

Also, the coupons they print on the fly with the receipt could be custom priced for that specific customer, as well.

Sometimes I receive a coupon in the mail but my sister who has the same last name as me and lives in the same town does not. Whatever algorithm causes that is pretty opaque.

Or their friend is the cashier and gives them the staff discount, or the cashier is crooked and over charges the person, or the person steals it.

Prices are different in different physical neighborhoods. Why shouldn't it be the same for digital neighborhoods and the user has an iPhone, or extra cash lying around? It offends your (and my) puritanical sensibilities, but prices are all made up and have no relation to what something costs to make (it's true. think about that deeply) anyway, so of evils in the world, Uber's pricing strategy is hardly the worst of it.

Pricing algorithms have ALWAYS been private, for any business. They tell you the price straight up. You either like the price or you don't. They don't and should not need to explain where the number came from. Do you whine about the pricing algorithms behind McDonalds or the grocery store? I would hope not.

The issue is the computer age has allowed gray-area-illegal pricing discrimination to be partook at unprecedented scale. McDonald’s sets a price per market not user. It’s funny you mention them though, because just look at the shenanigans with the $10 whopper sticker prices to drive people to “download the McDonald’s app”. It’s just setting up a reverse auction in disguise.

Funnily enough, that is especially not the case with the market Uber competes with, a.k.a taxis. The fare is pre-advertised and is based on distance/time. Transparent pricing that does not vary by customer was a very important aspect of traditional taxi services, to the point where you could see your fare change in real time as the ride progressed.

And yet, individual cabbies are enterprising enough to hoodwink individual passengers day-in, day-out, and it's all part of the game.

Mass consumer products generally don't discriminate per user like that.

This. B2C expectation is a fixed price, as if it was a property of the product or service, and any sudden changes need some plausible justification (like idk. import costs just went up because of a calamity, or sth.). When I go to the grocery store, I don't want to pay whatever I can individually negotiate with the seller - the hassle and resulting unpredictability has a large dollar cost on individuals' life too.

Well, generally, they tell everyone the price. In this case, they're only telling you the price, and that price might change tomorrow, or in 5 minutes, or if you move 5 blocks to the south, or if the local commuter train gets delayed, or... By how much, for each input? Who knows. Hence, the concern about the lack of transparency.

When I go to the supermarket, I get one price for bananas and my friend gets that same price. I don't pay 1 dollar while he pays 1.10. All the customers have the same pricing. This is the key difference.

If every customer has a different price, like Uber does, that opens up pandora's box. Naturally customers will start wondering about patterns and what they can do to lower their price. They might speculate if people of race X are given a slightly higher price on average, or what other physical characteristics might play a role.

Your supermarket doesn't play that game.

You may pay $1.10 and your friend pays $1.10 but gets a 10¢ discount with a coupon. It’s the same thing economically.

Not the same because coupons are public and equal opportunity. It's not like you get coupons for being white or being a man, but with Uber you could actually pay less for those things. Who knows?

Coupons often come only in certain magazines or newspapers so unless you bought said newspaper you would not know of them.

Again, this is fundamentally different because the content of those coupons are not proprietary. I think we all recognize there's a difference between a dynamic price black box and a coupon.

There have been government hearings in the US about grocery stores price-gouging over the rate of inflation. So yes?

If you have something to say, say it.

If free markets depended on transparent pricing we’d all be communists now ;)

What? How?

I _think_ they're trying to say that since we don't have transparent prices, and we have a free market, free markets must not depend on transparent prices. It's not obvious though because it seems that there's disagreement about whether or not we have free pricing (as seen by other subthreads here), so it wasn't clear to me at first if the parent comment here was arguing that we have transparent prices and therefore are communistic or that we don't and therefore aren't.

Right, thank you that. I didn't get what was being said there.

Of course in a large economy where most price discovery is transparent in the sense that they are not individualized and can't change in real-time based on arbitrary and hidden rulesets, then a few exceptions won't topple the whole thing. Some amount of fraud can also be tolerated. But too much and things start to break down.

Yep, I agree with that. I think there's probably a spectrum of "transparency" rather than just a binary thing, and we all have different ideas of where to draw the line of what's acceptable. They key question to me is whether it's transparent enough for there to be accountability. Right now, it's impossible to tell the difference between the pricing algorithm that Uber currently uses and one where they pull tricks like the one described in the article, and I think that's the problem; they might do it, they might not, and from the outside, it looks identical because there's no way to hold them accountable if they do.

> no way to hold them accountable if they do

Hold them accountable for what exactly?! Uber provides a service - how much it costs depends on many factors like where you live, time of the day and many other factors. You open the app to see what their services cost and you can then choose to use their services or not.

There is no price transparency in many businesses. Try buying airline tickets online - first try at your own home. Then take your laptop and go to a zipcode where one of your friends lives that is much better off than you financially and try the same thing. Next, do the same but go to a different friend's house, one that perhaps lives in a zipcode that is a lot less affluent and see what happens there. Then repeat this same test but use MacBook Pro vs some shitty HP running Windows 7 and see what the difference is. Next, get NordVPN and get your self parked elsewhere and see what happens with the pricing... It is quite silly to even discuss "price transparency" in 2024 mates :)

> There is no price transparency in many businesses. Try buying airline tickets online

People hate airline pricing as well, so I'm not sure that makes the point you think it does. I don't see why "lots of business do something people don't like" somehow means people should stop disliking it.

> It is quite silly to even discuss "price transparency" in 2024 mates :)

If you think it's silly to spend time discussing it, you're not under any obligation to. There's nothing wrong with people who do think it's an issue discussing it either though, and I don't think anyone concerned by it is going to be particularly dissuaded by just asserting that they shouldn't be.

The question isn’t whether people like or dislike something, the comment I commented on stated that free markets depend on transparent pricing which in my humble opinion cannot be further from the truth.

Yes I know, and I explained that the person who was confused by the way your comment was worded. We continued discussing the issue after that, and personally, it doesn't matter to me whether it's a strict requirement of the free market or not; there are plenty of things that are theoretically not incompatible with a free market that I think are bad, and this is one of them.

Pricing needs to be transparent, but the reason for the pricing does not. As long as it’s labeled clearly and accurately you can decide to buy or not. You don’t get to tell Walmart they have to give a breakdown of everything that went into a pricing decision.

Those situations aren’t the same: Walmart charges everyone the same price and they advertise those prices so they’re stable over some time. Uber has multiple sources of dynamic behavior and so I think it’s reasonable to demand visibility, similar to how an airplane fare breaks down the portions which are demand based from the things which are static.

> Walmart charges everyone the same price

This... isn't true. The same item at a Walmart near San Francisco will have a different price than in nowhere, Kansas.

But the person I was responding to was saying that the reasons for a price need to be transparent, which I think is orthogonal to whether a company has universal same-price-for-everyone guarantees.

And most companies do not charge the same thing to everyone, even within a market. Think about AAA and senior discounts, loyalty programs, etc.

It’s true in a market for Walmart but not Uber, and the same is true for everything else you mentioned – senior discounts don’t vary per-person. I think that’s a fundamental difference since private per-customer pricing opens up the possibility for the kind of abuses which Uber has been accused of repeatedly.

> You don’t get to tell Walmart they have to give a breakdown of everything that went into a pricing decision.

If Walmart would have a custom price for everyone that walks in based on how much Walmart thinks they can afford, then yes: absolutely there should be more transparency.

Pricing algorithms have always been private!! Yet "free markets" seemed to work out anyway.

Go to an auction house, or a swap meet. Haggle for prices, against other buyers, negotiate with sellers. Approach any salesman in a business with unpublished prices (B2B especially.) Try to purchase a home or a vehicle, middleman or not.

Think about it, and you'll discover that pricing algorithms have been subject to human whim since before the invention of money.

The amazing innovation of markets was indeed, up-front price tags, fairness to all buyers, yet any underlying algorithm was still private and proprietary, so the consumer at a Safeway doesn't really have any idea what his carton of milk costs or why he's paying $7 for it.

The problem is price fixing, right? Milk, really?

I suppose it's also possible that they are taking hundreds of data points including battery life and credits, and training some ML. Then they don't even really know what the algorithm is, other than whatever the weights they are feeding it.

I worked in the pricing team at the time. There was essentially no personalization. The biggest factors were your current location, where you're going, the time of the day, current demand level around you, and current supply of drivers around you. Promotions were slightly more personalized but battery level was not used.