This one is getting to me more and more. When I grew up, you got the best deals as a regular customer. Nowadays it's the opposite. Loyalty is something that can be exploited. If you don't switch insurance regularly, you are paying way too much. If you stay at a job for longer, you get paid under market. If you use a service regularly, you get charged more.

I think it's really corroding society when loyalty and trust are viewed as an exploitable weakness.

The mom and pop store making $200k/yr revenue selling physical goods gives regulars a deal because if their $100/mo spend goes elsewhere it is a demonstrably negative business impact, and there are 2 or 3 other mom and pop stores close by. The owner's kids also probably go to school with the regular's kids or there's some similar relationship. Plus, even if they wanted to maximize profit - they probably don't based on the previous point - they simply don't have enough data points to figure out how exactly to do it.

The multinational corporation has billions or tens of billions in revenue, tens or hundreds of thousands of locations, and so many data points they can test any price discrimination scheme they want and get data almost instantly. But this by itself isn't a problem (IMO, certainly some here would disagree). The root of the problem IMO is that there's no relationship. The manager of the location has no power, the district manager is in a city an hour away, the people making these pricing decisions live in another state or country, and they are judged on making the graph go up and to the right. Their bonuses depend on it, their livelihood depends on it.

In the mom and pop scenario, the customer interacts with someone whose livelihood depends on them being happy and has the power to make sure they are. With the multinational, they interact with someone who doesn't give a shit if they're happy or not, and has no power whatsoever, and the lowest person with power doesn't have any idea who they are and is actively incentivized to screw them.

One major clothing retailer I worked with for 4+ years was big on promotions, particularly via direct mail. Those scratch-off coupons were not random; they were specifically targeted to individual customers based on their prior behavior.

For example:

- Customer A historically buys when they get a 30% coupon; test them with a 20% and see if they bite, but if not, give them the 30% and get some money.

- Customer B will always buy with almost ANY discount but never without one; give them the lowest one most of the time, but occasionally give them a higher one because it keeps them interested.

- Customer C will buy any time, but we need to keep them hooked so we send them the lowest one all the time.

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I just don't know why people are surprised that this is happening at a bigger scale in app; it's baffling to me.

I don't see what the problem is.

Presumably people are fine with getting "ripped off" by Uber, otherwise they wouldn't keep using Uber and paying for it.

It's not like it's some free ad-supported product that's a scourge on society where all the costs are hidden.

I avoid Uber at all costs, other people are happy to rely on it. To each their own.

Fun fact, it's very easy for apps to see what apps you have installed on your phone.

If you only have Uber installed on your phone, see what happens with future pricing when you install Lyft, Curb, Waymo, etc.

You don't even need to ever use them. Just have them installed.

The problem is most people don't know. In my country you can't change the price for a given person. So if you don't know it's done, you can't change your behaviour (like do legal actions).

Betting it’s based on stereotypical appearance and language, not checking IDs.

A more charitable approach might be to charge an extra fee for foreign credit cards - that way you get to effectively upcharge tourists, while encouraging conversion to and payment by local currency, additionally saving yourself transaction fees in the process.

It's kind of reductionist to take that environment and that culture and just default to "giving the white guy the expensive menu is racism." You'd have to do that to probably 1500 people before you hit the person who has actually immigrated as opposed to a tourist.

It's an interesting dilemma. Personally, I prefer the version of price discrimination where you introduce high-margin premium value-adds that people can opt in or out of - alcohol or steak/lobster at a restaurant, rooms with views or additional packages at hotels, table service, etc, which can allow wealthier customers to subsidize less wealthy ones without necessarily compromising the core service. Though that's still a bummer when adding a view to a room is prohibitively expensive for something that cost the hotel nothing more to provide, and you feel like either you're getting screwed or you'll always have an alleyway view from your hotel.

They're fine with it because of the lack of real alternatives. There's effectively a duopoly with Lyft in most cities. Duopolies usually don't present every customer with at least some sort of solution that allows for both parties in the business transaction to gain value.

Which is why taxis were a regulated industry before some cokeheads in SV decided things needed to be "disrupted".

I’m not sure why we should presume people are “fine” with this just because it’s something that happens.

Plenty of things happen in this world that are not “fine” and make people upset, but continue to happen because of market forces, lack of reasonable alternatives, something being the “least bad” option, etc.

I think one of the most glaring issues is that Uber has established dominance in the category, which gives them power of their users and allows them to implement pricing strategies that are user-hostile with less chance of repercussions.

This sort of thing happens when you reach de facto monopoly status...

It is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44378508

If someone creates the same or better service at a more reasonable price, the consumers will switch. There is no vendor lock-in for Uber and no monopoly.

I don't see anything illegal going on here, just good old business.

Uber's price discrimination is opaque. Even if they aren't doing dastardly things with it, people don't like feeling ripped off. We have no way of knowing when we are.

1. The existence and mechanism of coupon programs is visible instead of secret.

2. They are not based on creepy individualized spy dossiers.

But most big box stores have moved to digital coupons that are indeed customized based on their creepy individualized spy dossier on you. At our grocery store, my partner and I get different coupons or even different deals for the same items.

Hardly a new idea. And Uber didn’t create it, they just do it well.