It's a dangerous game. With the cost of ride essentially being an unknown, ranging from cheaper than a cab to many times the cost of a cab, I often wouldn't bother either. People prefer consistency in what they pay for an experience, and when it's inconsistent, I lose trust that the value will be consistent (ie. Uber for most people I believe is attractive if the experience is better or equal in cost to a cab, but terrible when the cost is significantly higher than the convenience/better experience.) At least with a cab I am (fairly) certain of the value.
I think it's probably one of the 'things that could work better' but unlikely something the company makes much money from.
It's all speculative because how they implement surge is opaque.
This affects the demand side too: people remember stories of people getting burned by huge surge multipliers, and as a result adjust their behavior (being more willing to call a normal cab, driving instead of taking a cab). Here again the actual surge multipliers matter less than the expectations. By providing reasonable estimates, they could set surge multipliers that would ensure a high supply of drivers and demand for them, instead of having the curves moved out of whack by overestimation.