It seems as though Uber is making headlines every other week for their low prices, but with their latest announcement revealing they are dropping prices in over 100 U.S. and Canadian cities, Uber has surpassed their past benchmarks making this price drop one of the most significant in Uber’s history.
With the holidays drifting away into the past, the mid-January blues kicking in, and people staying at home to save money, Uber is finding that their demand for rides has dropped. Their solution is to lower fares in over a 100 cities in hopes of enticing more riders to open up their Uber app, hail a car, and get out of the house for a few hours. Sounds great for riders, but is it going to be beneficial for drivers as well? Uber is hoping that by lowering fares their drivers will be able to complete more trips which means more money in their pockets.
Or does it?
While we cannot argue that low demand is tough on drivers, Uber has to realize that by lowering their fares, they are also in effect lowering their driver’s earning potential. Car payments, gas prices, and maintenance costs will all remain the same for Uber drivers, yet their per trip income will be cut. Apparently, The RideShare Guy feels similar as he recently stated, “The gist of it is, that Uber will be cutting fares in order to increase passenger demand and then drivers will make more money. Unfortunately, we’ve been through this before and that is a total lie. When rates go down, it may increase passenger demand but drivers most definitely make less. And if they’re doing more trips per hour, their expenses are also higher.”
Even further, according to The RideShare Guy, Uber made their announcement on lowering fares after business hours on a Friday and didn’t even e-mail drivers about it! Because this is something that will affect all Uber drivers significantly, you would think that Uber would have had the courtesy to at least forewarn all of their drivers. Could this be one of the reasons, Uber’s driver turnover is so high? It seems like the company rarely puts their workforce first when making decisions.
The list of cities that will be affected has not been published by Uber, but our TFF team is working hard to figure out which cities are included in the price drop and will publish the full list for our readers! Stay Tuned!
About the Author
Lilly is the marketing manager for TaxiFareFinder.com. She has a dream to travel to 100 countries during her lifetime but meanwhile is filling her time by instagramming pictures of her puppy and trying to figure out how to get an acceptance letter to Hogwarts.
