A new Consumer Reports investigation released Tuesday found that Uber and Lyft riders often see different prices for the same ride, even when they request it at the same time, along the same route to the same destination.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.These price differences may be familiar to Uber and Lyft users who have compared fares with someone else.
But the new report found the discrepancies can be dramatic.Across the rides tested by Consumer Reports, the median gap between the lowest and highest quoted fare for the same trip was a whopping 50%.The investigation recruited 174 volunteers who priced more than 40 routes on Uber and Lyft across 18 states.In Kansas City, Missouri, 55 volunteers who checked one particular route generated 29 different prices.
In Austin, Texas, the fares for another route ranged from $25 to $65, a 160% difference.Rides in the investigation were requested within minutes of one another, and in many cases within the same minute.
Consumer Reports said some of the routes ordered by volunteers in the study were from exactly the same pinpoint location, but others differed slightly.Ride-hailing companies have long used dynamic pricing, also known as “surge pricing,” which calculates prices based on shifting market conditions such as rider demand, car availability, and traffic conditions.But the differences that Consumer Reports found among seemingly identical ride requests raise new questions about whether Uber and Lyft are using personalized pricing or “surveillance pricing.” These systems set a unique price for each individual customer based not only on market conditions, but also on that person’s user data.Derek Kravitz, the lead author of the report, says Uber and Lyft have access to a huge amount of customer data within the app, and that this information could be used by the companies to predict what a customer might be willing to pay.“We found that t...