People Figured Out How To Bypass Uber’s Surge Pricing And It’s Actually A Lot Simpler Than You’d Expect

There’s nothing quite like that feeling of despair you get upon opening up the Uber app and seeing a 4.0 surge charge at 3 in the morning while you’re standing out on a sidewalk in the middle of nowhere. Pay $80 for what should be a $20 ride, or run into the dark alley down the street and go fuck yourself? Hard choice, but according to researchers at Northeastern University there’s now a third option available:

Bypass the surge.

“Whaaaat?” you say as you forcibly pound your fist up your ass, “I didn’t know that was possible! Why am I fucking myself when I can just bypass the surge? Is it super complicated or something?” Well Mr. Fisto, I’m happy to inform you that the process is as simple as sitting around and waiting. According to Daily Mail,

To balance supply and demand during periods of high usage, or ‘surges,’ Wilson says, Uber uses ‘an opaque ‘surge pricing’ algorithm’ that changes fares every five minutes.

And it divides the cities it services into ‘discrete ‘surge areas.’

The number of ricocheting prices and discretely defined areas leads, the team found, to an unusual and what they say is unfair scenario.

Wilson dubs these ‘corner cases’, where you can walk across the street and all of a sudden the price changes.

Wilson goes on to use Times Square as an example, stating that simply by walking to an adjacent surge area a few blocks away customers can save 50% or more. Surge areas each have their own independent prices based on how intense the demand is at a given time.

For customers, however, the findings were explicit. ‘If you’re a customer, it can pay to wait or walk,’ says Wilson.

He notes, however, that you can’t know where to walk to or how far if you don’t have a detailed surge-area map in hand…(via)

Wilson and his Northeastern University team of researchers hope to one day provide consumers with an Uber surge pricing map, and considering that Uber is unlikely to ever provide one since it would undermine their profits, with any luck said map will be available soon.

[H/T Daily Mail]