FTFA:
"When a rider uses Uber's app to hail a ride, the fare the app immediately shows to the passenger is based on a slower and longer route compared to the one displayed to the driver. The software displays a quicker, shorter route for the driver. But the rider pays the higher fee, and the driver's commission is paid from the cheaper, faster route, according to the lawsuit."
You just quoted the argument that my comment refuted. What is your argument?
1) Uber is saying "I can get you from A -> B for $Y" and the rider agrees to pay $Y.
2) It tells the driver that it will pay them $Z to drive from A -> B and the driver agrees to it.
So what? Where is the fraud?
Consider a similar circumstance in Amazon:
1) A merchant is saying "I can sell you this widget for $X" and the consumer agrees to pay $X.
2) Amazon tells the merchant that it will pay them $Y to sell the widget to a customer. $Y here is $X minus Amazon's cut. The merchant agrees to take $Y in exchange for the product.
If your points #1 and #2 were in isolation, that would be fine. But the issue at hand is that those fares are justified by a evidence-based pricing policy, and the evidence in question are facts that Uber knows to be wrong.
If I'm a trader in the highly volatile Celery Stalk market, and I sign a contract with a restaurant that I'll sell them celery at a 5% markup over what I'm paying, and I actually take 7%, that's not "free trade", it's fraud.
Now I don't know exactly what the details of Uber's pricing calculations are. So maybe it's not quite like celery skimming. But it sounds close enough, and is probably worth a law suit to find out.
I see your point and understand why what Uber is doing feels kind of icky.
I don't see it as fraud, because I don't think Uber's up-front pricing is them saying "this is the best deal for you, the customer", but rather an offer to the customer to buy a product at that price. They don't have any fiduciary duty to give the customer the "best rate."
This feels like the trend now of people realizing that bank tellers aren't actually fiduciaries and getting upset when they—i.e. customers—are sold financial products that might not be necessary or in their best interest. Matt Levine has a section on this[0] (skip to the section on "cross-selling") and why people are upset.
> They don't have any fiduciary duty to give the customer the "best rate."
This, to me, is the critical point from the rider side.
If drivers were ever told something along the lines of "We, Uber, take an x% cut of the fare" then I can see a court deciding that drivers were defrauded by Uber when they misrepresented what the user paid.
Yes, and I seem to have been wrong about their relationship. @abduhl pointed out that their agreement with drivers does say that they merely take a % of fares.[0] That agreement, though, seems to have been before the implementation of upfront pricing, so I don't know if the Technology Services Agreement had been modified.
Yeah, okay. If A) that's true and B) Users paid a different amount than what Uber indicates to drivers was paid, it seems like drivers have an excellent case against Uber.
In which case we'll see Uber, a company that seems set on self-destruction at this point, pay a moderate settlement that's unlikely to be material compared to their funding.
> 2) It tells the driver that it will pay them $Z to drive from A -> B and the driver agrees to it.
I don't disagree with the overall sentiment that this seems like a non-issue.
However, the driver doesn't see the route, price, then agree to it. They see a pickup point of a passenger and agree to that alone. My understanding is that this is all the information they have when agreeing to a ride. It's a feature to prevent drivers being picky about passengers based on their trip value. It's one of the more important features to me. I've lived in two cities where cab drivers ask where you're going before letting you into the car for exactly this reason. In both cities it is both illegal and common practice.
The most charitable form of this same argument, assuming I've got my facts straight, seems to be: You've driven for Uber for >=1 ride and have a grasp on the reward structure and have chosen to continue doing the job in exchange for said reward structure.
