[backcountryrez]

It had been slow all day today as I live in a town there people leave it go to visit their families for the holiday. The specific area I live in is in close proximity to hotels and corporate parks, so one needs to drive down to either the city or lower-income suburban areas to earn money. As such, I decided to stay home to get some wrapping done for the holiday and get some sleep since I agreed to cover call for my colleagues who wanted to be with their families this weekend.

So I turn on the app on a lark to see if I could make a few bucks before I go to bed and wake up at midnight to work. Lo and behold, we have surge. Exciting!

I'm maybe a mile and a half away from the edge of the surge. To confirm this is not a bogey, I turn on the rider app. It shows two cars to the left of me! I opt to stay online and stay put to get the surge ride.

14 minutes later:

Nothing yet, until two minutes later I get this:

No thanks. Not a surge? Not interested. Opted to stay online. I got up and left to move towards the surge. Ten minutes later:

No pings, but a minute later:

This is NOT EVEN REMOTELY near the surge area! No thanks, decline. 7 min later, the ever-disappearing surge as I move back towards home:

So in 42 minutes, I have seen the surge come and go and received ZERO pings even though I was in close proximity to it.

So you win, Uber. You've made a sucker out of me in chasing the phantom surge fare. I will give credit where credit's due. I know I'm a lowly ant and you're here to make me follow the crumbs.

 

[Lessthanminimum]

Yep it's all a gimmick. The only time Uber isn't basically a free ride is in a surge. They use it to get divers online and then ping them with nonsurge rides. Occasionally you'll get lucky but the majority of the time you will not.

If we had a blueprint of everything they did to manipulate the system to turn drivers into free pack mules most would stop driving.

11 and 13 minutes to pick up a $5 or $7 ride is an automatic ignore.

 

[Grand]

Surge suckers think that Surge is related to actual demand. That is why we have a dedicated subforum just related to Surge.

 

[ABC123DEF]

You all must not have been around where surge used to cover LARGE chunks of a city area...not these random splotches of honeycomb beehive crap!

 

[Steve2967]

Or....

It could just be people aren’t willing to pay the surge prices because they don’t really HAVE to go somewhere right now?

Nah...

Of course everything is a conspiracy. You guys are the biggest group of freaks anywhere.

You’re mad about not getting surge rates cause your market value in the job market is crap.

 

[backcountryrez]

Or....

It could just be people aren't willing to pay the surge prices because they don't really HAVE to go somewhere right now?

Nah...

Of course everything is a conspiracy. You guys are the biggest group of freaks anywhere.

You're mad about not getting surge rates cause your market value in the job market is crap.

Of course I'm mad. That's why this is posted in the complaint forum. Additionally, calling my market value in the "job market" crap is subjective and without any actual data to back it up. Thanks for your useless comment.

 

[the ferryman]

Thometimeths thurge ith real

 

[Lessthanminimum]

Or....

It could just be people aren't willing to pay the surge prices because they don't really HAVE to go somewhere right now?

Nah...

Of course everything is a conspiracy. You guys are the biggest group of freaks anywhere.

You're mad about not getting surge rates cause your market value in the job market is crap.

Steve you must have great powers to see through our profiles and rate our market value. A useless point based on squat.

 

[ABC123DEF]

Maybe he also ran our resumes through an applicant tracking system while he was rating our market value.

 

[Mista T]

What is this "surge" that you all are speaking of?

 

[Jo3030]

Never chase the surge.
Ever.
Get lucky, that's okay
But knowing how Uber (and Lyft too) manipulate things, I don't trust either of them.

 

[Hihosilver]

Now I hope you are listening when we tell you NOT TO PICK UP POOLS!

 

[backcountryrez]

Now I hope you are listening when we tell you NOT TO PICK UP POOLS!

The sadomasochist in me feels otherwise. Thank god we don't have POOL yet.

 

[Cableguynoe]

The sad part is you're going to do it again