Two similar consecutive trips but very different pay

I think there are "hidden" surges. I see it all the time on the South side of the city where they aren't showing surge or just showing low surge but giving fares uncharacteristically higher.

This surprises you? We see this all day every day since UFF.

In addition to Uber now raising and lower fares for similar trips on a whim, there is "hidden" surge and there WAS hidden surge before UFF.

Before UFF some were calling it shared surge, or surge kick back. I sometimes called it pity surge. How it worked was when the pax was paying way more for their fare than the driver was earning, Uber would share some of that pax surge with the driver so their take wouldn't be sheer lunacy. For example, maybe with a $5 surge you were making $15 on a trip, but Uber was charging the passenger $50 for the trip. Instead of leaving you with only 30% of the fare, Uber would raise your surge on the trip detail to $10 to that the split was slightly less horrible at 50/50.

The difference now with UFF is that this "shared" surge is baked into the offer up front, and you can see it ahead of time in the request.

Schmanthony said:

This surprises you? We see this all day every day since UFF.

In addition to Uber now raising and lower fares for similar trips on a whim, there is "hidden" surge and there WAS hidden surge before UFF.

Before UFF some were calling it shared surge, or surge kick back. I sometimes called it pity surge. How it worked was when the pax was paying way more for their fare than the driver was earning, Uber would share some of that pax surge with the driver so their take wouldn't be sheer lunacy. For example, maybe with a $5 surge you were making $15 on a trip, but Uber was charging the passenger $50 for the trip. Instead of leaving you with only 30% of the fare, Uber would raise your surge on the trip detail to $10 to that the split was slightly less horrible at 50/50.

The difference now with UFF is that this "shared" surge is baked into the offer up front, and you can see it ahead of time in the request.

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I wasn't aware of such a thing as a "hidden" surge but it's good to know, thank you for explaining that in detail. I will try to pay more attention when I accept requests but I am afraid that I won't be able to analyze those in detail since I only have a few seconds to decide and keep my eyes on the road the same time. Maybe I need a bigger screen than just a phone to see more request detail? How do you do it?

Difference comes from how far away you drove to pick up passenger. They pay a low ball rate like .25 per mile for pick up distance driven. Then u get low balled on driving distance for ride at a rate less than .61 per mile.

Its just another reason to decline garbage, esp. during busy times,. you only have a limited window to maximize on demand, do it wisely. Always beware to what you should be willing to accept according to all the factors around you. Surges are frequently hidden in popular urban areas, they often use them to herd the sheep to low supply zones.
In general surge amounts dont really mean anything, algo will undercut high surge or boost low to no surge offer whenever it feels like, we have no rules or set base rates for anything, algo is playing games with and you need to start playing games with algo.

Funky said:

Almost the same surge amount, similar distance, same area but look at the pay: one is $16.90, the other one $11.89. Why is that, any of you know? View attachment 699289

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My friend yesterday had a trip come in for 55 bucks 2.5 hour round trip. He did not take it. 2 min later same trip came in only 35 bucks which he declined it. Then 2 or 3 min later same trip 45 bucks . It was a round trip with one stop. 2.5 hours what in the world is UBer doing to you all now. No surge was included in any of them. The person was only rated 4.79.

mrwhts said:

My friend yesterday had a trip come in for 55 bucks 2.5 hour round trip. He did not take it. 2 min later same trip came in only 35 bucks which he declined it. Then 2 or 3 min later same trip 45 bucks . It was a round trip with one stop. 2.5 hours what in the world is UBer doing to you all now. No surge was included in any of them. The person was only rated 4.79.

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I’ve seen more round trip requests in the past week than I’ve seen total in the time before that. Not sure why, maybe a lot of people need to get weed

New guy65 said:

I’ve seen more round trip requests in the past week than I’ve seen total in the time before that. Not sure why, maybe a lot of people need to get weed

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I've been seeing more multiple stop trips myself. It could be that ants are getting wise to them and rejecting them more often, causing them to bounce around more. Hopefully anyway.

Schmanthony said:

I've been seeing more multiple stop trips myself. It could be that ants are getting wise to them and rejecting them more often, causing them to bounce around more. Hopefully anyway.

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I always decline multiple stops and cancel any trip when a change pops up. As well as any trip switch on lyft which seems to happen multiple times a day

New guy65 said:

I always decline multiple stops and cancel any trip when a change pops up. As well as any trip switch on lyft which seems to happen multiple times a day

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I haven't figure out how can I see in the Uber app the final destination when a change like this pops up, before picking up pax. I am just a little worried that this is a way to go around the system to get f***ed by unwillingly ending up in an unsafe area of the city and get robbed or worse...
Maybe I should just do it like you and cancel the trip right after a change in destination happens.

Funky said:

Maybe I should just do it like you and cancel the trip right after a change in destination happens.

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Maybe? You absolutely should. No question about it.

Schmanthony said:

I've been seeing more multiple stop trips myself. It could be that ants are getting wise to them and rejecting them more often, causing them to bounce around more. Hopefully anyway.

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Hopefully? So those trips hit your radar 20 times?

uber_312 said:

Hopefully? So those trips hit your radar 20 times?

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Well yeah that part isn't that good. But I think overall, looking at the big picture, it's better if trash offers of any kind are rejected. If no one ever accepted multi-trip pings because they all suck, Uber and pax would be forced to pay more for them. Even a multi trip ping could be a good offer at the right price. They just aren't ever being priced right currently. And actually never have been.

I drove today's evening rush hr and was shocked that the majority of my offers were paying only 33 - 43 cents per min ($20-$26 hr) including the surge, and on a wet day to boot. I even saw a 42 min trip to Ohare paying $18.50 including a $2.50 surge. It was depressing to say the least.

Rainy, busy Thurs night and you had to take 4 - 7 mile trips to make $10 - $14 (including the so-called $3 - $6 'surges'). I almost always used to get $9 - $14 trips for only 1.2 - 3 miles driven using the same locations, routes, etc. Anyone who thinks UberHAL is the same since UFF started needs to take a remedial math course. Oh, and we no longer have decent Quests either.

uber_312 said:

Interesting take but I think it's the other way around. UberHAL is conditioning and training us to accept whatever rates and parameters it decides is most profitable for Uber. No rate card, no DF, and fake 'surges' are the new norm.
View attachment 699578

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Set your min rate and only take trips close to that rate, reject all other requests unless some other mitigating factor ( trip takes you where you want to go, etc) I use $30/hr when it's busy and $25/hr when it's slow, once tips and quests get added in I average ~35/hr/wk. It only takes a second or two to calculate a rough hourly rate from the request. Add the pick up and trip times to get a total time, use this to get a multiple to convert to hourly rate, then multiply this with the UFF. For example: UFF $7, pick-up time 5 min, trip time 10 min = 15 total time, 60/15 gives a 4 multiplier, 4 X $7 converts the fare to an hourly rate of $28, which I would take base on my parameters if it's slow. With practice you can do the conversion almost automatically without thinking about the math. Add in your other tactics regarding long trips, stops, etc. If everyone did this, the drivers would effectively be setting the rates.

Let the ants take the shit rides , patients is key now , good rides pop up , take em , It’s a different game now , but there is money between the raindrops , my market in Vegas , I decline a lot of x rides even when it surging , xl rarely decline as it pays a lot more , dollars per mile is my metric , 4 dollars per mile on each ride is my norm on average , but gos as high as $10 per mile , then restaging takes miles as well

Emptynesst said:

Let the ants take the shit rides , patients is key now , good rides pop up , take em , It’s a different game now , but there is money between the raindrops , my market in Vegas , I decline a lot of x rides even when it surging , xl rarely decline as it pays a lot more , dollars per mile is my metric , 4 dollars per mile on each ride is my norm on average , but gos as high as $10 per mile , then restaging takes miles as well

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So you are not working more than 10 hrs per week? It would be hard to get that kind of pay more than 10 hrs per week as it just doesn't surge enough. I mean $4/mile is basically a pay rate of $100/hr. Even my $1/mi days I am making $25/hr. I rarely ever see enough surge to get $100/hr. So I am assuming you can work about 25% of the time as someone willing to do $1/mile for 40 hours. So you would get the same pay as them, but have 25% of the work and expenses but you have a lot of sitting around doing nothing time.

Personally, $25 during slow times and $32 during prime times are my hourly rates.