Uber revoking their API access in 3...2...1

Hey! I made this more-or-less over a weekend with my roommate @qnikhil. Uber's been super cool with supporting our API requests. Ask away!

Awesome. I'm curious how this works behind the scenes.

This looks awesome. Would be interesting to see if it could estimate when surge pricing would end in your area based on nearby prices too.

Is surge pricing defined narrowly enough by location in order for this to actually work? I had assumed that surge pricing was in effect city or market wide. I'd been thinking recently that a sort of surge pricing insurance / hedging service might have legs. i.e. Uber power users pay a service a monthly fee, and any time they end up taking an Uber at surge, that service would recompense the user.

Nice idea. However the first review you have in the app store for a one day old app says: "Has saved me from surge pricing countless times. Thanks surgeprotector!" That may raise a flag in Apple review that the review isn't a valid review, or came from the developer. You don't want Apple suspending you for fake reviews.

can someone who has actually used this service attest to it's success? im curious to hear of others' experiences.

Doesn't work in Sweden, unfortunately. #sadface http://cl.ly/image/0S1r102U0v3I

Really interesting that surge pricing is so variable within a few blocks. If surge pricing is truly driven by a supply & demand imbalance with such specificity around the origin, it seems like surge pricing should be an absolute dollar amount and not a multiple of the total ride cost. After all, a $10 base fare and a $50 base fare both remove 1 unit of supply from the origin location. At 2x surge pricing, why should the former pay a $10 surge premium and the latter pay a $50 surge premium? That said, I imagine the higher your base fare the less price sensitive you are to surge pricing in absolute terms, rational or not, which would justify surge pricing as a multiple of base fare. It would be cool to see a more optimized origin + destination based surge (and whatever you might call the opposite of surge) pricing, which could also help relocate drivers to the geographic areas that have the greatest supply & demand imbalance.

Reminds me of a recent Tech Crunch article by @jordanrcrook, Be Smarter Than That, Uber Users.

Genius! I will use this often

Just last week I noticed when trying to get an uber and receiving a 2.75x surge, that moving the pin by just a block and a half reduced the surge to just 1.25x. Also fascinating that this is all done with supported uber APIs (and apparently condoned). Recently with an uber driver I learned that they sometimes "trick" the system into surging by accepting then immediately denying a ride several times in a row. Looks like now we have a trick of our own to combat this. It certainly still is the Wild West when it comes to ride sharing.

DESPERATELY need this on Android!

@tomhschmidt - would be awesome if it all showed areas where surge was lower. I'd rather walk a block for 1.3x vs. 1.6x than 15 minutes for no surge.

I love the name

killed it with the name...

Love it. Nice use of the API. Guessing you're just hitting these endpoints? https://developer.uber.com/v1/en...

A much needed hack (and I mean that in the good way). I immediately wonder about the economics of the situation. Obviously it will have immediate benefit to the user, though I can imagine a scenario that would this would just negative consequences for the drivers who rely on surge pricing for extra cash. Also, using this in high density areas like concerts and sporting events, you might just make what was a localized surge spread to the surrounding areas, though I imagine it would dissipate the peak surge. Apologies for the ramblings, still really cool!

Well, that's pretty convenient. I am very curious about the business model (and potential fundability) of an app like this since it's basically a hack for a very specific subset of a very specific type of person.

Brilliant name, very cool idea!