# Uber is handling Surge completely wrong and leaving a lot of money on the table.



## 1rightwinger (Jul 13, 2015)

Uber claims that surge pricing is used to bring out more drivers to handle higher demand of ride requests. Uber calculates Surge based on location of the person requesting the ride. If an area is in Surge and an available car is sitting in surge area Uber many times will send ride requests to that driver in surge area from requester outside of surge area. Read the forums here and you will see countless drivers say this happens all the time and they ignore the out of surge area requests. The person requesting the ride in out of surge area may want/need a ride just as badly as a person in the surge area. If the car is available why does Uber not make it available to that person out of surge area at the surge price? If a Surge truly exists that means that the area has more demand than can be handled by available drivers. If a driver spends his time and money and knowledge to put himself in the middle of surge area to capitalize on the excess demand that driver and car should have surge pricing. So, a person outside of the surge area wants a ride and no other close cars are available Uber should match that rider up with the driver at surge price. then the passenger gets a ride and driver gets a surge fare. 

Uber provides a service and Uber sets the price. Why does Uber set the price based on where the passenger is located instead of where the car is located? If the car is in a high demand area the car should have high demand pricing. Uber could at least offer it to the person out of surge area at surge pricing. they could even show the requester that a car is available at 2x or if you want to wait and get a car that is not in high demand area you can wait until one becomes available. 

this would help drivers and Uber. I have been in a lot of situations where I am sitting in a surge area and I get multiple pings from out of surge area. I ignore them and then the same one comes in again, etc. time out and log back in two minutes later and still get the same request. Obviously that person needs a ride. Many times that person may be willing to pay more so why not offer them a surge price Uber? I had this happen and it was surging close to the airport but not at the airport. I am sitting in middle of surge area and kept getting a ping for the airport. so why the airport is not included in the surge area in the 1st place is another question but I think it would be fairly easy for Uber to change the app and then match up the person at the airport with me a surging driver. I think sometimes these passengers outside the surge area if no other driver is accepting it because they also want to get a surge ride that this potential passenger is possibly going to give up or call a cab or do something else and now it becomes a transaction that Uber does not get. 

Uber could be so much better, this is just one example. Make the surge calculation based on the location of the supply (driver/car) not the demand (requesting passenger).


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## Shangsta (Aug 15, 2016)

1rightwinger said:


> If the car is available why does Uber not make it available to that person out of surge area at the surge price?


You are not understanding how surge works. The reason for those longs pings is that drivers closest to that person in the non surge area are ignoring the ping because they are hoping to get a surge ping themselves. If enough drivers ignore the non surge ping it goes to the driver in the surge area. Typically after enough drivers ignore the ping someone takes it for base fare.

If you get a non surge ping in a surge area ignore it and you should still be in a position to get a surge ping.


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## Adieu (Feb 21, 2016)

Yeah BUT a proper surge mechanism SHOULD see an ignored ping surge to the heavens


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