# Do you trust Uber's HEAT MAP?



## Truth & Facts (Jan 15, 2015)

Uber urges drivers heading to price surging areas. When you arrived there, just like other drivers did, the price went back to normal because all of sudden, the supply was more than the demand. My suggestion is, ignore the heat map and don't be fooled or played by the color changing.

Even you were in the heat map area, you did not receive any request. The pond has lots of big fish and you just caught nothing. Or, you accepted a request and at the trip end, you found a 1.0x price (sorry, no surging price for this trip.)


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## Fuzzyelvis (Dec 7, 2014)

I don't chase anymore. EVERY time I've run to a surge it has disappeared JUST as I hit the boundary. I've had 2 surge fares but at the time was in a busy area and didn't even realize it was surging. But going to the orange or red or surge has not ever helped me that I could see. I've driven right thru red as I was going home and got nothing.


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## UberHustla (Dec 2, 2014)

Fuzzyelvis said:


> I don't chase anymore. EVERY time I've run to a surge it has disappeared JUST as I hit the boundary. I've had 2 surge fares but at the time was in a busy area and didn't even realize it was surging. But going to the orange or red or surge has not ever helped me that I could see. I've driven right thru red as I was going home and got nothing.


Where I live I saw a surge earlier today. I checked the app ten minutes later and there were three drivers in the area and surge gone. Not sure where those drivers came from, but one thing you can be sure of: they wasted gas to get here for nothing.


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## Western Warrior (Jan 20, 2015)

You need to understand why there is a surge. What events is in the area? When is it likely to end? How high will the demand be? Not worth it to go if surge doesn't go beyond 2x.


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## biozon (Jan 6, 2015)

Truth & Facts said:


> My suggestion is, ignore the heat map and don't be fooled or played by the color changing.


 Exactly.


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## jsixis (Dec 14, 2014)

the heat map covers such a huge area even if there were fares there I could be 20 miles on the wrong end of it.


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## albert+ (Dec 11, 2014)

Ignore unless you are very close, demand is real but can change in no time.


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## just drive (Oct 29, 2014)

The only way to use the heat map is if you are in an area that is getting orange, you go offline, open rider app and wait for surge.


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## Uber-Doober (Dec 16, 2014)

Well, most of you know that I'm not with Uber and may or may not be when they slither into town again, but I do know one thing, and I learned this the hard way. Whatever some transp. company calls a "surge", they are mostly all the same. 
It's like when I'd be out there in the holding lot at LAX and dispatch would say "Open call, open call, Thousand Oaks". Some drivers would jump on their mics and give their number and then go into the port and pay $5.00 just to enter the arrival level and then after picking up one passenger and circle the level twice to see if there was anything else to pick up on the way, they would leave with one $38.00 ride out to Thousand Oaks in their big behemoth V8 Dodge or Ford van getting 11 mpg. Hah! 
I fell for it a couple of times, but what I'd do on the way back, instead of dead heading all the way back to LAX, I'd park let's say at the curb in front of the Hilton in Woodland Hills and just sit there and wait. 
If nothing came up in an hour, I'd go home because there's no way that I'd make a 75 mile round trip from LAX to the outer limits of Thousand Oaks and back to LAX for $38 bux. 
Best advice that I can give you is to park yourself near a more affluent area for a while and see what happens and don't chase the "hot spots" unless it's something like the last day of NASCAR here in Vegas where you'll be busy all fkn day long. Or SEMA. Or CES. 
But transport is all the same.... you can run your wheels off chasing something that's not there.


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