# Uber has capped the surge in my city



## redd38 (May 22, 2015)

Uber capped the surge in my city at 2.5x last weekend! No notice given to their "partners", no bulls*** excuse in an email. Lyft just started in my city this weekend as well so I think maybe they capped the surge to keep riders from switching platforms, but they've pissed the drivers off and I'm going to tell every PAX to use Lyft now.

Just venting.


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## Shangsta (Aug 15, 2016)

Why do you think it was capped at 2.5x?


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## prsvshine (Mar 2, 2017)

what is a surge? jesus christ, we don't even get them here.


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## redd38 (May 22, 2015)

Shangsta said:


> Why do you think it was capped at 2.5x?


Because I record and graph every surge, I know what the surge looks like when the bars close on Friday and Saturday night and last weekend both graphs plateaued at 2.5x



prsvshine said:


> what is a surge? jesus christ, we don't even get them here.


We only get 2 surges a week for about 20 minutes when the bars close on Friday and Saturday nights, so I want to maximize those two opportunities and only give a ride at the peak of the surge. But last weekend there was no peak. I basically stayed up till 3:00am for no reason.


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## wk1102 (Dec 25, 2015)

redd38 said:


> Because I record and graph every surge, I know what the surge looks like when the bars close on Friday and Saturday night and last weekend both graphs plateaued at 2.5x
> 
> We only get 2 surges a week for about 20 minutes when the bars close on Friday and Saturday nights, so I want to maximize those two opportunities and only give a ride at the peak of the surge. But last weekend there was no peak. I basically stayed up till 3:00am for no reason.


Perhaps the newly launched Lyft hado an effect on the surge


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## redd38 (May 22, 2015)

wk1102 said:


> Perhaps the newly launched Lyft hado an effect on the surge


Nope, and I'll give you three reasons why I know it wasn't just a naturally low surge due to lyft...

1. No one knows lyft is here yet. There's like 3 drivers and no marketing. It'll be weeks or months before people catch on to lyft.

2. It didn't peak at 2.5x, it plateaued at 2.5x. There have certainly been weekends in the past when the surge naturally didn't get very high, but the graph of the surge always looks the same, more or less, just scaled differently. This week the graph was drastically different, definitely not naturally.

3. Using the rider app it's easy to tell if the surge is waning or waxing based on the estimated wait time for an uber, the surge was holding steady at 2.5x despite 15+ minute estimates.


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## FenderBender (Mar 28, 2017)

Can you post your graphs


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## Jc. (Dec 7, 2016)

redd38 said:


> We only get 2 surges a week for about 20 minutes when the bars close on Friday and Saturday nights, so I want to maximize those two opportunities and only give a ride at the peak of the surge. But last weekend there was no peak. I basically stayed up till 3:00am for no reason.


This sounds exactly as my chances to get laid every week


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## brendon292 (Aug 2, 2016)

They did this in my city once too.

The day that Uber became legal in our city, hundreds of drivers who were non-compliant with the new rules were deactivated.

Uber _knew_ there would be a shortage of drivers the upcoming weekend so they capped the surge at 3.0x. I still made a killing on the Saturday I drove but probably could have made even more if Uber hadn't pulled that stunt. F*cking pricks.


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## redd38 (May 22, 2015)

So Uber had a "driver appreciation" dinner last week and I went to find out what's going on with the surge. The guy I talked to said he didn't know it was capped but would look into it for me. The next day he emailed and said it was taken care of and wouldn't happen again. And sure enough the surge was back to normal last weekend.



FenderBender said:


> Can you post your graphs


Sure, here's a typical Saturday night (the times are weird cause of the switch to daylight savings time):









And here was the capped Saturday night:


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## Fast5 (Apr 5, 2017)

They manualy manipulate surge all the time.


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## beezlewaxin (Feb 10, 2015)

How do you grab data points for your graph? Manually or via some type of script/app?


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## redd38 (May 22, 2015)

beezlewaxin said:


> How do you grab data points for your graph? Manually or via some type of script/app?


I wrote my own script to track the surge in my city and alert me when it's surging.


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