Uber rolls out ‘upfront fares’ in India and US

NewDelhi,June24: Cab-hailing app Uber on Friday said it will now present its riders in the US and in some parts of Indiawith‘upfrontfare’,making it easier for customers to see howmuchtheywillhavetopay for a ride.

The fare will be calculated on the basis of expected travel time, distance, traffic, surge andtollswhereapplicable.The move will also help the USbased firm address its Achilles’ heel surge pricing that has received criticism from many users as well as governments like Karnataka.

“We moved to upfront, per trip fares—just like airlines and hotels—two years ago when we launched uberPOOL... So in April, we began slowly introducing upfront faresforregularuberXtripsin cities across the US and more recently in India, with more to follow,” Uber product managers Arundhati Singh and DennisZhaosaidinablogpost.

To date, hundreds of thousands of riders have experienced upfront fares as part of this rollout, it added.

An Uber India spokesperson told PTI that “Uber has been testing upfront fares for a smallsegmentof ridersacross five cities in India since the beginning of this month”.

“These cities include New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai,” she added. The company plans to roll out the changes to pricing in the app globally over the next few months, including other cities in India.

In the US, upfront payment feature is available in six cities -- New York City, Miami, San Diego, Philadelphia, Seattle and New Jersey.

Whilebookingtheride,customers had to mandatorily enter their destinations, which allowed Uber to calculate the fare in advance and show it to riders before they book their ride. “Knowing how much a ride will cost in advance is clearly something riders appreciate: today uberPOOL accounts for over 20 per cent of all rides globally. And we now want more riders globally to benefit from this feature,” the blogpost said. PTI