[rolleiflex]

Taking an Uber ride is easy as long as you don’t want to optimise for prices. I meant extracting as much money from you as possible in the context of other options in the app that might be more economical for you (if you don’t mind waiting, for example), not in the sense that Uber providing a service for you is somehow an involuntary extraction.

It wasn’t clear before so I edited the comment, my apologies.

[djitz]

Do they still have surge pricing? I once paid $289 for a 14 minute ride at 3am Jan 1.

[rolleiflex]

They do, they just stopped calling it surge pricing (or anything else). They just show you the higher price with a microscopic grey text underneath that says 'there's a lot of demand, prices are higher now'. If you don't take that route often and know the average price, like when you're travelling or in a city that you're unfamiliar with, you'd be excused to think that's the normal price and just go for it instead of waiting a few more minutes or checking Lyft instead.

[djitz]

Sneaky sneaky