[jmduke]

To me, the only issue in this scenario is that Uber didn't show the author surge pricing before confirming the ride. For what it's worth, the app has always warned/informed me of the price hike before I confirm the pickup (though I've only started using the app in the past two months, and this was written in December of 2013.)

[sneak]

Whenever surge pricing above a certain amount (2.0X, I think) is in effect, it makes you manually type in the multiple - both digits, e.g. "3, 0, confirm" before it will let you even order a ride.

This guy's full of shit if he's claiming he didn't know it was surging until after the receipt came. It's quite literally impossible to order an uber at 2.0x or above and not be painfully aware of the surge.

[d23]

Since we're on anecdotal evidence, I've certainly been charged at 2x+ the normal rate without it giving me any sort of notice.

[2bluesc]

This has been my experience every time I've used Uber. I've seen it ask me to confirm 1.75x surge pricing on Android.

[grinich]

They also send you a push notification that mentions surge pricing when the car is arriving.

[hayksaakian]

Is it possible that all these fail safes were bugged in the author's circumstance? No software is 100% bug free.

[baddox]

That's possible. But it's also possible that the author is really upset at having paid such a large amount of money, and is exaggerating (lying) by saying there was no way to know the price beforehand.

[res0nat0r]

Highly unlikely. Sounds like the author knew full well surge was in effect, he just didn't expect the bill to be so high and now he wants them to cut him a break.

Also this is nonsense: There was absolutely no excuse whatsoever to be charged the surge price—not even their "supply and demand" cop-out justification, which falls short in this instance.

Bar closings etc have nothing to do with it if they are trying to get more drivers on the road. There could be 10 or 100 cabs around, it doesn't mean they are barred from enabling surge pricing.

[mattlutze]

Further, they've had the surge confirmation feature since at least March 2012:

http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear-and-straight-forward-s...

I've only used the service a few times so I don't remember if this has changed, but I can't imagine they would have dropped that confirmation.

[semerda]

Ditto re app telling me of surge pricing. Maybe the app has a corner case bug or even A/B testing (weird version of it) is being executed. Either way Uber should look into it and sort it out.