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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 20 2017, @03:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the always-read-the-fine-print dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1937

Uber is fighting a proposed class-action lawsuit that says it secretly over charges riders and under pays drivers. In its defense, the ride-hailing service claims that nobody is being defrauded in its "upfront" rider fare pricing model.

The fares charged to riders don't have to match up with the fares paid to drivers, Uber said, because that's what a driver's "agreement" allows.

"Plaintiff's allegations are premised on the notion that, once Uber implemented Upfront Pricing for riders, it was required under the terms of the Agreement to change how the Fare was calculated for Drivers," Uber said (PDF) in a recent court filing seeking to have the class-action tossed. "This conclusion rests on a misinterpretation of the Agreement."

The suit claims that, when a rider uses Uber's app to hail a ride, the fare the app immediately shows the passenger is based on a slower and longer route compared to the one displayed to the driver. The rider pays the higher fee, and the driver's commission is paid from the cheaper, faster route, according to the lawsuit.

Uber claims the disparity between rider and driver fares "was hardly a secret."

"Drivers," Uber told a federal judge, "could have simply asked a User how much he or she paid for the trip to learn of any discrepancy."

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/uber-driver-pay-plan-puts-a-significant-risk-on-ride-hailing-service/


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Wednesday September 20 2017, @07:36PM

    by edIII (791) on Wednesday September 20 2017, @07:36PM (#570821)

    Except that you're looking at it all wrong.

    IF Uber is NOT an employer, then it is a service company. No different than SaaS company offering accounting services like FreshBooks. They collect your payments, issue invoices automatically, provide reporting, and basically give you what a good accountant would give you. Uber LOVES to play games, and it loves to claim that it isn't an employer when it suits it to do so.

    If I was a driver, and I HIRED Uber to provide me with services, then I'm the customer. Is Uber servicing the customer correctly, or even honestly, when it charges MY customers a different rate, but pays ME differently? We all know the answer. Fuck Uber. If they're a service provider bringing together drivers with fare paying passengers, than under all circumstances they are providing the drivers with the expensive and valuable services the taxi cab companies were doing. That's the whole idea about this great new fantastic economy. Technology freed me from having to wage slave for the evil taxi company (with their fucking medallions), and I have an app my fares can find me on, and what I make depends on how nice I am and how nice my ride is.

    Except Uber is defrauding their real customers, the drivers. They don't give the services that drivers really want, they exploit drivers, and in the end, grind their faces into the dirt no different than the medallion-waving rent-seeking fuckers that owned the taxi cab companies. Uber cannot have it both ways. The drivers are either employees, or they're customers. Uber's actions clearly show that the drivers are employees, and not customers. The best thing that drivers can do is show how they're really just employees and let the local and federal governments of the world tear them the fuck apart.

    Strange thing is, there is a market for a company to provide honest services to people wanting to make a living driving people around. Nobody wants to get in that market to just service these small business entrepreneurs, and instead want to exploit the fuck out of them below a living wage. Humanity is true pestilence...

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