We’ve catalogued a lot of shady practices by Uber, the ride app.
We’ve warned about how Uber pre-selects a payment method that costs you more money.
We’ve warned you that Uber hides extra surcharges levied by airports, and about how Uber drivers have been caught filing cleaning fees that customers swear were fabricated.
Now here’s another reason to be wary of Uber, particularly in cities where the app includes the option to hail a taxi through it.
Popular London YouTuber Tom the Taxi Driver has earned a following of 134,000 subscribers for taking his camera along with him on his job as a London cabbie. Often, Tom compares the price of journeys in his government-regulated black cab with the dynamic prices that Uber quotes for the exact same journey.
More often than not, during busy travel periods Tom routinely proves that his city’s cabs are cheaper than the price of an Uber.
That fact, by itself, is worth remembering: Uber was often cheap in its early years thanks to many rounds of outside investment funding, but now that the app is well-established, fares have zoomed so high that they often exceed the price of established taxis.
In a new video this week, Tom the Taxi Driver also pointed out something else insidious about Uber and the way it represents taxis in its app.
Tom shows—and proves, by actually taking a taxi—that Uber’s app quoted a price of £10 to £12 for a black cab that, in actuality, cost just £8.20 if you had just hailed it yourself.
In other words, when Uber gives you the option to book a taxi instead of a ride share, the price is as much as 50% higher than the true price outside of the app. That’s easy to see in a city like London, where taxi rates are regulated and easy to verify.
Why Uber’s taxi prices are higher than at taxi stands
Why would Uber lie about the price of a cab?
Technically, it isn’t.
“The cab journey was just £8.20. But if you scroll down in the Uber app, you’ll see that their recommended price of what a black cab is £10 to £12, which it clearly wasn’t,” Tom explains in his video. “So, obviously, when [Uber] offers cabs out, they’re going to be putting a premium on top of them.”
So the reason Uber’s taxi prices are so deceptively high is that if you call a cab through Uber, the app piles extra fees on top of the going rate, making that high price accurate—but only if you buy your ride via Uber.
Taxis hailed on the curb do not cost that much. Get a taxi outside of the Uber app and commissions will not be a part of your price.
Posting an inflated price for cabs alongside ride share rates happens to have the effect of misleading many travelers who don’t realize they’re looking at a special price. Many travelers simply assume that’s how expensive a cab should be.
We can add Uber’s taxi price quotes to our list of legal deceptions and misdirections.
The moral of the lesson: You can’t trust Uber for accurate taxi prices.
