This is pretty standard marketing and you see it a ton with insurance companies. They gamify their service to increase spending and decrease the number of users leaving for a different platform. I wonder how effective this will be for preventing users from using both apps to find the lowest price.
Not sure if this is what parent is referring to but most insurance companies offer a discount for having multiple lines of coverage with the same company (ie a discount for having your house, car, boat, whatever all with them).
I don't see why people who spend 10-100x more than the average person should be treated the same as a casual user who uses it once in a while though. That's basic economics.
No, but I see every reason as an average user to oppose a strategy which will worsen the service for me.
There's no moral obligation to support economic good sense. Yellow journalism is economic good sense. Removing contact details from websites is economic good sense. Exhausting common goods is economic good sense.
Its disturbing the amount of people that seem to be unable to distinguish a moral argument from an economic or legal one. They seem to have the opinion that if something "economically" or "legally" makes sense, its the same thing as it being an acceptable idea that should have no issue taken with it.
While I'm arguing against them doing it in my comment, I do think it's a perfectly good long term strategy economically.
Experience suggests to me that the standard of service at which customers will stop buying a product is very low, so long as it's cheap.
A hundred years ago grocers thought that self-service supermarkets were too customer-unfriendly to last. That seems to have stood the test of time just fine.
Buying a business class fare on a plane absolves you of almost all the unpleasantness of an airport, yet fewer than 5% of people, eyeballing it, take the airlines up on that.
I use grab extensively in SEA and they have a rewards program built in.
Generally shun company rewards but I didn't mind their system.
Sample size of one but having gold status did seem to get quicker rides in peak hours. The points you can cash in don't add up to much, get a free or discounted trip every now and then. They also offered food /cinema vouchers etc.
Overall it's ok, you can't opt out but no one is forcing you to use it.
Your arguments are probably right about the downsides but is it truly uncommon to treat higher spending customers better?
So if I spend $250 on UberX rides I get $5 in credit? Hmm, that's going to be a pass on my end. In my city a local taxi company created an app similar to Uber, and it's typically 10% cheaper. Most people I know switched over to it, because it only takes a few seconds to do so. I'll take that 10% over 2% in Uber credit.
Also, isn't it already determined that Uber offers higher prices to frequent travelers, and people that take the same route on a regular basis? So, if I spend $250 on UberX, they probably added more than $5 in there because I'm a regular traveler. Now, they're just pretending to be a hero by returning some credit. If they had flat $10 trips in my downtown, and I would get a free trip after 10 rides, then it would make more sense. As of now, I don't trust them at all to provide equal pricing for different users, so I don't trust their entire concept of a loyalty program.
I switch to Lyft, but was surprised to see a semi-autonomous Uber drive by the other day in Northern Virginia. Pretty cool, but I still don't trust the company's corporate culture, and how they treat their drivers and the public, to consider going back.
"Frequent user/loyalty" programs are, across sectors, implicit acknowledgement by companies that their products are indistinguishable from those of their competitors.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 56.2 ms ] threadI'm not sure I've ever seen an insurance company gamify anything.
The current 25% off discount on Lyft makes it tough to even try Uber at the moment.
- less leeway on cancellations since you now need to earn them
- worse support, since the higher status folks will get the higher priority / premium support
- slower airport pickup times as high status folks get to "cut in line" while you wait
- lower quality drivers as the higher rated ones are given only to the frequent riders
This is based on the chart showing the benefits of higher status in the article.
There's no moral obligation to support economic good sense. Yellow journalism is economic good sense. Removing contact details from websites is economic good sense. Exhausting common goods is economic good sense.
Experience suggests to me that the standard of service at which customers will stop buying a product is very low, so long as it's cheap.
A hundred years ago grocers thought that self-service supermarkets were too customer-unfriendly to last. That seems to have stood the test of time just fine.
Buying a business class fare on a plane absolves you of almost all the unpleasantness of an airport, yet fewer than 5% of people, eyeballing it, take the airlines up on that.
If you alienate the majority of your user base, the more frequent users won’t have a reliable service at all.
Generally shun company rewards but I didn't mind their system.
Sample size of one but having gold status did seem to get quicker rides in peak hours. The points you can cash in don't add up to much, get a free or discounted trip every now and then. They also offered food /cinema vouchers etc.
Overall it's ok, you can't opt out but no one is forcing you to use it.
Your arguments are probably right about the downsides but is it truly uncommon to treat higher spending customers better?
They aren't a public service.
Also, isn't it already determined that Uber offers higher prices to frequent travelers, and people that take the same route on a regular basis? So, if I spend $250 on UberX, they probably added more than $5 in there because I'm a regular traveler. Now, they're just pretending to be a hero by returning some credit. If they had flat $10 trips in my downtown, and I would get a free trip after 10 rides, then it would make more sense. As of now, I don't trust them at all to provide equal pricing for different users, so I don't trust their entire concept of a loyalty program.