But your title would place the blame on the opposite side of where the post places it. Is it really just the title you disagree with, or the post itself? If it's the latter, it would help if you could make specific criticisms of the argument it presents.
I disagree with the article's thesis, from which both the title and content stem. Let me know if the Fisking below is specific enough for you.
Uber's surge pricing is awesome. It's a
well-executed feature that makes the
product better.
Baseless assertion, citation needed.
And yet... tons of people irrationally
hate it!
Citation needed.
People who hate Uber's surge pricing haven't
come to terms with the fact that it's
impossible for Uber to charge the normal fare
and still get them a ride right now.
The timing of this blog post seems to suggest that the sentence above is about the Sydney hostage crisis, and, if that's true, that's a pretty fucking callous to write something like this in the wake of such an event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Sydney_hostage_crisis)
The author of this blog post goes on to compare other examples of products and services with finite and infinite lifespans and availability, and—here's the part that I think is really important—then makes this point that I kinda-sorta[1] agree with:
What the surge-haters *don't* get is that the
supply of Uber drivers is also limited. Every
bit as limited as nice houses or seats on a flight.
Yes! That's right! (More or less.) Except that Uber:
1. Requires us to take their word for it.
2. Doesn't express this through their user interface in any way, shape, or form.
3. Has a significant burden of proof after all of the PR debacles they've been through ranging from Hurricane Sandy, to Emil Michael, etc. etc., all the way up to the Sydney hostage crisis (cf. http://www.wired.com/2014/12/uber-surge-sydney/).
Issues 1-3 presented above represent a user experience deficiency.
Surge-haters have an iTunes-like mental model
of Uber's supply capacity. They never learned
Econ 101
That's Uber's problem, not their customers' problem. If a $25 billion corporation cannot figure out how to properly explain this to their customers, then it begs the question of who they're hiring with all that cash.
The Wired article I linked to above says this, which I completely agree with:
The fact is, even though Uber didn’t
intentionally do anything sinister
[in Sydney], the company’s public image
has grown so tainted in recent weeks
and months, that the public actually
believes it’s capable of doing something
like this. And that’s an issue that’s
much tougher to fix.
[1] The availability of 'nice' houses is completely different from a seat on an airplane departing tomorrow. If you wanted to talk about something like 'an acre of land in San Francisco,' then yes, clearly, we're talking about the same thing, but 'nice house' is too different for each person for us to have a meaningful conversation about this.
4 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 21.6 ms ] threadHere's a blog post that I also disagree with, but at least it attempts to make a counter-argument: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/16/in-defense-...
The author of this blog post goes on to compare other examples of products and services with finite and infinite lifespans and availability, and—here's the part that I think is really important—then makes this point that I kinda-sorta[1] agree with:
Yes! That's right! (More or less.) Except that Uber:1. Requires us to take their word for it.
2. Doesn't express this through their user interface in any way, shape, or form.
3. Has a significant burden of proof after all of the PR debacles they've been through ranging from Hurricane Sandy, to Emil Michael, etc. etc., all the way up to the Sydney hostage crisis (cf. http://www.wired.com/2014/12/uber-surge-sydney/).
Issues 1-3 presented above represent a user experience deficiency.
That's Uber's problem, not their customers' problem. If a $25 billion corporation cannot figure out how to properly explain this to their customers, then it begs the question of who they're hiring with all that cash.The Wired article I linked to above says this, which I completely agree with:
[1] The availability of 'nice' houses is completely different from a seat on an airplane departing tomorrow. If you wanted to talk about something like 'an acre of land in San Francisco,' then yes, clearly, we're talking about the same thing, but 'nice house' is too different for each person for us to have a meaningful conversation about this.