Rumors abound that Uber increases the price of rides for those with Uber gift cards, promos, or credits on their accounts. I wasn’t comfortable posting about this without having solid data until a reader linked us to this Youtube video. It’s not exactly the same discussion, but it leads in the same direction.
Many people have suggested, anecdotally, when they have an Uber credit in their account they’ll get charged more for the ride. For example, if Uber knows you’re getting $15 off the ride with your AmEx Platinum credit, they can charge you more for the ride since you’ll still end up with “a good price” and probably better than on Lyft.
VFTW wrote about this recently and suggests using your Uber credits on UberEATS purchases where you should be able to monitor that pricing is consistent.
Even more shocking, multiple people seem to be noticing that when they have Uber Cash in their Uber account their ride fares are higher.
Reader King offers a suggestion: apparently, Uber allows you to apply gift card credit for previous orders, up to 30 days prior. And so you can save your Uber gift cards and then every 30 days load up your Uber balance with the amount needed to cover the prior 30 days of purchases.
A similar suggestion is to charge the ride to your card and then change it to a gift card afterward. Some suggest even this can help control costs (despite the gift card balance being there in your account).
This trick only helps control the gift card overpricing, it won’t help control for credits or promos on the account.
Another benefit of adding the Uber Cash afterward is keeping the initial charge on a credit card for added security. When getting overcharged on a gift card payment there is little recourse, like I learned the hard way.
We’ve also heard multiple reports/rumors of those with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card saved in their Lyft wallet get quoted higher prices on Lyft. The implication is similar: since Lyft knows you’re getting 10% back they can charge you more. Overall I’ve seen less complaints of Lyft’s pricing algorithms than those of Uber, yet there does appear to be some shady pricing going on there too. We haven’t yet heard of people complaining that Lyft charges more when a gift card balance is saved to the account.
In my opinion this is all scandalous and likely illegal: you can’t offer a benefit (for which people are paying a hefty annual fee) which is then negated with higher pricing. And the gift card overcharging from Uber seems like outright fraud.