Uber rolls out upfront fares in India, US

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi-Cab-hailing app Uber today said it will now present its riders in the US and in some parts of India with ‘upfront fare’, making it easier for customers to see how much they will have to pay for a ride. The fare will be calculated on the basis of expected travel time, distance, traffic, surge and tolls where applicable. The move will also help the US-based firm address its Achilles’ heel ‘surge pricing’ that has received criticism from many users as well as governments like Karnataka.

“We moved to upfront, per trip fares just like airlines and hotels two years ago when we launched uberPOOL… So in April, we began slowly introducing upfront fares for regular uberX trips in cities across the US and more recently in India, with more to follow,” Uber product managers Arundhati Singh and Dennis Zhao said in a blogpost.

To date, hundreds of thousands of riders have experienced upfront fares as part of this rollout, it added. An Uber India spokesperson told that “Uber has been testing upfront fares for a small segment of riders across five cities in India since the beginning of this month”. “These cities include New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai,” she added. The company plans to roll out the changes to pricing in the app globally over the next few months, including other cities in India. In the US, upfront payment feature is available in six cities — New York City, Miami, San Diego, Philadelphia, Seattle and New Jersey.