What Uber’s Sydney Surge Pricing Debacle Says About Its Public Image

WIRED

Wherever Uber goes, controversy seems to follow.

On Sunday in Sydney, Australia, a hostage crisis caused extreme panic in the city’s City Business District, and ultimately, it left one hostage and one gunman dead. The city is still reeling from the incident, which reached a climax on Monday, after a police raid, and there, on the edge of this horrific situation, sits Uber, the ride-hailing startup that has so galvanized opinions in recent months, not only in Silicon Valley but across the globe.

As the crisis unfolded on Sunday and so many people were trying to flee Sydney’s Business District, some noticed that Uber had imposed surge pricing in the city, charging passengers a minimum of $100 for a ride, four times the normal fare. Uber has always imposed surge pricing when demand for rides is highest, and it’s not always popular, but in an emergency situation such as this one, the sky-high prices looked like yet another incredibly callous move by a company that’s beginning to gain a reputation for putting profits before people. The public outcry was fierce.

Uber’s surge pricing is an automated thing, and the company quickly addressed the situation as complaints began circulating online late Sunday night, offering refunds to anyone who already paid for a ride and released a statement on Uber’s blog announcing that all rides out of Sydney’s Central Business District would be free until the hostage situation was resolved. “Our thoughts are with those affected and the Police Force,” it reads. But while this particular incident is easy to explain away, it represents a much deeper issue for Uber.

The fact is, even though Uber didn’t intentionally do anything sinister, 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.

Over the last few weeks, Uber has been accused of plotting against journalists, it’s been banned in Spain and Thailand, sued by San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, and was forced to shut down operations in Delhi after a passenger was allegedly raped by her Uber driver. All of this has given rise to a growing mistrust of Uber, a company that seems to grow richer by the day, despite having so many still unresolved problems.

When Uber was a smaller company, itsh battles with regulators and trouble with drivers were more likely to fly under the radar. But Uber is now six times larger than it was even twelve months ago, and as Uber CEO Travis Kalanick noted in a recent blog post, “This kind of growth has also come with significant growing pains.” One of those growing pains is the fact that now, every slip up, every public controversy, contributes to a much larger narrative about the kind of company Uber is. Lately that narrative has skewed decidedly negative. Uber is still young enough to redirect that story. But first, its leaders will have to reconsider their strategy of growth at all costs—before it costs them dearly.