Popular ride-sharing service Uber has confirmed that it’s going to cut prices in more than 100 cities across North America, price cuts have been implemented in 80 North American cities initially, Uber hopes that the move is going to increase demand in this seasonally slow month.
The company is going to cut prices by 10 percent in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Houston gets a 20 percent cut, with Richmond, Virginia getting a 15 percent cut. For now prices in some major cities like Chicago and New York will remain unchanged.
Uber does say that it’s going to gradually expand these fare reductions to more than 100 cities across North America, a regional general manage for the company tells Bloomberg that they “believe in price cuts when demand slows down.”
If it cuts prices that means the drivers earn less and that is a major concern, however, regional general manager Andrew Macdonald points out that Uber has cut prices in the past as well, and say that a lot of drivers understand why the company does this.
Even though drivers will be making less per ride the company is of the view that lower fares will attract even those who haven’t tried out the service before to give it a shot and this is going to increase the number of trips per hour, hopefully offsetting the decline in earnings caused by the price cut.
Uber says that the reduced fares will remain in effect for the time being, it’s not giving an end date just yet, but does say that it’s going to guarantee that drivers earn a set amount of money per hour in most of the cities where these price cuts are being made.
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