Lyft is slowly killing off surge pricing in an attempt to draw-in more customers.
The rideshare company, which calls surge pricing “primetime,” is attempting to lower prices to undercut its competitors, chiefly Uber, but it’s not totally working.
“[Primetime pricing] is a bad form of price raising,” said CEO David Risher, via Techcrunch. “It’s particularly bad because riders hate it with a fiery passion. And so we’re really trying to get rid of it, and because we’ve got such a good driver supply…it’s decreased significantly.”
Lyft’s second quarter earnings showed that it did add riders but its revenue per rider dipped. Reuters noted that cost-per-mile fares fell 10 percent compared to the same quarter to last year, but ridership jumped 8 percent compared to the same period.
Still, investors weren’t sold. Lyft’s share price fell 7 percent Wednesday morning, though it did begin to rebound as midday drew closer.
Lyft said the number of customers who experience surge pricing fell 35 percent from the first quarter this year to the second. The goal is to kill it off entirely.
“That has a revenue implication — we’re actually taking less money,” Risher said, via Techcrunch. “But it’s good for our riders, and it’s good for our overall market results.”
Uber, which is obviously Lyft’s main competition, has been in the news lately for how expensive it can be. Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was shocked by the $50 cost of an about 3 mile ride in NYC. A journalist with Wired tasked him to the guess the price, which the CEO wrongly thought would be 20 bucks.
“Oh my God. Wow,” Khosrowshahi said to the real pricetag.
So maybe it isn’t the worst time for Lyft to get cheaper.
