Do Uber and Ola charge iPhone and Android users different fares for same trips?

Do Uber and Ola charge iPhone and Android users different fares for the same trips?

That’s the debate which has broken out on social media after some users have claimed  that the fares appear to be different depending on which phone brand they use.

The government has now issued a notice asking Uber and Ola to respond to such claims.

But what happened? What do we know?

Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

The theory gained traction weeks ago.

This after The Times of India conducted a survey in Chennai.

The test, which checked fares for the same routes on both iPhones and Android devices, showed that iPhone users are repeatedly charged higher fares.

The newspaper noted that though the trend held for smaller rides, it didn’t necessarily prove bias against iPhone users.

More from Explainers

Is your house heating up and making you miserable? Paint it white How ChatGPT is becoming everyone’s BFF and why that’s dangerous

It stated that the same searches on different days could lead to different results.

Uber at the time denied that it had any policy which personalised fares depending which device one used.

It chalked up any difference in fares to time, distance, and real-time demand.

Ola, meanwhile, declined to comment.

Some users also took to social media to claim that they are being charged different fares on iPhones and Androids.

Now, the Centre has sent a notice to Uber and Ola.

“As a follow-up to the earlier observation of apparent differential pricing based on different models of mobiles - iPhone / Android - being used, Department of Consumer Affairs, through the CCPA (or Central Consumer Protection Authority), has issued notices to major cab aggregators Ola and Uber , seeking their responses," Union Minister Pralhad Joshi said as per NDTV.

Editor’s Picks

1

Why is Uber paying $178 million to Australian taxi drivers? 2

GPS spoofers, auto clickers; scammers are taking Uber-like ride-hailing apps for a ride using a variety of tools

Joshi has ordered both firms to respond to the notices.

He had previously warned of “zero tolerance for consumer exploitation” and directed the CCPA to conduct a thorough inquiry.

Joshi said such a practise, if it indeed was occurring, was a “blatant disregard” for consumers’ rights.

“This, prima facie, looks like unfair trade practice where the cab-aggregators are alleged to be using differential pricing based on the factors mentioned in the article below. If so, this is blatant disregard for consumers’ rights to know,” Joshi wrote on X.

He said he had directed the CCPA to check food delivery and online ticketing apps to check for similar complaints.

What do experts say?

“With tighter scrutiny of tech companies, the notices reflect the government’s approach that tech majors have to address consumer concerns and not ignore them,” Ravi Khajuria, a tech-products reviewer for MacWorld, told Hindustan Times.

C Ambigapathy, managing director of Chennai-based ride-hailing platform Fastrack, previously told The Times of India, companies such as Uber and Ola can make changes easily.

“It is child’s play for companies to tweak fares based on hardware details while hiding behind the ‘dynamic pricing algorithm’ explanation,” Ambigapathy said.

Ambigapathy said that companies use user data to predict behaviour. “Once they identify a regular user, they inflate fares, confident that the user will eventually book,” Ambigapathy said.

P Ravikumar, a former senior director at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), told Economic Times, “If factors like estimated time, distance, and ride modes are consistent, users should not face discrimination based on their device.”

News18 quoted experts as saying that consumers ought to check fares on different devices before booking, clear their app’s caches regularly and report pricing differences to the authorities.

With inputs from agencies