Fawkes Cat
Established Member
- Joined
- 8 May 2017
- Messages
- 5,246
I'll bite, although please note that I have no knowledge at all so this is a thoroughly uninformed guess...Is it at all likely that Uber will start offering weekly or monthly season tickets anytime soon or is there some reason why this isn’t possible?
I think the quick answer is 'no'. In no particular order
- while Uber is clearly trying to buy business (stack discounts on gift cards and Uber One together, and you may be talking about a 20% discount) there's only so far even they will be prepared to go. If a monthly season ticket is £500 then the 20% discount is £100 - an amount that accountants will begin to notice
- how big is the season ticket market? Is it worth Uber upgrading their system to cope?
- is this a market they want to be in? My impression is that (leaving aside the ambition to secure the entire minicab market with driverless cabs) Uber want to get the end-to-end, one-off market (when I buy a train ticket, they encourage me to book a cab from my destination station): they're not very interested in commuters.
- (edited to add): Uber don't seem struck on handling large sums to avoid fraud - see the discussion earlier in this thread about when security checks kick in. Season tickets by definition cost some multiples of single/return tickets so might be larger sums than Uber wants
Overall, I see lots of negatives for Uber and few positives. So I think they won't bother.
