Car service Uber has issued an official apology to its Sydney users for last week’s surge pricing that saw massive fare hikes during the Martin Place siege.
“The events of last week in Sydney were upsetting for the whole community and we are truly sorry for any concern that our process may have added,” Uber wrote in an email to Sydney users, via Gizmodo.
“Our priority was to help get as many people out of the CBD safely in the midst of a fast-moving event. The decisions we made were based only on helping to achieve this but we communicated this poorly, leading to a lot of misunderstanding about our motivations.”
Last week it was reported that Uber briefly charged its users in Sydney fares as high as $100, four times the usual rate, for rides in the area while the siege was underway at Martin Place and a large part of the city was in lockdown. Following an online backlash, the service announced it will offer free rides to passengers leaving the CBD.
In their statement today, Uber reiterated that surge pricing “is algorithmic and kicks in automatically when demand for rides outstrips the supply of cars that are on the road,” but took the blame for not addressing this issue quicker.
“We didn’t stop surge pricing immediately. This was the wrong decision,” they wrote. “In the end, no rider was charged to leave the CBD on Monday and all higher fares resulting from surge pricing earlier in the day were fully refunded.”
“It’s unfortunate that the perception is that Uber did something against the interests of the public. We certainly did not intend to. We will learn from this incident and improve as a result of this lesson,” they add.
Uber also said it will be looking at the feedback and “are working to standardise a global policy to ensure we’re serving communities in the most efficient, effective and helpful way possible at all times.”
