If you’ve ever tried to hail an Uber on New Year’s Eve, you know it’s either impossible to get a ride or it will cost you. This year should be a little different, mostly because Uber now shows you what the total cost of the ride will be up front. In other words, there won’t be any surprised New Year’s Eve revelers waking up to receipts for short rides that cost upwards of $100.
Uber expects to give 15 million rides this New Year’s Eve
That’s three times more than last year.
Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
It’s typically the busiest night of the year for the ride-hail company, and Uber predicts that this year, it will hit more than 15 million rides across the 450 cities it operates in. That’s three times as many as last year.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a really important night for the company — and it’s a hard one to get right. The demand is unlike what Uber sees even on the busiest weekend nights, which means the company spends most of the evening and New Year’s Day fielding an onslaught of user complaints about the resulting surge pricing.
In past years, even Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has been on deck and spent his night either on Facebook or Twitter either triaging user complaints or updating his followers on the demand in certain markets.
It turns out the patterns of demand are fairly consistent across the markets the company is in — at least as of 2013. So the company is also suggesting a few ways to get around on New Year’s Eve without paying too much: In addition to sharing your rides and checking the up-front fares, Uber is also reminding users to plan around the most expensive time frame, between midnight and 3 am.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
