Man holding his phone. Stock image: Getty Images
Uber is allegedly charging users more if they have low phone battery, according to a new investigation. The small study by the Belgian newspaper Dernière Heure looked at how the app changes its pricing for users in Brussels based on their battery. The paper reported that 2 identical requests were made to go from and to the same location yet Uber charged 6 percent more for the journey that was made on a smartphone with only 12 percent battery remaining. The phone with 84 percent battery was charged €16.60 (£14.56, $18.10) for the journey from the newspaper's offices to a nearby ferry terminal while the other phone was charged €17.56 (£15.41, $19.16). Uber has denied that payment is determined by how much charge a phone’s battery has left, and says that the app is not able to measure a user's battery. “Uber does not take into account the phone's battery level to calculate the price of a trip,” the company said in a statement to Dernière Heure. “The dynamic pricing applied to trips booked via Uber is determined by the existing demand for rides and the supply of drivers who can respond to it.”This is not the first time the ride app has been accused of taking advantage of its users’ battery life. In 2016, Uber’s former head of economic research, Keith Chen, said in an interview with NPR that the company had found that people with lower battery levels were more willing to pay for surge pricing. Chen denied the company was specifically raising prices on these users, but some commentators voiced scepticism about why the company was monitoring battery life at all.