Gett, The Uber Without Surge Pricing, Cuts Ride Fares In NYC

Gett, an international Uber competitor making a big push in NYC, has today reduced fixed and predictable pricing by up to 25 percent, aiming to compete more squarely with Uber’s UberX service.

Last year Gett introduced a summer promotion which ended up staying in effect (and is still in effect today). The promotion offered $10 Gett rides anywhere between Houston St. and Central Park South in Manhattan, which would undercut just about any Uber fare in that region (save for ones that go only a few blocks).

When the summer ended, Gett kept that pricing structure in place for Manhattan, where marketshare against Uber is hard to come by, especially given the various modes of transportation outside of ordering a driver.

But beyond cutting prices by 25 percent, and promising a flat $10 fare in Midtown, Gett is also promising New Yorkers a more reliable system of dealing with supply and demand. Unlike Uber’s Surge pricing, which multiplies the fare based on a mysterious algorithm, Gett is either on peak time or not. During peak time, users are charged an additional $10 flat.

In other words, users don’t have to worry about Uber’s price multiplier and do math with unknown variables based on traffic and exact distance, only to then be disappointed by just how pricey Uber Surge can be.

It’s been a long winter up here in the big city, and Uber’s Surge pricing has felt nearly constant for the past four months. Of course, Uber has explained why it charges sometimes double or triple in the rain or on a busy night by saying that they have a more manageable supply:demand ratio when there are excessive passengers on the road.

But Gett’s way of dealing with peak traffic times on a flat-rate basis could open up the market to a bit more competition.

Gett says it has thousands of cars in the New York area and that it takes between five and ten minutes to hail a licensed black car.

Gett operates internationally in cities like London, Moscow and Tel Aviv, with New York being its first market in the United States.