Currently, your idle slothfulness that sees you pay someone to bring food to your door rather than walking six blocks has a very distinct price. Uber Eats charges $4.99 for delivery, whether your restaurant is one block away, or all the way across town.
But according to CNET, that’s all about to change. The company is introducing a sliding-scale delivery fee that can range from $2 to $8, depending on how far away you are from the restaurant. It’s a move that makes total sense, given that the $4.99 delivery fee was higher than most of Uber’s competitors, and hopefully it will make ordering in a little more affordable.
Uber is going out of its way to make sure that customers aren’t blindsided by the new changes. You will be able to filter restaurants so you only see things within a certain delivery price range; if you’re unhappy with the options nearby, you can expand the filter and pay $8 for the perfect burrito, if you so wish.
“It’s really important to us that these fees are transparent,” Annie Fogel, product operations manager for Uber Eats, told CNET. “The idea is you see it up front before you click into the menu.” According to Uber, in trials it found that 52 percent of delivery fees were cheaper than the $4.99 it charges currently. The variable pricing has been trialed in a number of US cities already, and it should be rolling out nationwide on Wednesday.
