Uber competitor Gett undercuts rivals with $10 rides within Manhattan for the rest of 2014
Uber Who? Gett Slashes All Manhattan Cab Prices to $10 Flat — Haven't heard of Gett? That could change by the end of 2014. When two companies like Uber and Lyft battle it out in loud debates …
Context & Ripple Effects
Gett's $10 flat Manhattan fare lands mid-feud: confirmed reporting in late August 2014 detailed Uber running a nationwide operation to poach Lyft drivers — brand ambassadors armed with burner phones and credit cards — while Lyft claimed Uber recruiting cost drivers up to 48% of their earnings. Against that backdrop of recruiting skirmishes, Gett is attacking on the rider-facing variable neither had touched: outright price.
The story traveled widely for a startup salvo, picked up same-day by The Daily Dot, VentureBeat, and Get Taxi's own channel. It also arrives just after an August 2014 assessment that Uber and Lyft had become near-indistinguishable commodities to riders and drivers — which is precisely the opening a flat-price challenger is exploiting.
First-order effects
- Manhattan riders get every Gett cab ride at $10 flat through December 2014, making Gett immediately cheaper than Uber and Lyft on typical city trips and forcing both incumbents' NYC pricing into direct comparison.
- Gett converts marketing spend into guaranteed volume: the flat rate is a customer-acquisition subsidy, buying trial rides that surge-priced Uber trips cannot match on price during the promo window.
Second-order effects
- If services really are commodities, as the August 2014 assessment held, Uber and Lyft's remaining differentiation in New York collapses to price — pressuring them to discount or lean harder on supply-side perks like the driver-recruiting tactics already documented.
- Drivers bear the margin squeeze either way: subsidized fares raise utilization questions about per-ride earnings, echoing Lyft's own claim that aggressive competitive tactics were already costing drivers up to 48% of expected income.
Third-order effects
- A shift from feature-and-recruiting competition to open consumer price subsidies favors the best-capitalized player and pushes sub-scale ride-hailing entrants toward consolidation or exit if the pattern holds across markets.
The trend: Ride-hailing competition is escalating from driver-poaching skirmishes into direct consumer price wars, with flat-rate subsidies becoming the weapon of challengers against entrenched networks.