When I\u2019m in Las Vegas, I usually drive my own car to go places. Sometimes, though, using rideshare is convenient. Like going to or from the airport. Or taking me to physical therapy appointments when I\u2019m recovering from one surgery or another and I\u2019m not supposed to drive. While I do enjoy a glass of wine with dinner periodically, I haven\u2019t been too impaired to drive safely since my college days more than 50 years ago, but I suppose it could happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have both Lyft and Uber accounts set up, but in 20 trials, Lyft was always cheaper than Uber. So, I only use Lyft. It\u2019s possible that Uber might be cheaper than Lyft some of the time. Since many of the Lyft drivers also drive for Uber, I\u2019m assuming the experience itself is pretty similar between the two companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bonnie and I go to Reno 20 times a year or so. While most of our play is at one casino, we do play at others there and so earn free play. We schedule our trips, among other parameters, so we can pick up any free play we\u2019re offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we have three or more casinos to visit during a trip (or if Lake Tahoe, which is 60 miles away, has one of those casinos), we\u2019ll rent a car. But if it\u2019s only two casinos, we\u2019ll take the shuttle from the airport to get to the first casino offering free play, and Lyft our way to the casino where we\u2019ll stay. While we could take a shuttle back to the airport and get another shuttle from the airport to the second casino, that can easily take an hour or so and Lyft is much quicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On one occasion, we did this in reverse. That is, we took the shuttle to the main casino we were going to stay for the trip and used Lyft to take us to the second. From there, we would take a shuttle to the airport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On this occasion, I brought most of our luggage down to the video poker machine I play, and was waiting for Bonnie to join me. She was still in the room and was going to meet me at the machine. I opened up the Lyft app to check how much it would be to go to the second casino and found out it was $12.50. I didn\u2019t order the ride (Bonnie wasn\u2019t there yet), but I left the app open. Five minutes later, the price was $9.75, and ten minutes after that it was $18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I knew rideshare pricing is based on supply and demand, I didn\u2019t realize it jumped around so much so quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Bonnie arrived, the price was $14.35. I waited a few minutes and it dropped to $10.95, which I took. That wasn\u2019t the lowest price of the day, but if I took the earlier price of $9.75, the ride would have come and gone before Bonnie got there. And leaving Bonnie behind wasn\u2019t an option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But $10.95 was a relatively low price. It was much lower than $18 and was the second-lowest price I\u2019d seen in the last half hour. It\u2019s possible the next price would be $8.35, but it\u2019s also possible it would be $17.70. I have to pull the trigger some time, so I pick a price that is relatively low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s possible that the first price I see will be the lowest one for quite some time. I won\u2019t get that price, usually. Unless we\u2019ve taken the same route at the same time of day several times, we don\u2019t know a good price from a bad price. So we almost always get a few prices and pick a relatively low one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, Bonnie and I make a game out of which Lyft price to take. If the price drops when we\u2019re ready to go, we jump on it and feel good about saving $1.25 or so. Never mind that we might be up or down $40,000 for the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Las Vegas when we take Lyft from the airport home, I expect the price to be rather stable. During normal business hours, there are always a lot of people wanting to use Lyft to get away from the airport. The last time we took it, the price was $19.99, and it stayed that way for almost ten minutes. Finally, it dropped all the way to $19.85. I took it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I \u201cbragged\u201d to Bonnie about saving a whole 14 cents, we both laughed. This time, what we saved was essentially zero. But doing this over and over again, we\u2019ll get lower prices in total than if we blindly just take the first one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I\u2019m in Las Vegas, I usually drive my own car to go places. Sometimes, though, using rideshare is convenient. Like going to or from the airport. Or taking me to physical therapy appointments when I\u2019m recovering from one surgery or another and I\u2019m not supposed to drive. While I do enjoy a glass of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":843442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[601,557],"tags":[561,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/spinach-2.png?fit=500%2C300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":891730,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891729\/revisions\/891730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}