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Uber takes U-turn, lets riders schedule trips in advance

Passengers will be able to schedule a ride up to 30 days in advance, a reversal of Uber's long-held attitude that it is an on-demand service. 

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Robert Galbraith/Reuters
An Uber car in San Francisco in May 2015. Passengers will soon be able to pre-schedule rides.

Passport, check. Toothbrush, check. Scheduled Uber pickup, check.

The ride-hailing company announced that users on their way to the airport, or in need of any pre-scheduled ride, will be able to reserve one . The service started Thursday in Seattle, the home of Microsoft, and will expand to other 鈥渢op business travel cities,鈥 Uber wrote on its blog.

Uber is not the first ride-hailing service to offer this feature. Lyft announced in May it has started to in San Francisco, while Gett has offered for more than a year where it operates, USA Today reported.

As these companies upend the taxi and limousine industries, Uber鈥檚 announcement shows that it, Lyft, and Gett have found that they shouldn鈥檛 discard too many taxi and limo features in the name of 鈥渙n-demand.鈥 聽 聽

鈥淓ven though we鈥檙e an on-demand company, ,鈥 Tom Fallows, Uber鈥檚 director of global experiences, told Wired.com. 鈥淪ometimes you just want that extra reassurance that your Uber will be there when you want to leave.鈥

Through Uber鈥檚 new feature, a user will be able to schedule a ride 30 minutes to 30 days in advance. The feature will be offered to start just through Uber X, its less expensive, private vehicle option. A user can cancel any time before their ride is on its way, at no cost to them. Pre-scheduling won鈥檛 impact drivers, who will not be able to ahead of time, according to The Boston Globe. And users won鈥檛 be able to avoid surge pricing, in which the cost of a ride climbs at peak hours, either.

Schedule-ahead service is a reversal of Uber鈥檚 about how, and when, it serves its customers.

鈥淯ber is an on-demand service,鈥 it writes on its website, on a page titled 鈥淐an I make a reservation?鈥 鈥淯se the Uber app to request a trip when you鈥檙e ready to ride. There鈥檚 no need to make a reservation in advance.鈥

Travis Kalanick, Uber鈥檚 chief executive, in September, when he spoke one-on-one with Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff at the cloud computing company鈥檚 Dreamforce conference.

鈥淒o you schedule time with your shower?鈥 said Mr. Kalanick, when asked by Mr. Benioff if Uber would introduce scheduled rides, reported Forbes.

And yet, ever since it started six years ago, Uber said it has received requests from customers for pre-scheduled rides 聽鈥渟o they can rest assured that an Uber will be available when they need it, even if it鈥檚 for a 4 a.m. ride to the airport,鈥 wrote Uber in Thursday鈥檚 blog post.

Taxis and limos have long offered schedule-ahead services. In fact, it鈥檚 a foundation of the limousine industry. Gett, which operates in Europe, Russia, Israel, and New York City, recognized this when it launched the service more than a year ago. Lyft was next. It started to pilot service in San Francisco about two weeks ago, and plans to expand it to other cities sometime this summer, reported PC Magazine. Lyft, though, will allow users to reserve a ride , compared to up to 30 days through Uber.

Uber introduced pre-scheduling in part聽to keep up with its rivals. Yet it鈥檚 also an indication that ride-hailing companies are learning they can鈥檛 do away with too much of the traditional model. 聽聽

鈥淚f you want to really, truly upend the market, then you have to focus on people use to create change,鈥 wrote Kevin Harrington, the inventor of the infomercial, in a Forbes article. 鈥淚n the end, companies don鈥檛 upend markets 鈥 customers do.鈥

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