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Indian Express
26-05-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Why does Uber charge Advance Tips, and why is it under government scrutiny now?
Last week, India's consumer protection watchdog issued a notice to global ride-hailing giant Uber, asking for an explanation for its 'Advanced Tip' feature. Pralhad Joshi, the Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, also called the practice 'deeply concerning' on social media. 'Forcing or nudging users to pay a tip in advance, for faster service is unethical and exploitative. Such actions fall under unfair trade practices. Tip is given as a token of appreciation not as a matter of right, after the service,' Joshi said, adding, 'Fairness, transparency and accountability must be upheld in all customer interactions.' He said the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) is also investigating other ride-hailing apps, including Ola and Rapido. They will be served notices if found to be indulging in such practices. When a user requests a ride on Uber, the app prompts the user to 'Add a tip for faster pickup'. 'A driver may be more likely to accept this ride if you add a tip. Your driver receives 100% of the tip. If you add a tip now, you can't change it later,' it says. Rapido, an Indian app, similarly urges users to increase the ride fare, saying the available drivers are not accepting a ride at the current price. Ola also tells users that their chances of getting a ride more quickly may increase if they add a tip. When and why did companies start this feature? Namma Yatri, which is backed by the government initiative Open Network for Digital Commerce, was the first to start this feature in 2022, and Rapido implemented it in 2023. Uber announced it in November last year and implemented it in April 2025. 'Companies don't have to pay 5% GST on the tip (which aggregators have to pay for passenger services otherwise), so they get drivers to earn more through this feature. To avoid an unfair advantage, all players eventually moved to this model,' according to an industry source. 'Offering drivers tips upfront has thus become an industry norm, with different names,' the source added. 'This option of adding extra fare is a transparent way of informing the Customer about any probable surge pricing which may get activated if demand is high in that particular area. However, this is completely optional and only gets applied when a customer chooses to do so,' a Rapido spokesperson said. The Indian Express earlier reported that following the Centre's action, Namma Yatri recently renamed its 'add a tip' option as 'add more (voluntary)' to find a ride. The company also defended its policy, saying customers are given the option only after no driver accepts the ride request within 30 seconds. According to Shivam Singh, an Advocate at the Supreme Court who practises in consumer litigation, 'Upfront tipping institutionalises practices such as haggling with auto drivers on the road, which people were looking to escape by using such apps. While it is shown as discretionary, that discretion gets skewed if you tell a user that someone else might get that cab if you don't tip the driver now.' He added that the practice 'is something that appears coercive', and that 'It does look like an unfair trade practice under the Consumer Protection Act of 2019.' Under the Act, unfair methods employed to promote the sale of an item include false representations about its quality and quantity, among other things. Could this be a type of dark pattern? The issue highlights 'dark patterns', often used by companies to influence consumer behaviour in their favour. Design patterns (such as user interface/user experience) are built to mislead or trick users into doing something they originally did not intend or want to do. The CCPA also issued guidelines in 2023, aimed at regulating and prohibiting dark patterns. One such tactic listed in the guidelines is false urgency. It refers to falsely stating or implying a sense of urgency or scarcity to mislead a user into making an immediate purchase, or taking immediate action that may lead to a purchase. It can include presenting false data on high demand without appropriate context, like saying, 'Only 2 rooms left! 30 others are looking at this right now.' Another category of such practices is drip pricing, where elements of prices are not revealed upfront or revealed surreptitiously within the user experience. For example, the price of an aeroplane ticket at the checkout may be a certain amount, but a higher price is charged when making the payment. In 2024, the Advertising Standards Council of India analysed around 12,000 screens from 53 apps across nine industries, identifying an average of 2.7 deceptive patterns per app. It included apps like Ola, Uber and Rapido, and found that 32% of surveyed companies showed instances of false urgency, and 42% engaged in drip pricing. Devansh Mittal is a trainee correspondent with The Indian Express. He studied political science at Ashoka University. He can be reached at ... Read More
The Hindu
03-05-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Bengaluru's restaurants see self-delivery systems as alternative to aggregators
As aggregator apps which provide food delivery services continue to increase their commission, restaurants in Bengaluru are looking for alternative channels, including self-deliveries and WhatsApp based-delivery systems in collaboration with technological partners. While the issue of commission is a huge burden that restaurants are not able to cope with when it comes to the apps which have a duopoly in the market, in the case of Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), there are logistical issues concerning last mile-connectivity according to restaurateurs. While some restaurants are now working with ONDC to resolve these issues, restaurateurs are looking for win-win situations for both restaurants and customers without much hassle. 'Many restaurants and cloud kitchens which are dependent on food delivery are on the verge of shutdown or are not able to pay salaries to the staff due to the commissions imposed by the aggregators. The aggregators also force discounts on restaurants which do not work out for us. They also refuse to share our own customer data with us,' said Chethan Hegde, who heads the Bengaluru Chapter of National Restaurants' Association of India (NRAI). He added: 'This is why many restaurants are now trying to figure out self-delivery options. We are working with tech partners and delivery partners for this.' Just Fresh Point is a vegetarian restaurant which operates three outlets in Bellandur and Electronics City. Recently, the chain started its own delivery system on WhatsApp. A customer can just send a 'Hi' on the messaging app and browse the menu and place their order. The restaurant offers free home deliveries at dine-in rates up to 3 km and a delivery charge of around ₹25 to ₹30 for 3 to 5 km. 'This strategic shift also aligns with a growing trend among local food businesses to adopt more sustainable and community-driven approaches. By handling deliveries in-house and reducing dependency on third-party platforms, we ensure better control over quality and service — while passing on the benefits to our customers,' said Durgesh Shobhawat, co-founder of the restaurant. Many restaurants are mulling similar strategies to strengthen local delivery systems. 'Long before aggregators came around, many food chains, especially pizza chains were offering deliveries on their own with the help of phone calls. Even today, many chains have their own delivery systems up to a certain radius. This helps them maintain a loyal customer base,' said an owner of a popular restaurant in Jayanagar. Girish Pai, founder and CEO of GrowthFalcons, a seller-side platform on ONDC said that be it WhatsApp channels or even ONDC, they help restaurants acquire and retain customers without having to shell out higher commission. 'While ONDC can help them with acquisition, self-delivery channels can help them with customer retention,' he said.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A Major Real Estate Policy Might Be Repealed—How Will Your Home's Value Be Affected?
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." There's some serious drama happening in the world of real estate—and no, we aren't talking about how Gen Z is experiencing some intense homebuyers' remorse. This is something that affects everyone, whether you already own a home or wish to one day. That's because it involves the accessibility and transparency surrounding the current and future houses on the market. And real estate experts are desperately asking you to pay attention. To put it in layman's terms: A fight has broken out amongst realtors and brokerage firms over a policy put in place by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) called the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP), which requires that brokers and agents list the properties they represent on the MLS (multiple listing services) centralized database of real estate listings within one business day of publicly putting them on the market. This policy was created in the hope that 'pocket' listings, which are private home listings, would decrease and there would be more competition in the public marketplace for home buyers and sellers going forward, according to Some agents, brokerages, and real estate aggregators, like Zillow, want to keep the CCP in place, arguing that it provides more opportunities for sellers to sell their homes at better prices, and for buyers to see everything that's out on the market in a timely manner. However, there are other agents and brokerage firms, such as Compass, that are actively lobbying against this policy, trying to get the NAR to get rid of it altogether. These firms argue that this rule takes choice away from sellers, forcing them to list their houses in ways they may not want and compromising their privacy. Of course, this issue isn't so black-and-white, and the NAR has made recent changes to the CCP that some realtors argue aren't in the best interest of the consumer—while others think they are steps in the right direction. As the intensity around this conversation continues to build, there's a lot to know. But don't worry—we broke it down below, and looked to three real estate experts to help us do so. National Association of Realtors. This is an American trade association for those in the real estate industry. It is the governing body for all things real estate. Clear Cooperation Policy. Put in place by the NAR in 2020, it requires all brokers to submit listings to the MLS within one business day of publicly marketing the property. Multiple Listing Services. A database created by real estate agents to share details about homes and properties for sale in a particular region. To understand the CCP, you must first know about the multiple listing service (MLS). The MLS is a tool that helps 'listing brokers find cooperative brokers working with buyers to help sell their clients' homes,' according to the NAR site. There are over 500 MLSs out there for brokers to use. Since these are private databases, each MLS is maintained and paid for by real estate professionals in order for this information to be provided to the public free-of-charge in most cases. Each individual MLS has to abide by NAR's policies, but it's able to implement said policies in its own ways with its own rules. As Kori Sassower, principal agent at The Kori Sassower Team, explains it, NAR is like the country of the United States and the MLSs are the individual states. The CCP, a policy put in place by the NAR in 2020, requires all brokers to submit all listings to the MLS within one business day of publicly marketing the property. This allows for all members of the MLS to see this property for sale. 'The Clear Cooperation Policy is saying that if a house is being marketed publicly for sale, it needs to be added to the MLS database so that all of the market participants can see it,' Jared Antin, the managing director at Elegran Real Estate, explains. 'Then the MLS feeds that out to all of the real estate aggregators, so Zillow, Trulia, things like that.' Basically, there's no trial-run for a house that's to be publicly listed for sale. With the CCP, a broker can't market a property on their own site or elsewhere before publicly listing it in order to get the word out—it must input the property into the MLS within that one business day. According to the 2020 Clear Cooperation Policy, agents need to report new home listings to the MLS within one business day of receiving them, unless the sellers wishes for it to be an exempt listing. Because there's this controversy in the real estate industry around this policy, NAR recently added a new policy to the existing CCP. On March 25, 2025, NAR introduced the Multiple Listing Options for Sellers Policy. This new addition will work alongside the CCP 'to provide sellers and their agents more options and choice when marketing a property, while also supporting fair housing by providing buyers and their agents with equal access to important MLS property information,' the NAR site states. It must be implemented by September 30. More importantly, this additional policy created two exempt listing options for sellers: office exclusive and delayed marketing. Office exclusive exempt listing. Sassower breaks it down: 'The office exclusive exempt listing is saying that I'm only going to market a house to people in my brokerage.' This is apparently something that already happened within brokerages anyway, as it's a hard rule to police. For example, if Sassower, who's a Compass-affiliated agent, has a house that in four days she's going to publicly list (as in, enter into the MLS), and she knows that one of her fellow Compass agents is looking for a house for their client, she's allowed to tell them about her upcoming house listing in that time frame. Now that this exemption is listed in this additional policy to the CCP, Sassower can get a signed agreement that this listing is an office exclusive, and she can tell every agent within Compass that this is something that's coming on the market. However, she still can't market it publicly until she's ready to add it to the MLS. Delayed marketing exempt listing. This exemption requires brokers to still put the listing in the MLS, but it doesn't allow for public marketing through an Internet Data Exchange (IDX) feed and syndication. An IDX feed is the software used by real estate professionals to put MLS listings to their sites. Zillow, Trulia, and other real estate aggregators use syndication to add home listings to their sites. Each MLS gets to determine the length of this delayed marketing window itself. Basically, this allows the seller and their agent to market the listing in a manner consistent to what the seller wants, but it also limits the number of brokers and agent who will see the listing when it's first put in the MLS. Sassower explains this exemption as being similar to a restaurant's soft-launch, while others criticize it as not being consumer-friendly for its lack of transparency. This additional policy, like the CCP in general, is also quite controversial. Sassower calls it a step in the right direction and Antin feels that it's modernizing the CCP, but James Dwiggins, a third-generation real estate professional and co-CEO of NextHome, a progressive real estate franchise, disagrees. Dwiggins argues that these exemptions will make it even harder for homebuyers to find homes in an already tough housing market. You now have a good chunk of the background information about the CCP, what it requires brokers to do, and how it has very recently changed. It's time to get into why this division is taking place and what it could mean for homeowners if NAR did eventually get rid of the CCP. The main reasons some brokers and big brokerages, such as Compass, say they are lobbying against the CCP are because they think brokers, agents, and sellers should be able to have a greater say in how and where their listings are marketed; and they believe sellers who wish for more privacy in their listing—because they're a celebrity, for example—should be allowed that option. With the current rules and regulations outlined in the CCP, including this latest Multiple Listing Options for Sellers Policy, brokers and therefore sellers are required by the NAR to list their homes in the MLS. Sassower says, 'We just want the ability to market the house before it goes out to everybody else.' Otherwise, the day a house goes on the MLS is the day the broker is able to start marketing it. This inability to pre-market a house also means, according to Sassower, that brokers are unable to get a good sense of the pricing. If brokers are allowed to pre-market a home privately before having to do so publicly, then they'll be able to get feedback from potential buyers within their brokerages that a home may be overpriced. When they do finally decide to market the home publicly, they can do so at the proper price without having to show any reductions. 'Once a house looks like it's reduced in price, it tends to make people think that they can get it for an even better price and the sellers are desperate,' Sassower says. 'It kind of gets rid of all that negative connotation if you start out at the right price.' Essentially, the thought is that if brokerages can't pre-market a home, they aren't doing right by their sellers. Though taking away the CCP would reduce the number of homes available to the public through the MLS, Sassower argues that 'anybody can have a Compass account,' or go to other brokerage sites to view their houses for sale. Sassower can understand why small brokerages aren't in favor of getting rid of the CCP, but she disagrees, arguing, 'All we're doing is expanding the choice for buyers to be able to see the houses before they come on the market.' Out of a total 2.72 million home transactions Zillow analyzed, around 54,400 were 'pocket' listings that weren't reported on the MLS. The brokerages and agents who want to keep the CCP argue that the MLS system allows for the most transparency in the housing market for buyers and sellers. According to Antin, repealing the CCP—repealing this central repository of information—would show a regression in the housing market. By not requiring brokerages to add listings to the MLS, a lot of visibility would be taken away from the consumer, and brokerages with smaller inventory would suffer. Dwiggins actually dislikes the office exclusive exemption policy addition to the CCP because of this lack of visibility too. 'It's essentially a way to try and find a buyer within the brokerage represented by one of their other agents, and double end the deal before working with other agents at other firms,' he says. 'The brokerage would make both sides of the commission versus only half.' Completely taking away the CCP would make this even easier for the brokerages with a larger inventory to do. Those agents for keeping the CCP also argue that a seller wouldn't get as many eyes on their listing if the broker wasn't required to report it to the MLS. Fewer eyes means potentially extending the selling timeframe of your home, Antin says, which means leaving money on the table by not getting the highest potential price. As Sassower points out, you as a seller would have more flexibility and freedom around the way your house is listed and marketed if the NAR was to completely get rid of the CCP. You'd be able to have a sort of test-run with the pre-market pricing, there would be more potential for privacy, and you'd simply be given more choice as the seller. However, you as a buyer wouldn't see every house on the market as easily as you do now. You'd have to go to different brokerage sites to see what listings are there, as there would be more exclusivity in the selling process. This would make a rough housing market even tougher thanks to the lack of visibility across the board. The monetary risks of leaving money on the table by reducing the potential buyers who see the listing are also very real. According to a study by Zillow (which is on the side of keeping the CCP), homes that were sold off the MLS sold for, on average, $4,975 less than those listed on the MLS. This figure varies state by state—listings in California that were sold off the MLS made $30,000 less, on average, than those sold on the MLS. Another Zillow study found that selling homes off the MLS disproportionately affects people of color. In ZIP codes where the majority of households are Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander, or Native American, off-MLS houses typically sold for 3.2 percent less than houses on the MLS, which is more than double the 1.2 percent loss in neighborhoods that are a majority white. 'This equates to $9,850 lost per off-market listing in communities of color, compared to a loss of around $3,700 per home in majority white neighborhoods,' the study states. Homes in Hispanic communities sell for 4 percent less when sold off the MLS, which comes to about $13,730. Homes in Black communities sell for 3.1 percent less when sold off the MLS, which comes to about $5,576. There are points to be understood on each side of this controvery, but at House Beautiful, we feel it's necessary to provide you with all the information possible so you can stay informed and know how all of this is going to affect you—whatever happens. Follow on Instagram and TikTok. You Might Also Like 15 Home Bar Gifts Every Cocktail Enthusiast Will Appreciate 32 Low Light Indoor Plants That Can Survive in the Darkest Corners of Your Home These Are the 50 Best Paint Colors for Your Living Room
CBC
18-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
'Nail-biter' result predicted in Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge as voters weigh international, hyper-local issues
Social Sharing Poll trackers show more than a half-dozen ridings in B.C. too close to call as voting day nears on April 28, with voters in places like the Fraser Valley saying their decision hinges on who can be the best local representative, but also part of a government that can best defend Canada. "It's going to be very close. I think it's going to be a nail-biter, actually," said James Dupont, a Maple Ridge resident. "I'm on the edge with the Liberals, but you know, I want something that works … I'm thinking Conservative." The urban and rural riding of Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge, with around 100,000 residents, has had both a Liberal and Conservative member of Parliament, and residents are carefully mulling their choice again this election. WATCH | What voters are considering in Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge: A close race in Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge has voters carefully considering their choices 2 days ago Duration 1:05 Some voters in the riding of Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge say they expect the race to be close between the Conservative incumbent Marc Dalton and the Liberal challenger Angie Rowell. Chad Pawson visited the community and spoke with voters about the issues important to them and how they may cast their ballots. Constituents like Dupont say that with the area's population quickly increasing, affordable housing, access to health care, and public safety are all election issues in tandem with the economic and sovereignty threat posed by the U.S. administration under Donald Trump. One of the biggest issues in Pitt Meadows is a long-promised, but yet-to-be-delivered overpass for a train yard in the middle of town that would remedy the often long traffic delays. "It's not just a train going through, but it's backing up, it's stalling, sitting still, it's grabbing more cars. It's just sometimes the lineup there is insane," said Rob McCoy, who moved to Pitt Meadows from New Westminster six years ago for more affordable housing. The local chamber of commerce said it has 550 members and is growing, but businesses need strong politicians to advocate for their needs, such as commercial space and a strong federal response to the U.S. tariff threat amid high interest rates, inflation and a tough labour market. "Five years ago, we were in a pandemic, and I feel like businesses are just starting to get back on their feet," said Kristi Maier, the CEO of the Ridge Meadows Chamber of Commerce. "And here we are hit with another problem that businesses have to deal with. It's a lot for businesses to be able to handle." Ground game critical, candidates say Polling aggregators like 338Canada predict Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge will be a toss-up between the Conservatives and Liberals, where incumbent Marc Dalton is trying to win for the third straight election over banker Angie Rowell. The NDP's Daniel Heydenrych is trying to convince voters that his party deserves to have parliamentarians in Ottawa to work collaboratively with other parties over the country's most pressing issues. The seat is also being contested by Chris Lehner with the People's Party of Canada and Peter Buddle with the Rhinoceros Party. Candidates like Rowell say the race will come down to who best connects — in person — with voters in the riding through door knocking and phone calls. "And so I'm understanding, I think the … more of the emotional side of politics and for candidates and voters to feel they have a connection to the person they are voting for," said Rowell. Dalton and Heydenrych did not respond to inquiries from CBC News about their campaigns. in the 44th Parliament, the Conservatives 14, the NDP 13 and the Greens one.
