Sometimes when you read stuff on the Internet, your first reaction is to think that some billion-dollar company scammed a poor user. So it’s no surprise to see that some folks are up in arms over this:

Uber surprised a 26-year-old Baltimore woman with a spooky Halloween bill that hit $326 on a routine ride, resulting in her inability to pay her rent and general Internet outrage.

I don’t know about her, but I think Uber does a pretty decent job of explaining its controversial surge pricing when it kicks into effect. Surge pricing basically adds a multiplier to the cost of the Uber in order to adjust for supply and demand. So if you’re trying to catch an Uber during peak hour, the cost might be 2X or even 9X. This isn’t any different from retailers raising prices when goods are in short supply. Some would deem it opportunistic, but it’s just supply and demand adjusting itself. If this were a 9X price on something that we absolutely must have to survive, then it’s a cause of concern, but there are alternatives to Uber out there, and as always, users can vote with their wallets. They can choose not use Uber, or wait until the surge ends. I usually just wait it out or take a regular cab.

I think it’s a pretty common practice to check the price of something before purchasing too. So if you see that the price is jacked up nine times, I think common sense would be to not buy it unless it’s an absolute necessity.

I do find her solution intriguing though. Using a crowdfunding service like GoFundMe to get herself out of a fix might be frowned upon, but I don’t see much difference from asking your mates for some help from time to time.

Hopefully this incident does bring more awareness to Uber’s surge pricing model though. Next time before you book that Uber, just take an extra glance to make sure you’re not agreeing to something you’re not comfortable paying for.

Dan Frommer wrote on Quartz about why Apple Pay has little to fear from retailers.

How CurrentC works:

Because it’s designed to skirt the existing credit-card infrastructure, CurrentC’s current version only supports payments via checking accounts and certain store cards. And it comes with a questionable privacy requirement: To “confirm your identity,” CurrentC demands both your driver’s license number and social security number.

When it comes to actually paying, the system gets even more cumbersome. CurrentC describes the process on its support site: You need to select a “Pay with CurrentC” option on the register, activate your phone, open the CurrentC app, enter a four-digit passcode, press the “Pay” button, “either scan the Secure Paycode that the cashier presents (default) or press the Show button at the bottom of your screen to allow the cashier to scan your Secure Paycode,” select the account you want to pay with, and then press a “Pay Now” button.

How ApplePay works:

For comparison, paying with Apple Pay is comically simple: Hold your iPhone—sleeping or awake—next to the store’s credit-card reader, touch your finger to your phone’s home button to verify your identity, and that’s it. As long-time Apple watcher John Gruber explains, “What Apple gets and what no one else in the industry does is that using your mobile device for payments will only work if it’s far easier and better than using a credit card.”

Dave Mark wrote on Loop Insight about CurrentC and antitrust implications.

Quoting from Reuters:

Antitrust experts said CVS and Rite Aid have the right to drop a vendor if they believe they can save money by going around the credit card companies and Apple, both of which will take a piece of the action.

But they could run into antitrust trouble if they coordinated on dropping Apple Pay and Google Wallet or if someone else, perhaps a person working with CurrentC, organized their decision to drop Apple and Google’s payment services.

“If I was a regulator, I would want to take a look at that,” said Peter Carstensen, who teaches antitrust at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Dave asks the questions that I’m asking as well:

But is that what happened here? What caused them both to drop Apple Pay? Was it a contractual requirement? Was there an email that went out from MCX to the exchange merchants laying out some rule requiring them to block Apple Pay?

Karen Webster wrote on PYMNTS about the scariest things in payments.

Customers, furious at not being able to use the payment method of choice to shop at Rite Aid, are taking to Twitter to not only let their feelings be known, but letting Rite Aid know that they are now, literally, walking across the street to Walgreen’s so they can use Apple Pay. Walgreens is also taking to Twitter to tweet their thanks to Rite Aid for giving them so many new customers. Marketing people are probably furious and full of “I-told-you-so’s” and the CEO is now probably going to be the one brought in to decide whether losing sales and reputation is worth saving a few cents on interchange.

Of course, what making matters worse is that CurrentC can’t even offer Rite Aid an alternative for its customers to use today or even tomorrow or the day after that. Rite Aid is saying, and I would guess a little sheepishly, just wait folks, we’ll have something too, soon, like sometime in 2015. And, it will be great.

Of course, it is entirely believable when a company tells customers that they have the customers’ best interests at heart, but they will prevent you from using a solution that is readily available and make you wait until next year for a more complicated solution.

The Verge reported on former head of Android and current Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra praising the iPhone 6.

Using careful language, Barra suggested that Xiaomi phones and software sometimes resemble existing products because the company is young and its designers lack confidence.”It’s a fight, but I think we’re learning and we’re progressing,” he said. “When you look at the stuff that’s coming next from us, you’re going to see some unique new twists.”

Kevin Fitchard wrote on Gigaom about the surreal interview given by MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson.

He said no MCX member would be fined or penalized for accepting Apple Pay (contrary to an earlier report in the New York Times), while reiterating that member merchants have all agreed to use CurrentC exclusively.

So are the members free to breach the agreement with no penalties?

From what I gather based on numerous sidestepped questions asked at the press conference, Davidson feels that MCX retailers are free do whatever they like as long as they quit the consortium, and that competition and third-party innovation are great as long as they’re done at some other retailer’s stores.

Davidson sounds confused to me.

One of Davidson’s final comments was perhaps the most telling. He said the goal of MCX was for retailers to establish much stronger bonds with their customers, the implication being that Apple, Google or the carriers stand in the way of establishing that bond. “Three’s a crowd,” he said.

I prefer a crowd than banking solely on the first mobile payment solution to be hacked even before it launched.