Woman questions Uber after noticing rides with Spanish-speaking drivers cost less than regular rides

Pay disparity is a huge problem in today's world, which is something everyone comes across while working in different sectors. It could be based on gender, color, or race. A woman on TikTok–who goes by @sarcasm.generator–shared an interesting analysis of how there was a price difference between UberX and UberESPAÑOL rides. "Uber is doing something potentially very questionable," she said in her video. "For context for anyone who doesn't use Uber or doesn't have this option in their area, Uber offers this thing called UberESPAÑOL with Uber driver who speaks Spanish," she added.

"So, I got flown out to Los Angeles for a conference and I was like, let me get Uber to my hotel. I pull up my Uber menu and I notice that UberESPAÑOL is $5 cheaper than UberX," she shared. Since the woman knows the language and appreciates saving money, she opts for that ride. But then the woman began to wonder why exactly this ride was cheaper than UberX. "So I go to look it up online to see if I can find any sort of answer, I search and I find some posts with the exact same question," she shared. She then shows two posts that she found from two years ago and in both screenshots, the cost for UberESPAÑOL drivers was lesser compared to the other drivers.

The woman was unable to find definite answers and there were too many speculations. "There might be, for example, more people who speak Spanish as drivers and, therefore, based on quantity, it would be cheaper to get a driver who spoke Spanish," she found online. However, she did not agree with this answer. "Two things about that strike me as odd," she said. "Even in a place like Los Angeles, which is geographically right next to Mexico, it is more likely that there are people who speak Spanish population-wise there should be far more people who speak English than Spanish."

"The other thing is that unless Uber can demonstrate that someone who drives UberESPAÑOL will be compensated the exact same amount as UberX for the same distance and the discount is coming out of Uber's pocket and not the driver's profit... unless Uber can demonstrate that, it could suggest that UberESPAÑOL drivers are paid less," she concluded the video.

The video has garnered over 112K views and 10K likes. It is captioned, "For legal reasons, I'm not asserting anything about why UberESPAÑOL rides could be cheaper than an UberX." Moreover, people in the comments section made more guesses as to why UberESPAÑOL drivers are charged less. @wormloverboy commented, "I would guess that there was less demand for UberESPAÑOL than UberX." @willalexwhiteshared, "I guess that it's a test program that they charge less for so that more people will take it and get more data. companies do this stuff a lot." @oceananddustttt expressed, "They need to be more expensive. That's not fair to the Spanish drivers." @lei_leiiiii said, "Their pricing is all around odd because Uber Green is always cheaper than X in my area, which makes no sense to me."