1) Uber comes in pays well - sources on the net for hip drivers - You get awesome English speaking nice drivers
2) Uber starts to drop rates
3) Good Uber drivers quit for lack of pay, existing cabbies start to drive for Uber
4) You end up getting the same cabbies as before Uber, but with surge pricing.
It takes a while, but eventually it ends back up in the same exact place as before :( Totally happened in Chicago in front of my eyes.
1) No communication problems telling the driver where you are going. If you or they don't speak English, that's fine
2) No tipping.
3) No cash/form of payment shenanigans
4) ETA and location information in near real-time
5) No hailing--great if you are an introverted person/don't know how to whistle like a truck driver/etc.
Honestly, if the taxi industry adopted that dispatch system I would have no problem using it. Uber should do enterprise licensing for "Uber For Cities" so they can finally run their taxicab operations properly.
In chicago you can call 311 but you have to register a case and show up in the court on the hearing date.
You can't really complain about general rudeness, but most usually the really rude behavior breaks at least a couple rules.
If I'm in downtown or SOMA, I will use a taxi (either hailing or using Flywheel). It's usually a huge time saver (and there's no "surge" pricing either).
Sounds like something Uber themselves would do come to think of it.
There was a precise cliff-edge over which service levels dropped dramatically, and it came a few months ago when the lowest priced tier, which had nice, big modern cars with really professional drivers who knew the city, was replaced with a tier branded as 'uberX'.
The uberX experience, while still certainly usable, is a very obvious step down from the previous standard. To sum it up, it basically feels less like you're getting an on-demand professional driver/ taxi, and a lot more like you're just flagging a lift from some guy with a car.
The cars themselves are a big step down - much older, smaller, worn out interiors, sometimes even without seatbelts. On numerous occasions the drivers have been far from the professional driver standard. In general they get the job done but they sometimes don't know the roads very well, and I've run the full spectrum of issues like them taking forever to get to the pickup point, often driving past it and circling back round a one-way system etc, having to take ridiculous detours en route because they miss a turn, going via obviously gridlocked routes, asking me for directions along the way to the destination. All of the things you just don't expect to happen with a driver service but you might expect to happen if you asked a friend for a lift. It's not a guaranteed slick service like it previously was, at all.
I'm not sure what happened here but this, along with the Android app being fairly buggy and seeming to get worse over time (takes minutes to lock GPS coordinates, really kills my battery, sometimes completely freezes when you're tracking them coming to pick you up, gives you a locking error message when you've lost your data connection so you can't even see the map, or the license plate of the car, any more) has really downgraded my impression of uber from something which was all-round vastly better than taxis, to a something which is basically on the same level and that I'll just use when it's not that convenient to hail a taxi on the street. And I'm no big fan of taxis.
It's a shame, I used to rave about uber to anyone who'd listen, but if the level of service for the same cost continues to slide like this here and in other cities then I could see myself looking for and switching to competitors much more often where previously I had no real need or desire to.
Seems like they are simply using as-the-crow-flies distance, which is kinda crazy.
Based on what Uber is spending on acquiring new drivers I would assume they have eased up on threshold for booting poorly rated drivers. Based on the recent revelation that the map view of nearby cars is now simulated I would assume that the published reviews should no longer be taken at face value either.
At the beginning the pitch went something like Uber would win because it had so much data that it would be able to route drivers much more efficiently than any new competitor. The pick up times rather have gone the other direction over the year. If anything, there are far more opportunities for vehicle transport services now.
I wondered, what if the future Uber, rather than offering the awesome service it had in the beginning, ended up being just as mediocre as what we had before -- cabs, buses, towncars you booked a day before -- but just in different ways?
Uber adds a level of accountability that NYC cabs do not have.
I feel like cabbie turnover is so high, if 1000 join Uber.. 200 get canned so switch to Lyft... 200 more cabbies will just join Uber the next month.
A rating system is good over the long term, but if people have an average life in a market of a few months - it doesn't do a bunch.
All else equal (and many say all else isn't equal here of course, though that argument cuts both ways), a system with SOME accountability is better than a system with none.
[1] http://uber-partners-static.s3.amazonaws.com/chicago_uberx/f...
Personally I give a 5 star as default unless they are sub-service given I know they face being cut if below ~4.5. So for me it almost works as a negative only scale with no positive points for exceptional service.
It's not necessarily a bad thing for business models to be cyclical. Even when it results in a downwards spiral, it usually allows the problem space to be explored, and that spiral can be disrupted upwards... at the cost of temporary lack of quality.
Steps 3 and 4 are no longer relevant.
I'm not sure what the solution is with this whole mess though.
In a new market Uber will pay something like 95-110% of fares taken in to drivers (not exact numbers, would need to look). Over the long run I think it drops to 60-70%, or something significantly worse (as clearly paying drivers 110% of income is not sustainable).
If Uber decides to change the commission it almost always grandfathers existing drivers to what they had when they joined.
1) Uber comes in pays well - sources on the net for hip drivers - You get awesome English speaking nice drivers
2) Uber starts to drop rates
3) Good Uber drivers quit for lack of pay, existing cabbies start to drive for Uber
4) Alternate company, takes lower margin, pays drivers well and offer better customer experience.
5) Uber hold some inertia in via brand name while the majority of the market recognises new services is better and uploads new app on their phone over the course of a year or 2.
This is the beauty of the Uber model. Its relatively easy for new entrants to enter. There's no medallion system holding out innovation. The day Uber mucks around their customers/drivers significantly I'll delete their app. I already use an alternate one occasionally for comparison and cause I like to see competition in the market.
It doesn't seem to me that your crucial step will work. Uber is worth >$50bn, but more importantly has a substantial amount of cash on hand. I can't imagine anyone could out last them in a price war.
Give that response was largely about someone saying when Uber has lost their customer service quality, that would be a large switching point alone. I went to Uber more for service and convenience. Price was a bonus.
And they will be limited on price wars. If someone comes in at slim margin, paying more to drivers, Uber can hardly go negative in pricing. Firstly they have investors to appease. And in many countries they would be charged with predatory pricing and be in a heap of trouble. They might knock out a few competitors this way but eventually anyone competing would have massive regulatory protection in this area.
Convenience is another protective moat. Simply having cars available. But its easy for a car to run 2 versions at once if they feel the demand is there, even if Uber demand exclusive service (again possibly causing regulatory issues), policing it would be nightmare when one can simply have a second phone in the car. And pushing for exclusive would likely shoot themselves in the foot if there is increasing demand from the market elsewhere as some drivers will be forced to jump ship hurting their own service.
Taxis do not compete in any meaningful way.
4. They pretend that ccard machines are not working. Demand cash.
5. Cars are so old that someone of them have no Air conditioning.
6. Drivers often have BO and are often chewing gutka(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutka)
7. Rude. This needs to be said again.
I mean, it's obviously a scam, so most of the time they don't, and they're not actually broken, but at least there's something you can yell back at him when you arrive and he demands cash.
But discussions like this are loaded with people who assure us that certain ultra-common behavior "is illegal", as if that somehow settles it, so I'm going to tolerate otherwise content-free reminders that this is not true.
I see what you're saying. There are two fallacies at play:
1) same logic that people use to reason out of voting (it doesn't matter if I do x because it hasn't mattered before). 2) the logic that because it's illegal means it isn't permitted (which is, as you stated, not always true).
I'm not sure if it truly matters if people report taxis. What I am sure about is it will never matter if no one cares to report them to begin with. This works for any system.
We don't care about illegality per se. We care about "not making the bad thing happen". If illegality accomplishes that, great! But if it doesn't, then it is non-responsive to our concerns to remind us that it does. It's like if you're going to friends talking about problems you encounter, and all they ever tell you is, "Well that's not supposed to happen".
The process of enforcing the illegality puts a lot of burden on the customer, and your response recognizes that it requires people going far out of their way.
In practice, a system that requires most individuals to make heroic sacrifices is the same as a system that just doesn't work.
But you should still report it. It is the volume of reports that are considered. Plus, you're calling a facility run by the city, not calling the taxi company.
If you can't afford to tip your taxi driver, take the train. Sorry.
If cab drivers expect a tip regardless of service quality, then the tip might as well be added to the cab rate.
Yeah, it should be, shouldn't it? But it isn't. The system is fucked, of course, but it's fucked in a very deliberate way where "protesting" by not tipping hurts the cabbie significantly, and the people responsible for the system not at all.
In certain Asian households it is expected that you take your shoes off, if you know this, and still stomp around the household in your shoes, would you say there was no justification for the owner of the household to be rude or snarky?
You might be able to argue that the enlightened person might say "I don't know what has happened to this person today, or why they're doing this, and I will try to find out their story before assuming they're just being an uncultured ass", but there is certainly justification, especially when it comes to the fact that these people are earning their livelihoods in this way and the tips are an essential part of that.
In that case, the host should at least consider the possibility that they forgot about money they owe you, or that this was an ambiguous case, before concluding that you're committing a faux pas.
The analogy is that tipping is supposed to be "optional" in some sense, and there's tremendous disagreement about what is appropriate in what context, and that "if you felt this person didn't provide you with great service, you can reduce or withhold the tip".
Thus, if you tip too little, the driver should consider it to be possible feedback about underperformance.
Of course, they way it really works is that they expect you to give 20% irrespective of service, but want to maintain a pretense that it's "for service", enforced by rudeness-with-impunity.
As well as all of Canada (when we have a house party, there can be a pile of 30+ shoes at the front door, and someone inevitably loses one or both shoes), and most other countries...
Shoes in the house is the strangest part of the US to me.
Stories of not getting picked up and rumors of complaints are not the same as "Taxi number ZX123 did not pick me up, though they were on duty and looked directly at me hailing him".
There is no proof of the incident, but at least there is the official record. It gets logged, it's a statistic, and it's something officials in the city can state: "we've had X number of complaints this year about taxis. This is up twice from last year."
1) They drive as if they are on a rally track. I have had never experienced motion sickness before until I moved to Manhattan.
2) If you ignore the tip or tip them in the range of $1-3 you get snarky remarks from them.
3) If you try to hail a cab and (regrettably) ask the taxi driver to drive you to a place where their chances of hailing a passenger back are slim then they will rudely turn you away (Tip: First hop in then tell the direction. It is a NYC law).
I can go on and on but point being Uber is the much needed necessary evil in scarce resource cities like Manhattan.