> Travis is right on a technicality they did not lower Uber Black prices much if any. What they did instead was coerced Uber Black drivers to take Uber X request.

That seems like semantics to me. The pay was lowered.

Why are you both unaware that the rate itself was in fact lowered. Straight from the article:

> In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile or $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber's website. Today, Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute.

Nip arguments in the bud, not at the leaf.

But there's no indication that this has anything to do with how much the driver receives. This number is how much Uber receives.

> Nip arguments in the bud, not at the leaf.

I like that attitude.

If the consumers are voting with their wallets that they want more Uber X rides and less Uber Black rides, well, that's what should happen. To bring supply back in line with demand, some drivers who used to drive Uber Black should either leave or downgrade, and if they won't do it willingly, then some drivers going bankrupt is a way how the market forces "driver supply" to go in the direction where it apparently needs to go.

Sure, but the way Uber is set up means the costs from that adjustment are bourne entirely by the driver, who was probably advised by Uber to take our a lease on an expensive luxury car in order to pick up expensive fares.

Bear in mind the start of this thread was discussing the driver being rude. You can call it "market forces" as much as you like, but if Uber is happy to sit back and let its drivers pay the price, its CEO can expect to be given a hell of a lot of abuse in return. And he'll deserve it. Don't expect to be treated well when you don't treat others well.

This is the free market. Uber Black is one thing, but you do know Uber is aggressively working towards autonomous vehicles, because Uber wants to provide transportation in the future, and not just now. A $69 billion dollar company must always be thinking of the long term if they want to stay relevant.

Uber isn't a charity. I don't condone Uber's culture or whatever the CEO may or may not have done to create such a workplace but you have to understand that Uber is a business, like any other, out to maximize profits. Everyone seeks to maximize profits, and if the market calls for changes, then you make those changes lest you give up market share to your competitors.

> Uber isn't a charity.

No, but it functions in a society, and shouldn't be under the mistaken belief that it is immune to societal change.

We can all agree that self-driving cars and automation in general are a positive technological development. But what if it results in mass unemployment? It's short sighted to say that Uber only has to seek to maximise profits - it also has an interest in there being a large customer base with money available to use their product. Presumably it would also prefer that those customers are not rioting and trashing vehicles in the street.

This is a mini version of that. Uber has screwed over this driver, and he is justifiably angry about it. "Well, we'd lose market share if we don't do it" is not a winning argument to anyone except other advantaged rich people.

Let's keep in mind that Uber Black was meant to be a replacement for renting limousine by the hour. It was meant to take something that used to be $135/hour with a 5 hour minimum, and turn it into $50 per 30 minute ride so limousine owners could profit off their spare time.

This is hardly something that is for the common man, and has little to do with self-driving cars or automation.

> Let's keep in mind that Uber Black was meant to be a replacement for renting limousine by the hour.

WHAT?! How are the vehicles on this site even close to a limousine? http://uberestimate.com/what-is-uber-black/

Private car services offer 4 seater and SUVs as well as the typical looking limo. That's what most of their business is... Driving people to and from locations like nightclubs in SUVs.

Uber is not immune to societal change, they fully embrace this, like any company must if they want long term success.

Every corporation seeks to maximize profits. They may make investments, but every company expects a positive return on those investments in the long term.

I think we are responsible for our own actions. No one forced this driver to use Uber. Uber and Lyft always had very open relationship in the sense that drivers routinely double dipped in the pool without legal issues. There is absolutely no expectation that the terms under which the drivers are operating are set in stone and they aren't going to change in the future.

You have to look at things within the legal framework. $97k is a lot of money and people sue for much much less. That driver probably had no case at all.

> Uber isn't a charity.

By that token, their drivers aren't charity workers either. If we put aside the inter-personal aspect of the video (which is contentious to say the least) this, to me, espouses the fundamental flaw in Uber's approach to their business: they have no respect for their workforce.

Unless they can get their self-driving cars working in time (which is another contentious subject), I suspect their eventual failure if it comes will be due to how they treat their drivers. Personally, I use Lyft because (a) in SF Lyft and Uber availability is more or less fungible and (b) I got tired of Uber drivers giving me an earful on how badly Uber treats them. Lyft drivers, in my experience (which is anecodtal, but I take at least 5 Lyfts per week and often 10+) are reasonably happy about their work. After the recent news I went ahead and deleted my Uber account, but that was an easy decision to make since I never use them anyway.

It's not a problem if their driver recruitment material reflects that. If the message was "Drive a black car for occasional UberBlack fare, beware that you must accept a certain percentage of lower UberX fares, and that at some point you will be replaced by a driverless vehicle", it's truth in advertising and drivers get what they sign up for.

Driver ads, however, display successful-looking models quoting some unrealistic (as frequently pointed out by quite a few news sources) dollar amounts, and let's face it, the clientele it's targeting is very removed from robotics/AI development, unlikely to have an economics degree (or speak fluent English, for that matter) or disposable income to trade up / trade down their vehicle of choice to reflect the strategy of the day.

Your argument can be rewritten to apply to Countrywide Mortgage and fake Viagra peddlers, does that make those businesses right?

In a properly functioning market, drivers would be going bankrupt due to not having enough fares, not by being forced to take unprofitable fares.

If customers are voting with their wallets that they want more UberX and less Uber Black, then Uber Black drivers should be faced with a choice of chasing volume or margins, not forced to subsidize customers.

They're not being forced to take unprofitable fares, though. They're being offered UberX customers when there are no Uber Black customers available. Whether or not they have the ability to change that priority is the question here. It seems that taking a slightly lower fare is better than taking no far at all at a higher rate.

> It seems that taking a slightly lower fare is better than taking no far at all at a higher rate.

That is not how capitalism works. Uber drivers are responsible for both fixed and variable costs. The marginal revenue of a fare might be less than the marginal cost and the decision to accept a fare needs to be made by the driver. If Uber drivers do not have the ability to make revenue management decisions they cease to be contractors. Uber is misleading its drivers and the IRS by labeling its drivers as contractors and passing losses onto them.

If they refuse too many UberX fares, they'll be dumped. I'm sure Uber will argue that doesn't qualify as "forced," but it does to me.

They get marked as inactive which they accept, and go back to their normal business of being a private limo service for the wealthy at $135/hour.

Uber Black in Washington D.C. is basically exclusively run by private limo operators driving Escalades. Owners of recent model $70,000+ cars are not your typical Uber driver, and do have other sources of income.

Almost every Uber black driver I've taken has handed me their card and proceeded to upsell me on their services outside of Uber.

That's not true with Uber Black. If you refuse an Uber X fare as an Uber Black driver, you're just marked as inactive temporarily (as you've declined a legitimate customer when there were no Uber Black customers). You can mark yourself as active again and take fares, but you are not forced to take Uber X fares as an Uber Black driver.

If it's as seamless as you describe it to be, it's not an issue. An external source here https://pando.com/2014/09/04/uber-continues-to-screw-its-par... claims "Uber drivers are required to maintain a minimum 80 percent ride acceptance rate to remain in the company’s good graces – the best performers exceed 97 percent, the company tells its drivers. Ignore too many inbound ride requests when you are the closest vehicle and the result could be some combination of reprimand/probation, lost bonus income, or, in extreme cases, deactivation of the driver’s account".

I don't have any personal experience driving, would be nice to have a clarification on that.

This only applies to drivers that decline fares in their current rate class. Standard Ubers, Uber XLs, etc. Uber Black drivers that decline UberX fares when there are no Uber Black customers are simply marked as inactive. They can set themselves as active again and accept fares again almost immediately. If they continue to do so, then there is a wait time simply because they're not offering the service they're contracted to do and they're creating a longer wait time for Uber customers.

In that case I agree this is a non-issue. I was going from the comment earlier in the reply chain that said they'd get kicked out.

IANAL but my understanding is that this sort of are claiming Uber drivers are employees vs. contractors. If they are contractors then they should be able to refuse rides from a different class freely and without any sort of punishment.

I'm following till "without any sort of punishment", there I'm lost. If I have a contract with a gardener that is servicing me for watering my yard, but then I also need to have my lawn mowed. If I ask him about providing this service and he declines, what's wrong with finding another gardener willing to provide the service I need?

I agree with you but I wonder if a court might say it's more like hiring a gardener to water your flowers and then when he doesn't want to change your flat tyre you cancel the contract. At the end of the day though short term/casual contracts are cancellable. I don't think anyone wants a world where you can't get rid of contractors when you want or need to.

In that specific case he might still be ruled a contractor, sure.

But if you expanded the list of duties to be sufficiently large and indefinite ("gardening and whatever else I need"), then a court might rule that you have created an employment relationship and are responsible for providing various other benefits.

So it would seem to favor the "employee" classification if Uber had a long history of "oh, and you also need to take these other requests ... oh, and support spotify integration now ... oh and you have to auto-accept requests before you're done with the current."

What a bizarre way of looking at it. There's vastly more economy class passengers on a plane; but it doesn't mean that first or business passengers don't exist.

You are right that some drivers going bankrupt is how the market would correct, but forcing them to take uberx fares at below cost is a dreadful idea and definitely not free market economics. If anything, it's like a govt regulation that requires businesses to do some stuff below cost to still be in the game.

Im not disagreeing, can you explain why (or point me to reading material)? If customers aren't traveling business, won't the airline company either have to give away seats or keep them empty?

Uber is the plane, and drivers are the seats.

Uber works so that each seat (or pair, or row of seats) is operated by a single driver, mostly at their own personal risk – with the operator of the plane controlling a lot of the equation.

Normal airlines assume an aggregate risk of the entire demographic and seasonalities of air travel. If customers suddenly stop traveling business, the airline can do something about it (lower prices, improve service, better marketing, and so on). With the Uber model, there's not so much a single driver can do, but they carry a lot of the risk.

I'm not sure I follow as to why they have to accept Uber X requests. If there is less supply for Black cars, what's wrong with them sitting idle? What if they miss a request for a black car while they are driving their uber x customer around?

Forcing Black drivers to accept X requests invalidates any claims Uber has about their drivers being independent contractors instead of employees.

I don't think that is a good reason to say they are employees.

What happens when you look at it like this; A Uber driver must accept some % of request sent their way (any class), but if you want to be sent uber black request then you must have an appropriate car.

I feel like you are looking at it from a top down view, vs a bottom up view. I am not saying ether view is right or wrong. I just find it hard to follow the logic to how that makes them employees.

But I have struggled with the employee argument from the start, so I am a bit bias at this point.

A big part of why I think people feel the way you do is because the system is programmed, and automated. If i was a guy looking for contractors to do jobs for me naturally people who were more consistently available and that I have worked with in the past would get jobs before people who can only be available "whenever". The only difference is that was some sort of decision I made in my head vs a system who had thresholds programmed.

What I feel like uber has done is automated the process of hiring contractors for on the spot jobs. And somehow people don't like the automation of it, or the rules. I feel like the solution is simple. Don't drive for uber if you don't like the terms. Go get a taxi medallion if you want to make your own rules, or drive for one of the competitors.

> I just find it hard to follow the logic to how that makes them employees.

The IRS has guidelines: http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/appx_d_irs_ic_test.html

Arguments for drivers as employees:

Behavioral Control 1a (the relevant argument I am making), 1b (Black drivers have specific types of cars), 1f

Type of Relationship 11

> What I feel like uber has done is automated the process of hiring contractors for on the spot jobs.

That is not true because Uber dictates the pricing. In fact you as the passenger are not hiring the contractor. If you look at it from a per-ride-transaction perspective it is actually one more reason why Uber drivers are employees (Financial Control 7, Uber limits the extent to which a driver can realize a profit on an individual ride).

Looking at Uber drivers as being contracted by the passengers does not make sense.

All good points. Thanks. I had not considered that way before.

I think 1a and 1f are the strongests points. I do feel 1b is a bit of a stretch. I don't think somebody becomes an employee because they require you to use a hammer and not a rock to push nails into wood when building a house. While that is not the best analogy I think you should be able to expect the contractor to show up to work with the right tools to do the job.

I would really like to see a system that was more like a real time Angie's list. In such when ride request came in drivers made bids, and requesters could pick from the bids. The bids might also have information about distance from pickup location (or expected pickup ETA, along with price). Maybe have a default setting to pick lowest bidder and shortest ETA. But other things like car styles or types could be part of the system too.

In any case thank you for your reply. You have given me some things to think about.

> I don't think somebody becomes an employee because they require you to use a hammer and not a rock to push nails into wood when building a house. While that is not the best analogy I think you should be able to expect the contractor to show up to work with the right tools to do the job.

This is actually a relevant distinction for the building trades. A contractor will have their own nail gun with a brand-specific feeding system, or might even choose to use an impact driver in certain circumstances. When a construction firm requires all its subcontractors to have a particular model of nail gun that would be an argument for them being employees.

> I would really like to see a system that was more like a real time Angie's list. In such when ride request came in drivers made bids, and requesters could pick from the bids. The bids might also have information about distance from pickup location (or expected pickup ETA, along with price). Maybe have a default setting to pick lowest bidder and shortest ETA. But other things like car styles or types could be part of the system too.

This was how a lot of people expected Internet commerce to work in the early 1990s - the research term for it was agents/multi-agent systems. The passenger would have their agent put out a call for bids for a ride from one location to another. The driver's agents would reply with bids and the passenger agent would take the lowest one. The driver's agent would base the bid on some function that could take into account things like distance, predicted driving time based on current traffic conditions, predicted mileage cost based on MPG estimates based on data from the car's OBDII sensor data, etc.

That would be a market system. Uber and Lyft are a duopoly from the point of view of passengers and monopsonies from the point of view of drivers.

I think this is where the crux of the disagreement is. They can decline fares for UberX requests and I don't think it counts against them. Normal Uber drivers will get kicked off the system if they decline too many fares but I don't think that applies to Uber Black drivers that get shifted to UberX.

Here's a comparison. With advertisement sales, often companies will say you must provide at least X impressions, even if we won't guarantee premium pricing for you.

Sometimes, maybe even most of the time, you'll get a high CPM (like Uber Black). Sometimes you'll get a low CPM (compare this to Uber X). Regardless, you have to do X amount of business with them or else they drop you.

Sometimes this means taking higher quality traffic (thus potentially higher CPM), and funnelling it to a certain advertiser at a lower rate simply to maintain your impression level.

That doesn't make web site owners, employees of ad companies even if they're solely dependant on a single ad company for their livelihood.

Well, it's basically that "Uber Black" no longer exists as a distinct service. That has screwed drivers. But still, that was a risk they took.

UberBlack drivers never signed up to accept UberX fares. That wasn't part of the contract, which is why so many feel cheated, an equivalent of a cable company selling you a promotional $19.99 rate and then upping it to $79.99 once you bought the equipment.

> To bring supply back in line with demand, some drivers who used to drive Uber Black should either leave or downgrade

Sure, or some passengers who used to want a cheaper UberX but find it unavailable should either resort to alternative methods or upgrade to UberBlack - market equilibrium can be found in either direction.

But even so, what's the point in pretending that fares aren't going down?