Anyone who has taken a black cab should immediately understand the hypocrisy motivating this decision. The user experience is absolutely horrendous and there's no good tracking system to make black cab drivers accountable. In short, as everyone knows, it is just another artificial monopoly enshrined into law by regulators.
A good thing is that same regulators are losing lots of credibility. For decades they could pretend they were acting on basis of consumer protection. Now it is clear they aren't. People love Uber (not necessarily applies in the US anymore) because the experience is amazing at decent prices. Even in a city with a high density public transportation system like Paris, you are always happy to have that option in case it is past 1:00am or you're in a hurry.
I've had cab drivers refuse to drive me to certain parts of London because it's inconvenient for them.
They are also really expensive.
1. When you need one at about 10pm in the City, and stand on the street corner for ages watching dozens of them go by with their lights off and no passengers.
2. When you are less than 1/2 a mile north of the Thames, and the cabbie refuses the ride because he 'doesn't go south of the river, mate'
3. Same as #2 but 'doesn't go north of the river, mate'
4. Same as #2 and #3 but for inside/outside the north/south circular ringroad.
5. Deliberately ignoring your route request, and then snarles the cab up in non-moving traffic all while the meter is still running (Black Cabs charge by time, not distance).
For me it is not 'let's grab an Uber', it is 'drat, missed the last train, where and when do I get the night bus?'
Because traffic is considerably lighter at night the bus goes at a good speed and during the day the bus has its own lane, one which Uber can't be in.
I appreciate that if you have some very important clients arriving then you want to book them a cab, plus there are plenty of other reasons to get a cab, however, TfL is putting together a transport system for everyone, not just people stuck in their apps.
that's incomplete.
https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/taxis-and-minicabs/taxi-fares/tarif...
> The meter automatically adds a charge based on time for any part of a taxi journey when the speed drops below 10.4mph.
Sounds like you're exceptionally unlucky.
Basically, it comes down to lack of serious customer support and accountability system. Setting new rules from top to bottom in a legacy industry that has decades of industry malpractice under its belt cannot be effective if you aren't able to enforce those rules.
Report them, by taxi license number (displayed on a plate in the passenger area). Both those things are rare and taken seriously, but the authorities can't do anything if they aren't told.
I'm not paying money to increase it.
I improve services by voting with my wallet, which black cabs are trying to take away from the consumer.
A customer should not HAVE to report people for this shit. It should just work. And if it doesn't, then I am using a different service.
The last point I won't disagree with; Uber is definitely cheaper, qualitatively so, such that you'd consider it for trips that you'd never take a black cab for.
I just want to know if Uber drivers can average the same income as cabbies working the same hours. In New Zealand, several Uber drivers use to be cabbies and switched from Wellington Combined because they earned more money with Uber. That was years ago and I'm curious if that's still the case or if those drivers have switched back. In Berlin, the Uber app hails a regular taxi driver that's under standard taxi regulations from the city, so there it's more just a billing system.
Everywhere else I've taken Lyft/Uber, the drivers never started out in taxis. It's turning the taxi industry into a "gig economy" I realize a lot of people got their start in new cities as taxi drivers; immigrants from generations back. Things are changing. It's not good or bad, just different.
The biggest concern is Uber as a company. Most of the rides I've mentioned I've taken with others. I prefer public transport when possible, Lyft when I have to. For a while on HN, ever week was another post: Greyball, the Hell map, the two harassment blog posts, anti-union efforts against drivers, hiring Eric Holder for damage control, the continuing Google/Waymo self driving tech court case, etc.
Are there any recent posts on how much drivers earn? I've heard it's going down each year. Is it worth it to lose an entire career path for some people for cheaper rides?
I have no data, but my prior based on conversations in London is "no way". Uber pays similarly to minicabs --- minimum wage-ish when car maintenance is accounted for. Pre-Uber, I heard cabbies made £40k-£60k pretty steadily.
(I suspect they make £60k but they don't declare anywhere near that)
that said, black cabs get more and more unreliable the further away from central London you are.
Yes, during the rush hours they are faster than ubers (mostly because they have priviledged access to bus lanes etc). But catching a black cab at night is almost impossible.
Also some of my friends regularly get ignored by black cabs when they try to hail it.
Black cabs are far from a monopoly, and Uber are far from the only alternative.
The BBC article is a bit light on details. Do you have a link where I can read the detailed license revocation reasons so I can make my own judgement?
I saw the Tfl's statement which only had four abstract bullet points. What did they ask about Greyball and what was answered? Which unreported crimes and were there cover-up attempts by the company?
In general, one might expect a level of detailed transparency in these rulings lest it's seen as a foregone conclusion retroactively finding reasons. Is there a commission report I can read or a committee hearing I can watch?
If there isn't enough already published then you could consider submitting an FOI yourself.
--edit-- This may be interesting and has various links to rulings by the London Assembly, and other bits and pieces:
https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/assembly/chair-of-t...
If anyone has a link to the actual investigation/details, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise, I'll keep digging and if I find it I'll post it.
That said I used to live in Streatham in the mid 00s, and sure, the transport situation wasn't great. There was choice back then, but between terrible or worse.
Sure, but that doesn't exist in the majority of cities. The user experience is why I use Uber.
And yeah, I'm a Londoner, don't really feel the need for Uber to exist in my area.
Here's an interview with a woman who got uber drivers prosecuted: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lhl
Here's another article about the same woman: http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/19/blind-woman-repeatedly-turned-...
A different case: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-30523449
And another: http://metro.co.uk/2011/02/28/blind-yvonne-saint-john-guide-...
Uber is far from unique in refusing service dogs or wheelchairs. It seems the rules are more clearly explained to regulated taxis than they are to less regulated minicabs.
It’s been two years since Uber launched and they still haven’t really taken off, mainly because they are a lot more expensive than the other apps and don’t have as many cars. Although Uber’s cars are a bit nicer (executive car vs 10yo Prius), people here are cost sensitive so that isn’t really a selling point.
User experience is why I avoid Uber. I've only used ride hailing services at airports, and Uber drivers tended to be very aggressive on the roads compared to Lyft or regular cab drivers. I had one driver miss an exit on a freeway, and then proceed to REVERSE on the freeway to get back to the exit. That about sealed it for me with Uber.
I still prefer Lyft and haven't had big problems in other cities. But it's worth mentioning.
Do you buy from Amazon? Essentially the same thing, and I for one use it regularly. Like you, I worried for a while about a monopoly, but I think capitalism will pan out.
Amazon and any other online retailer that can successfully provide massive selection, good product review system, and reliable and fast home delivery will drive a change in the landscape of retail locally. This will eventually lead to smaller local physical stores through agreements with those retailers where the most popular items are stocked.
(The exception for the short-term will be supermarkets. And you've already seen the attempts at transformation; many generic retailers are half-grocery store now. That's what they will become in full, if they survive. But, home delivery will take that over also, eventually.)
Uber had poor decisions made, but along with Lyft in the US, Mytaxi in the UK, etc.- these are the "early Amazons" of the transportation business. The old method that Taxi services use is no longer relevant now that anyone can find directions easily. London is somewhat unique in that some of its cab drivers are known worldwide as those that have incredible memories, and that's great, but they are the typewriters of the future- used by some, but not by most. All of the dispatch and directions have been automated.
It's amazing how those finicky card readers miraculously start working when you say 'oh well, too bad I guess' and step out of the car!
Drivers have still pulled the ""my reader doesn't work" on friends.
The requirement for it to always be available is a new one - it was introduced in recent months. So if your experience pre-date that, that behaviour may have changed.
If it hasn't you absolutely 100% need to report the driver to TfL.
Not true. Alternatively, you can have competition and consumer choice which can also make it better for everybody. Not everyone wants to be a squeaky wheel on these things, nor should they be forced to.
All the reporting in the world didn’t help my black friend hail a yellow New York City taxi. You know what did ? Uber exerting competitive pressure on the Taxi & Limousine Commission and its drivers.
The easier way is to use a service that doesn't suck, and let the services that DO suck go out of business.
There was one restaurant recently that didn't have one, and we almost freaked out about it.
"You can tip taxi drivers as much as you like, but most people round up to the nearest pound."
On the other hand, if I were to go with a reasonably sized group of people, had to get a table big enough for the lot of us, have people with dietary requirements or order cocktails or who otherwise make many demands of the staff... it's worth tipping as we're a pain in the ass, basically. And many restaurants automatically add a service charge in that case anyway.
Some places accept tips, and perhaps in some you should. The vast vast vast majority don't expect them as par for the course.
Ok, but I still think restaurant = tip expected. But hey, you are free to tip/not tip as you see fit.
Uber, it's worth pointing out, does not currently allow for tipping either, I believe.
That's when I stopped using black cabs.
All this central planning is annoying me a lot these days
Failure to properly check medical certifications: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1897962/investigation-reveals-...
Failure to follow up DBS (criminal records) checks (can't find an article about that one).
Use of Greyball to dodge regulators checking on the service: https://www.ft.com/content/2ab3c0e8-0076-11e7-96f8-3700c5664... (not specific to London but they're being sued all over the place for it)
TfL's statement about the ban - https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2017/septem...
[0] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/over-400-london-cab-dr...
That would include Uber drivers.
> I prefer knowing the name and track record of my driver
You know their name, but their track record? You can see previous ratings, but that's not exactly going to include "1*, driver sexually assaulted me" is it?
And failure to properly conduct DBS checks is one of the four reasons given by TfL for suspending Uber's license.
I can't see why doctors forging documents for people that they later use to become drivers is anything to do with Uber. The article even says those doctors did the same for drivers applying to other minicab companies.
A click on the subject tag gives me some recent political criticism from the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on taxis (who knew such a thing existed?) -
"It stands accused by the police of failing to properly handle serious allegations of rape and sexual assault of passengers.
It had to be dragged through the courts to recognise its responsibility to provide even the most basic rights and protections to Uber drivers. Its business model is based on saturating London's taxi and private hire market to drive its competition off the road."
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/vv598m/uber-drivers-a...
You're not just supposed to blindly reprint things people say.
Admittedly everyone does it anyways, but still.
They did not reproduce what he said as though the content of his statement was factual - they reproduced it to report what he had said.
To illustrate the point further, they had his quote:
> Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: "I fully support TfL's decision - it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety and security."
and then several paragraphs later they had this from an Uber driver:
> But one driver with Uber in London said: "I don't think it is a fair decision. Uber offers a flexible schedule, and a weekly income."
The also reported on statements by "Fred Jones, head of cities for Uber across the UK and Ireland", and "Uber's general manager in London Tom Elvidge".
Reporting on the statements of a range of parties interested in a particular dispute is perfectly reasonable journalism, and should not be compared to opinion-led journalism where the statements of favourable individuals are rewritten as though they were facts.
To clarify, I'm not claiming that the BBC as an institution is devoid of opinion-led journalism, I just don't think that demanding that journalists substantiate the claims of interested parties (as O.P. did) is very reasonable.
Who said anything about them seeking to become a worldwide cab monopoly?
They are a cab company, expanding globally. Any other company can do that too, if they want.
They behave as if they are attempting this, IMHO.
>> They are a cab company
I believe, depending on which way the wind was blowing, they might dispute this. Their argument is that they are not a cab company, merely a service for connecting drivers and potential passengers. This is how they avoid pesky things like employment laws.
>> Any other company can do that too, if they want.
Few others have the access to VC money that Uber do - I would consider this reliance on an absolute ton of investment, which allows them to operate at the prices they do, to be something of a market distortion.
Every rational company should behave as if they're attempting to become a monopoly, this is a completely meaningless point to argue either way.
I don't personally believe either to be true, and I do believe there's a very real difference between out-competing the competition and using a ton of VC money to undercut them, or skirting rules and regulations that may add cost.
Not really, there are lots of private-hire firms in London.
>> Are you seriously siding with "banning potential monopoly" to protect an entrenched centuries old monopoly.
Nope. That's a wilful misreading of what I've been posting and I'm not sure it warrants much response. I'm siding with protecting a diverse market from an unethical company who appear to be bending the rules and sinking a ton of investor money into distorting the market in an effort to capture it.
If thats your definition of monopoly, then UBER is also not a monopoly. Those still exist and can continue to exist.
> I'm siding with protecting a diverse market
You are not siding with protecting a diverse market because you are eliminating an option. Its the exact opposite direction. The rules are written by the same people that invented taxicabs. If the rules are removed, UBER would not be bending any rules. Its a problem created exclusively by the government, and uber drivers and passengers are being disregarded. This is what people want, and you are advocating for restricting those people in favor of another.
To help one side, you are advocating the attack of another one. That is not an even standing.
The rules are much more than there to protect just black cabs, they are there to protect consumers and workers too.
Uber are a set of problems all to themselves, and have only their own attitudes and practices to blame.
I am not advocating helping any one 'side', and to paint my arguments that way is disingenuous.
Some people aren't primarily motivated by power and profit.
Right, but whatever their target demographic is, they're still going to want to have an exclusive stake in it. I'm not saying that Taco Bell can/should seek to monopolize all food.
Some independent stores simply aren't interested in being the monopoly in their local area for their particular product. Sometimes they just run the business because its a product they enjoy and running their own business is preferable to being an employee for someone else.
Another example of businesses not run like monopolies is with consumables like fast food. You might have a successful fish and chip shop, Chinese or Indian take-away. Most UK towns will have multiple different independent restaurants but you seldom see these restaurants open up more shops in town, or even in other towns. Yet there is clearly a demand for good take-aways.
pbhjpbhj's comment implies that by addressing a niche market, you would avoid the drive to monopolize. I'm arguing that if you are addressing a niche market, you are working to monopolize that market, and you don't have to monopolize the whole market of similar services to be a monopoly. For example, Microsoft has a monopoly (in this case a government one) on producing Microsoft Windows, but Microsoft Windows is not the only PC operating system.
Similarly, you could monopolize a certain demographic. For example, Microsoft has an effective monopoly in PC operating systems when it comes to government administration workstations in most countries.
That's pretty much what a monopoly is, and even in your niche, not everyone wants to be a monopoly.
I have a friend who runs a small craft beer bar. Another craft beer bar is going to open two doors down. To him this is great - the area becomes known for craft beer and more people come along. There is no monopoly there.
>> For example, Microsoft has a monopoly (in this case a government one) on producing Microsoft Windows, but Microsoft Windows is not the only PC operating system.
But they tried to make it that way, and came close for a while. That's the time period they had various anti-competition lawsuits aimed at them.
This is what most people are talking about when they are talking about monopolies, and it's clear that not every business aims to be one.
Yes, there is a qualitative difference here.
Uber really can't just put the entire world out of business.
Undercutting competition just meana VC funded cheap rides for consumers.
Business wasn't always like this, and doesn't have to be either.
Craft brewing is almost defined by a premium on variety, and that marketable variety creates an highly recursive system of market segmentation. Since flavour/atmosphere/taste has so many facets, and there is so much variance in terms of "customer success", all product categories which are differentiated by flavour and/or atmosphere and/or taste tend to multiply markets rather than consolidating them. Coca-Cola, for example, could be seen to have no competition at one level (the market for Coca-Cola specifically), and enormous competition (the market for all beverages). Legal restrictions on transportation and processing of raw coca leaf, and on marketing products as "Coca-Cola", help the Coca-Cola company retain a monopoly on Coca-Cola specifically.
I think everyone who looked at them, for the past 3 years or so. It's been plainly visible that they're a) reaching globally, and b) not afraid of using any means necessary, including illegal ones, to destroy their competition - both from the taxi world and other Uber-like companies.
Their former CEO. And not just a cab monopoly, but a car monopoly, period.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/16/technology/uber-travis-kalan...
Just look at Lyft, they don't have the bankroll of Uber to play so it's very hard to compete on the global scale when your competitor is basically playing a price dumping scheme with investors' money.
Conveniently, a few minutes going through public financial statements disproves that outlandish, comical premise.
3M, McDonald's, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, AT&T, Delta, UPS, Disney, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Honeywell, Intel, Walgreens, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Boeing, Visa, Comcast, Altria, Exxon, Chevron, Nike, Honeywell, Intel, Merck, Pfizer, Cisco, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, Caterpillar, etc.
They're all going to be very upset to discover the 20-35% tax rates they've been paying on their earnings, they could easily have avoided by just squirreling it away in the Caribbean.
One could also do a few minutes of research:
"The average effective tax rate among S&P companies that had posted calendar fourth-quarter results as of Friday was 24.11 percent"
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/13/tax-cuts-sp-500-may-not-get-...
So what US companies tend to do is incorporate subsidiaries in tax friendly locales like the Caribbean (Ireland is also popular) to avoid paying US corporate taxes on this money.
It's quite common.
The question in a discussion of tax avoidance, of course, is 24.11% of what.
The transparency and accountability that Uber brought has been preferred by everyone I know, and people are voting with their dollars.
Before Uber, I already avoided taxis as much as I could, only taking a couple per year.
The notion that people will be kind and nice because of social norms or "plain decency" or something is sentimental hogwash. People behave well when the system rewards them for doing so and penalises them for not.
Then why not just let them compete?
Yes, I pay with credit card 9/10 times and get a receipt. I doubt any of these companies are big enough to have offshore companies to route their income through.
"Then why not just let them compete?"
They do. There's quite big competition in my city among public transport (city owned), many local taxi companies, private taxi drivers and Uber. Competition is quite fierce and costumers can choose freely whatever they prefer. I prefer taxi, I call taxi, some of my friends prefer Uber - they call Uber. What other competition do you have in mind?
You can exercise your opinion by not taking an Uber. Why would you ban a third person from using uber?
The competition you describe is exactly what's needed, but that's not always the competition that's allowed.
You don't have to use their service
Fact is, Uber is running an unsustainable business in a lot of markets to gain market share. It's anticompetitive business practice. Free market fanboys will argue that the issue will fix itself after Uber raises prices - thus allowing more healthy competition, but this takes time. Not everyone can drive or rely on public transportation. In modern society, transport is a utility, and to act like people can simply "not use" a taxi service is ridiculous.
Yup, by which time the current players may well have been driven out by the undercutting. Not really a sign of 'healthy' competition.
The "issue" will likely fix itself by uber going under and losing all of its investors their money in a spectacular and richly deserved hubristic implosion.
What uber is attempting has been managed before (e.g. the 'bus wars') but it's unlikely they will achieve a sustainable monopoly.
The Taxi business in every city is a 'monopoly'. Shares in this 'rent seeking entity' are bought by owning 'medallions'.
It's hypocritical that a cabal of local medallion owning rent-seekers want to attack Uber for their 'monopolistic' practices.
The cab drivers who don't own medallions aren't getting much out of it.
Uber is not a monopoly, nor has it been demonstrated that their drivers are 'more unsafe' than other drivers.
Love or loathe Uber - this is a political move - and it's scary. A government can come along and arbitrarily decide they 'don't like you because you're foreign' or whatever and ban you from doing business?
If London wants to make 'cabs outside of those holding medallions' illegal, I would disagree with it, but it would be fair at least.
It seems that there is room for competition in London in terms of taxi services.
40 000 people are going to be out of a job - let's say 1/2 are full time - that's 20 000 jobs.
Literally, a US 'startup' creates 20 000 jobs for people in London alone using tech - and the Mayor squashes it?
'We don't want jobs' is the essence of his argument.
It would seem there's quite a lot of rent-seeking in the Black-cab business if London can sustain an additional 20K full time drivers, that can't be ignored.
This is just not true, and the medallion system doesn't seem to exist outside of the US.
The rest of your post is just as much nonsense. There's a whole list of reasons Uber are having this happen, and none of it's political.
Oh, and according to Uber, they aren't jobs - or else they'd have to comply with employment law, something else they'd rather avoid.
Just 'let them eat cake' then?
This is really quite insulting to the 20 000 - 40 000 people who are about to lose their source of income - most of them at the lower end of the economic scale - and the millions of users of Uber for whom Black cabs are just too expensive, because medallions or not - the system is de-facto a controlled economy.
I highly doubt that a fairly operationally competent entity such as Uber would simply fail to supply some information or adhere to some basic regs when the writing was clearly on the wall that they needed to do so or lose their license.
This from the BBC: "But a wave of bad publicity about its corporate culture, its lax attitude to checks on its drivers and its treatment of this freelance army seems to have spurred TfL into action." - i.e. a populist action.
“Uber and Volvo put $300M into building self-driving cars” doesn’t imply that Uber really care about their drivers either.
Yet that's exactly what has happened in multiple markets now. Uber have a history of pulling this stuff.
--edit-- and now I'm back at a real keyboard:
>> This is really quite insulting to the 20 000 - 40 000 people who are about to lose their source of income
So by that logic we should allow any company to continue to operate, regardless of how badly behaved?
I don't think this argument has much merit, especially when unemployment is at a record low and there is clearly a lot of appetite for services in this sector.
>> i.e. a populist action.
Which must mean it's wrong, obviously? That couldn't be a wave of information coming to light about how bad they are, and how they are not in line with regulations?
But they are not stupid.
If they were given only a '4 month extension' in London - and told to 'comply' with certain things - this is a very direct 'shot across the bow'.
Uber creeped into markets 'under the radar' - but when the regulators are directly holding your business hostage - and are saying point-blank: 'do these things or no permit' - it's time to believe them.
Uber is not stupid. They know the difference between 'being under the radar' - and when things are 'for real'. They can ignore city councillors here and there, but this was not that.
Uber is, if anything operationally competent. They'd have had a legal team, strategy sessions etc. on this. It's London - maybe their #2 largest market globally (or at least top 5) - so they're not going to screw around on this.
If Uber was definitely continuing to cheat - and if they were definitely non-compliant, and there were in fact 'a lot of rapes' or whatever with Uber ... then I have no problem with them being banned.
But I believe this is a hugely political move - irrespective of what Uber was and was not.
European regulators from bottom-to-top have been attacking American companies with special regulations.
Apple had to pay a 'magical' $25B tax bill. EU regulators are now trying to create special 'google' and 'Facebook' taxes. They want Uber off their turf.
It's politics and geopolitics as much as anything. And there is a strong whiff of economic protectionism.
It's entirely possible that Uber was just breaking all the rules - but it would also be very naive to not see the geopolitical interplay here.
It's how 100% of international business works. There's no such thing as 'free trade' in reality.
We have licenses in argentina which are basically the same. While the taxi drivers that are unionized flipped out cars and threw stones at Uber offices down here, they claimed Uber wasnt safe.
At least 50% of taxis in argentina dont have working seatbelts.
This is very far from my understanding, most people I know use Uber quite regularly.
I know nobody that uses them in Southampton, though they are here.
Fair point.
Does that mean that you can only order for a cab via an app? Or are apps an alternative?
Well, apps are my primary way of ordering cabs now, because I can set the pick-up and drop-off precisely by map, and track the vehicle before it arrives etc.
But they still have their phone lines too.
I don't want to give any business to a company that are seeking to become a worldwide cab monopoly, and squirrel away any profits to the US. We have a perfectly healthy cab ecosystem in my city, app-driven and with fare competition and city regulation. Which I suppose is why Uber, though present, hasn't really taken off here.
That said, talk of profits may be a little early and AFAICT they're losing money by the fistful. Which kinda says that they're engaging in some dodgy market distortion to me...