This is my personal peeve with Uber that drives me nuts. When Uber first came out, the wait was typically a bit longer, but they were honest and upfront about the wait. I had no problem with that. If the wait was 15 minutes, I might order a beer and enjoy the wait at the bar. Or if I am leaving from home, enjoy my couch as opposed to standing outside my building's lobby.

I feel like they bait you now by always saying a car is 2-3 minutes away. Then that wait turns to 8, which turns into 8 minutes where the car just sits at an intersection, then it starts counting down. It infuriates me, but hearing about the rest of their business practices, I guess its not surprising. I have adjusted my behavior by not cutting whatever I was doing short until they are a block or two away, but it just makes for such a worse experience- my original pitch to my friends when Uber was new was "now you can have a beer inside the bar and let the cab come to you instead of going outside and fighting for a cab." Its definitely better, but I now feel like I am fighting with the app/algorithm...

It is your prerogative as a consumer to check multiple car hailing apps and pick the one that suits you best.

* Much lower quality cars (torn seats, smelly, old, safety issues...no one looks good showing up to a date in a Cab).

* Much lower quality drivers (some smoke openly, talk on the phone loudly, don't listen to you, take longer routes than necessary, etc)

* No accountability for service

* No trip data for safety reasons

* No handy log of all your recent trips

* More expensive + tip required

* Sometimes will pester you to be cash-only (even though the credit card machine works, they'll just lie to you)

* Ignore the law and will refuse to give you a ride if you're going to some specific destinations where they don't want to go.

I can go on and on. This is in most American cities. I will not take cabs even if they are cheaper.

Cabs deserve to be eliminated as a transportation option.

Cabs:

* Cars regulated by state.

* Usually cheaper than Uber rides (in my experience always).

* Know the city like the back of their hand.

* Can file a complaint directly with the state or cab company.

* Accountable through a taxi license.

* Won't defraud you with bogus cleaning fees.

Uber:

* Been in two minor car accidents due to driver switching between Waze and GMaps to find the route or just constantly fiddling with their phone.

* Had an Uber driver show up in a car that looked nearly totaled. Passenger side door was nonfunctional due to damage.

* Poorly maintained cars operated around the clock by operators than get virtually no sleep due to an unlivable wage.

* Had a driver travel at high speeds in poor conditions while talking about how they only get a couple of hours a sleep a night and manipulating their phone.

* Many drivers clearly living in their car, undergarments and clothes on front passenger seat.

* Uncomfortably hit on my girlfriend 100% of the time if she is alone.

* Driver complaints often ignored / go into the corporate void.

This is why we don't trust ancedata.

For all the issues you had with Uber or Lyft. You can contact them and they'll refund you your ride. They've refunded my ride every time something bad has happened.

Cab driver hits on your girlfriend? Good luck doing anything about it.

Same situation happens in a Lyft or Uber? You get your money back and the driver's rating gets lowered or they get kicked off the platform and you get unmatched permanently from that driver in the marketplace.

Cab driver takes a selfish route? Good luck proving it.

Uber driver takes a bad route? It's logged, and easily reportable. You'll get your money back.

Uber/Lyft drivers also commonly have chargers, water bottles, and other amenities and are generally accommodating because they know their rating matters. Cab drivers don't care at all.

I've even had cab dispatchers promise a cab will be at my house at X time, and I've had several drivers just not show up with no notice, no warning, nothing. Uber driver cancels? I know immediately.

As a customer, it's a far superior experience in nearly every way - even in cases when things go wrong. I'll pay more every time to take Uber/Lyft over a Cab, and so will my 20s/30s friend group - we'll do it happily because the world is changing and Uber/Lyft are more in line with what we expect from a car service in 2018.

Not only that - it's a similar experience I can get in LA as in NYC as in SF as in my small hometown. They all have Uber/Lyft and I can call the services from any curb at any time right through my smartphone and it works reliably with similar systems of accountability and trip reporting. It makes business travel and expensing dead easy.

The service is very different though:

1. The driver often knows the best way to get to my place and all I have to do is give my address.

2. The driver knows how to drive in the city.

3. I'm rarely if ever forced into a conversation I don't want to have.

I find the whole thing so much more pleasant.

Really? I've never tipped a cab, though I rarely use them. What happens when you don't tip?

Huh?? The #1 reason I use ride-sharing apps is because I have no idea what I'll be paying for a cab until the ride is over.

What about Lyft?

> I tried to book a trip to the airport for my inlaws using both my account and my wife's account. She rarely uses Uber, and hers showed a 10-15% cheaper rate. Do they think we're stupid? They targetted 'smart' people for using ride sharing as opposed to taxis, and now they try to play us.

> Let's not even get started about dark UX patterns. It's hard to see peak rates now, and unless you get a bad gut feeling, you wouldn't know you're currently paying more than a cab rate.

> ...

> The same ride I used to pay $8 for is sometimes $25-32 now. Let's be honest, if anything better came along, I wouldn't look back.

The world now is rediscovering the valid motivations for the old taxicab regulations that so many were claiming were holding "innovation" back.

Uber's prices were so low mainly because they were using VC money to try bankrupt traditional taxi companies. Once the subsidies run out, Uber will probably at least as expensive as traditional cabs, if not more so, but with consumer-hostile pricing tricks that were once illegal.

Ride-hailing takes an incredible toll on cars, and with Uber pushing more costs into drivers that might otherwise be borne by the taxi company, there was no way the original standards of cleanliness would last forever. It all regresses eventually to “minimum amount of maintenance that people will still accept” and so Uber and taxis will be basically indistinguishable given a few more years. Hired cars are a commodity, after all, and this is what always happens to commodities.

That still gives me a much better experience than dealing with their bullshit.

No idea how strict Miami is on this stuff but I didn't really have time to dig into regulations and make phone calls 2 hours before a wedding while I've got some asshole shouting at me and being aggressive. I remember joking to myself "great, my phones dead so I can't Lyft, bet I'll have a great cab experience."

That was the last time I ever took a cab.

edit: Seems pervasive; https://www.yelp.com/biz/crown-taxi-miami

Just out of curiosity, does DC limit the number of cab drivers?

At some point, they'll all wean drivers out of subsidies, and cheap fares will see cheap cars on average.

Yes, it seems routine and unremarkable at this point to note that Uber continues to have a frightening contempt for its users and that this has not changed in a meaningful way after the CEO swap.