Virtually all of the cab companies still around now have mobile apps and many of them have all the features that Uber/Lyft have (card payment via app, car-tracking, etc).
It's still a win for the consumer, even if you're using old school cab companies.
(1) BMW and Daimler will invest $1B in their new joint venture (https://www.your-now.com/) that brings their mobility services under one roof.
However, I also have to acknowledge that I think I'm an outlier, because I have many friends (most of whom could easily afford it) who complain about prices every time this topic comes up. I think that as a society we'd be better off if people could truly internalize the truth of "you get what you pay for," and stop buying solely based on price, but that's not the world we live in.
As for a ~30 second call resulting in a success story, that does sound pretty good indeed.
Let me tell you what my decades of taxi ordering experience in Estonia looks like. I call a taxi company [1], wait about a minute, nobody even picks up the phone. I try another company. I finally get someone to pick up, I tell them where I am, and they proceed to tell me that they have no taxis available. I have to call a new company. Eventually when the 5th company promises to send a taxi, there's a greater than 10% chance that they never show up. Sometimes I call the taxi company and they say the driver went on a break. Other times they say the driver picked up someone else on the way to my location. Sometimes the company has no clue whatsoever why the taxi didn't arrive.
With this old system, whenever I was in a rush, the most time-optimal plan was to run to the closest taxi stop and physically find a taxi.
The arrival of Uber & friends has mostly removed this nonsense. It's all so much more reliable. Although not 100%, sometimes when I'm ordering from a suburb, the driver will call me and ask if I'm willing to pay extra in cash for them to come out. If I say no, they cancel the order.
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[1] All these calls are to reasonably priced taxi companies, similar to Uber pricing. If I were willing to pay 3x price, there are plenty of premium taxi companies who will come and roll out the red carpet in exchange for your wallet.
I don't mind cash but I rarely have it on me.
Baloney. The market size of people willing to pay taxi rates for transportation is much smaller that the market sizes currently implied by Uber and Lyft's valuation. Before Uber and Lyft, most people I know would only take taxis very occasionally, for special occasions or emergencies. Once Uber and Lyft started offering such good rates they would use ride sharing much more often.
Consider all the places where you needed a taxi but wouldnt know how to hail one -- Uber/Lyft expanded the market here.
I was recently in Taiwan and needed a ride, but could not describe the address to a driver who did not speak English. Uber to the rescue -- again the market got expanded.
It isnt all about cost.
Not having to deal with (local) cash or a constantly “broken” credit card machine are also pluses.
Then you may require the actual receipt for your expense. Sometimes the Corp wants more than a credit card invoice for their accounting.
The only place I've seen acceptance be a problem is San Francisco (although I've certainly heard it's a problem in other American cities). I can't speak to other cities but in San Francisco the cabbies are required to pay pretty hefty fees for credit card usage. But Uber and Lyft take a big chunk of the pie and leave no cash option so there's that.
I've been to a couple cities where credit cards were not accepted as a general rule (cabbies didn't even have the equipment). But in cities where I've used a card I've asked and generally been told they'd never do anything that ridiculous. Of course I typically have a strong preference for public transit so cab rides are the exception rather than the rule for me.
As for accounting, merchants already get a category assigned to them by their credit card processor. Generally there's enough specificity that something like a few cab rides shouldn't need much more clarification (although receipts may be required if you cross a threshold or exhibit some suspicious pattern).
Now Uber and Lyft has made it harder to embezzle from my job :(
The only time I've been in a situation where I needed to take a taxi but didn't speak a common language was in Paris. I simply showed the driver the address as written and he got us there with no problems whatsoever. Granted Paris is pretty easy that way as rides (both taxi and Uber) from the airport are fixed price.
Alternatively I bet just pulling up the location on a mapping app would be enough. Of course in most countries I've been to, the public transit infrastructure was good enough that I never wanted to bother with a taxi of any sort.
Kinda sucks to see as I think the idea of the service is good.
Even if rates went up to what cabs were (still cheaper in SF in my experience), I wouldn't switch back to cabs. I'd still user Uber/Lyft for the convenience and higher quality product.
Are those stories very uncommon, or does the cab market in SF etc. manage to be even less quality?
Round here, a cab is at worst an 8 year old Toyota Prius, at best a new Mercedes or a Tesla, and the cab companies all have apps that let you book rides and see where the car picking you up is right now.
Only until Uber and Lyft run out of cash (a few more quarters based on cash on hand), at which point taxi fares will rise to properly reflect the actual cost of the service.
People will choose a combination of walking, public transit, traditional cab companies, and perhaps an e-scooter and/or bicycle. We lived before Uber and Lyft, we'll live after them. Fun experiment while it lasted.
It is not an understatement to say that I hate traditional taxis. I hate the terrible service. I hate having them refuse fares based on where I'm going. I hate calling to schedule a pickup in advance and the driver just not bothering to show up. I hate being pressured to pay in cash instead of credit card and having them berate and insult me when I insist on card. I hate having to be on alert to see if they're taking a deliberately longer route or running up the meter. I hate the verbal and sexual harassment they have doled out to me and my friends with no consequences, because there is absolutely nothing in their business model that provides them any incentive to treat their customers with courtesy and respect.
I want to see taxis crash and burn, I want to see them fail, I want to see them removed from my experience on this earth. I don't think I'm alone in that, and I will continue to use Uber and Lyft and pay far more than taxis because they provide an exceptionally better service.
Also Uber Pool/Lyft Line are brilliant and taxis will never bother to replicate that kind of efficiency.
- Accusations of racism
- Dangerous driving
- Detours/no idea where they're going
- Being held hostage (took 4 very strong demands to be let out)
- Given a lecture because the driver couldn't find the address and told if you don't like the service to get out.
The grass isn't always greener
I have a bad experience maybe 10% of the time I take a rideshare, with taxis it's more like 75%. That does mean bad experiences will continue to happen either way, but I still favour the former and will pay more for it. Plus ridesharing still has the benefit of pooling, knowing costs up front, paying through cards without harassment, having the company keep a detailed record of your pickup/dropoff and route so reports of issues can be substantiated, quickly rescheduling if a driver fails to show (plus a map to see when a driver is not on route), etc. I think it's a clear win - at worst they share some of the problems taxis have, but taxis share none of the benefits that rideshares have.
We take taxis quite seriously in England. They are granted licences from the local government (the council). They are overseen by Licensing Officers.
I've only reported a taxi driver once (I can't recall exactly what for, but it wasn't anything too egregious), but it seemed like a swift and thorough investigation. They quicky summoned the driver to their office to explain himself and then gave me a report on the matter.
Customer input seemed to be taken quite seriously.
However, it seems the licensing framework does seem centred around drivers' criminal convictions, so the police would have to be involved in serious matters.
The cat is out of the bag. Nobody is going back to taxis.
Not sure if I agree. The convenience of the Uber/Lyft app's is still superior to a taxi service in most cases. The only time I'll take a cab is if it happens to be right in front of me and I'm in a hurry.