> Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation.

How quickly we forget. When I did traveling-consulting for a year and a half — a mistake — I heard horror stories from the quite recent past: for instance, the New York taxi driver who clearly wasn't supposed to be the one driving the cab and thus refused to take a credit card payment (as mandated by law) with the (working) credit card machine. Instead he demanded cash, and drove my colleague to an ATM against his will holding his luggage hostage. And the one time I took an actual taxicab home from LaGuardia — hoping to save the hassle of a pickup in the cold — my driver got pulled over for running a red light.

Yeah, Uber and Lyft are both sketch as heck, but they've got nothing on the world's taxis.

And that's compared to Taxis in the USA... anyone who has used a Taxi here in Mexico know how shady, unclean and terribly maintained they are. There are cars whose back seat is teared down and the foam is going out. Cars literally without seatbelts. Taxi drivers often REFUSE to use the Taxi meter and charge you whatever the heck they want (I had a taxi driver turn off the meter just when we were about to arrive to a destination).

Freaking Taxis are mafias, and the people that drive them are part of it. I consider them part of the problem, specially now that there is an alternative.

Uber, Didi and others may be a lot of things (over here I feel they became more expensive), but bad service they definitely don't have.

Uber also engage in mafioso tactics, I am sure all here can agree on this. The difference is where the impact is felt. It's great that for now, Uber can ensure a higher-class experience than what was available to most previously. However, the luster is already quickly coming off of Uber & co.

Have you recently had to supply Uber with your photo for "mask proof," before requesting service? Are you comfortable with all the grotesque data mining they're doing with that in the name of "health & safety?" Have you read about Uber's horrific data mining practices, privacy violations, and generally bad-faith actions they've undertaken against individuals and drivers?

In places like Mexico especially, these sorts of things should concern you immensely. Perhaps it's still worth it for you - however, perhaps it's worth considering the lifestyle you and other Uber users live, and considering whether living in densely populated & corrupt major metropolises is actually a good economic decision in the long-term. Without these horrific starting conditions, the point of Uber's existence in the first place is highly suspect.

Why didn't your colleague call the police when the taxi driver kidnapped him? Are you sure he was taken against his will?

Because he deemed it less risk and hassle.

> Instead he demanded cash, and drove my colleague to an ATM against his will holding his luggage hostage.

This is kidnapping.

Uber's advantage was the ease of using the app to find a ride, but in many places local cab companies got their own app to match the competition. In many cities there are lots of times where Uber's availability and pricing algorithms mean it is quicker & cheaper to use a local cab company instead. I moved out of London a few years ago but had already stopped using Uber as other companies were much better.

Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man. So in many cities food delivery companies are creating their own food preparation businesses to try to make profit that way. Most of these markets are low margin and providing wheels alone isn't enough to pay for an expensive multi-national.

At least in my city, the taxi service had an "app" which theoretically allowed you to book a cab, but in reality, it was a crapshoot whether they would show up. It just put in a request to the dispatch but if nobody ever came to pick me up, calling the number just got me the same unhelpful dispatch.

This doesn't even get into the constant scams I would run across. Usually it was just drivers not running a meter and then charging some ridiculous price at the end of the ride. I don't care if you want the fare "off the book" so you can pocket the whole thing. Hustle your employer all you want, but don't hustle me.

I got into the habit of asking them to run the meter every time they started to drive off without starting it. If they still insisted that it was broken, I'd ask how much they wanted to charge me. If it was reasonable, I would accept. If it was stupid, I'd get out.

For all the complaints about Uber/Lyft, as a passenger, they are much more reliable and I know roughly what to expect every time.

So... are you trying to claim that Uber isn't a crapshoot whether the driver will actually show up?

I mean, many small towns have local food joints, but people driving by the highway will still stop at the McDonalds. I think Uber is kinda the McDonalds of transportation; travelers pretty much never want to bother finding out what the local taxi company is called nor they want to take risks with possibly unreliable/sketchy service.

I think Uber Eats' marketing of "we're not the jealous type" kinda expresses it well: there are use cases where Uber is undoubtedly superior (convenient ride summoning), and for other cases where cabs fit the use case, it's often a low-stakes choice, such that things like branding and reputation might trump other qualitative metrics such as price.

And for what it's worth, in many markets, Uber offers a bunch of price-oriented services that taxis simply aren't able to: the pool service was the most well known offering in the US, but in Brazil for example, it also serves "I need a ride NOW, and willing to pay premium, take my money" (the Prioridade service) and "I'm very price sensitive and willing to ride a motorcycle to save a few bucks" (the Moto service).

> Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man

Somebody should probably tell that to the millions of public market investors who have bought into these public companies worth tens of billions of dollars.

https://www.google.com/search?q=doordash+stock&oq=doordash+s...

https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock

https://www.google.com/search?q=grub+stock&oq=grub+stock

In fact if you're sure there's no money to be made, you could short them all and make a killing. Have you done that?

That's a whole other discussion. Having a good stock price does not equate to profitability. Vast amounts of money are pumped into loss making companies in the hope of future returns, either when other people pump money in to raise the price, or a profit is eventually returned. Uber has yet to post a profitable quarter, let alone year. Doordash has had one quarter in the black. This is during a pandemic, when use of these services has skyrocketed.

By some analysis, food delivery companies have a potential margin of about 2% from delivery alone. Which is why these companies are trying to find other ways to take in more per order and hopefully one day make a profit.

Agreed - Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs.

I can call a car from almost anywhere in the world and have a ride in a few minutes for a reasonable price - that’s a huge shift.

>Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs.

Remember, effectively you have said law breaking is acceptable. In this case, it may be partly even true, but once this catches on, anarchy, literally one step away.

How is anarchy one step away? Vs hundreds of steps away? Nearly every one breaks the law in small or bigger ways some of the time. There’s some studies that have shown more well off people cheat/break the law and justify it more often.

>Basically, anything that remotely involves wheels and cultivating a precarious, contracted workforce is game for Uber.*

Anecdotes are not data etc, but my daughter attended a friend's birthday party recently and the friend's dad told me he had been out of work due to covid so started doing Uber and was bringing in $3k/week and had managed to pay off a ton of debt thanks to that (this convo happened in SF last week). Needless to say, I was extremely surprised, as the media generally gives the impression that driver earnings are crap.

I'll buy that your friend may have made $3k a week doing Uber but he's either working an unsustainable number of hours behind the wheel or taking advantage of surge pricing that will work itself out in time. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not quite as insured as he thinks he is and certainly isn't taking into account his costs to provide the service.

He may very well be grossing $3k a week but he's not actually earning that much.

While I didn't want to pry into the exact unit economics, being in a children's party and all, he did say he worked ~10 hours a day. But also he was very proud to share that he had paid off over 16k of debt despite the high CoL for a family of 4 in SF, which leads me to be believe that the actual take home amount wasn't exactly chump change.