This cannot be understated. Also, as an introvert, negotiating with drivers, especially those that don't drive by the meter was always stressful, I mostly ended up overpaying.
Things I don't ever have to hear or put up with ever again #623.
Nowadays I have Uber drivers sit around the corner refusing to show up and calling me to tell me I should cancel so that I have to pay the $5 fine. Sure I can contact support to get that $5 back but it has happened to me so many times there really should be a button for it. It’s hard for me to believe Uber is not aware of this behavior.
Another 5-10% or so of my Uber orders in Prague involve driver coming my way then cancelling after 5-10 minutes in the middle, then another driver picking up, and so on. You could be on a 3rd or 4th driver sometimes. Initially I thought this had something to do with traffic jams, but I am now beginning to doubt this, as it happened in mild traffic and off-peak hours as well. It is impossible to trust if Uber will arrive in 10 minutes, 20 minutes or not at all. An Uber ride to the airport is a lottery sometimes.
Finally, arrival times are usually understated. It can be 7 minutes on display but 15 minutes in reality. And this is mostly in Kosire area, about 15 minutes from the center. Whoever is reading this in Uber should really look into their Prague situation.
That being said, I am using Uber extensively in London as well and never have these issues. I also used it in California and never had issues. Uber in Prague is something else, my friends.
Uber in California and Russia (it's actually Yandex.Taxi for quite some time here) works great.
There is some hidden benefit for Uber drivers in creating barriers for the passengers. Also, the platform does not allow downvotes until you get on the car.
And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times. And if you did get one, you had to have cash. In my 20s I had the personal phone numbers of a couple who ran a car service. I would only ride with them after another taxi home (probably unlicensed) where the driver was drinking smh.
I wonder how many DUIs have been avoided since Uber came about.
People always point out big cities, but forget how abysmal taxis were in small towns.
Not just that, but people forget how bad they were in cities prior to the pressure Uber created. The article asks "Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful?" but the answer is obvious. It transformed the industry. It made a big impact on my life. I no longer had to stress about getting a cab home from pretty much anywhere. When traveling, I know I won't get my face ripped off or have an issue with mistranslation. If it were around earlier, I would have likely driven and made some extra cash when I was home from college. No one would hire me for a few weeks or extremely variable schedule so this would have been a great option.
Today's cabs are better behaved but only because people have alternatives.
Or my hometown of ~60k, I can't say availability of app based taxis is better or worse than availability at a taxi rank, though obviously there is the benefit of not having to get to a taxi rank.
The city I live in now of 1 million, app based taxis are a clear win, mainly because most taxi ranks fit ~5-6 taxis max and so at busy times there would be a queue simply because of that fact. That said, you're going to be waiting as long for a pickup at closing time via an app as for someone to show up a rank.
(Extending to app based services in general as actual Uber is a niche player in my country, basically only used by tourists so hard to get rides that aren't going to or from the airport or a couple of tourist hot spots)
Not just small cities. I lived in Las Vegas for many years. Try getting a taxi to take you from the airport to the suburbs at 2am. I got hung up on by two taxi services. When I finally got someone to pick me up, I had to wait 30 mins for them to drop off other fares to the Strip before they would take me.
And in some towns and cities it's now becoming difficult to get an uber, as there are fewer drivers around than there were. And they conveniently drove the local cab firms out of business so you're just generally SoL
My experience has been the opposite. In small towns you cannot get use rideshare apps, but you can dial a taxi service. This has been the case in every town of less than 1,000 I've needed a ride in.
the main issues i have with uber are that it's now almost more expensive than taxis, there's almost no regulation, the drivers are taken advantage of / not making profit and also not getting proper benefits. just because taxis suck doesn't mean uber should replace them.
government should invest in better public transit, more livable and walkable cities, and less car ownership instead of propping up either taxis or uber.
For me this is the real evolution, and what was needed all along. I've used the apps you're talking about in Europe and Asia, and they're great.
> just because taxis suck doesn't mean uber should replace them.
Hear, hear. I don't miss the old taxi model, and Uber/Lyft came in with simple, strong improvements in usability and payments, as users outlined above. But after 12 years, Uber has shown itself to be what it is: an expensive, shitty vampire.
Yeah, Uber never got a foothold in Germany, but they brought us apps and card payment. Before that, it was cash only.
That said, cabs (both, actual taxis and rentable cars with drivers [0]) also seem to be far better here. The cab companies own the cars, not drivers, they are modern and clean and usually premium brands. Just from what I’m reading about the situation in the USA, it seems to be a clusterfuck, and I know from experience that in South Africa, cabs get you crappy overpriced cars that are almost falling apart while Uber gives you a clean private vehicle.
[0]: I’m not sure if this is a distinction in other countries, taxis are allowed to pick up people, and have some limited public transport rights, e.g. certain streets might be bus and taxi only, while rentable cars (German: Funkmietwagen, Personenmietwagen, or Minicar) can only be ordered in advance and have to follow all rules like a private vehicle. Taxis pay more taxes.
Germany also worked hard to cripple Uber. Even its per-existing rules are hostile towards much of the innovation Uber brought to market.
One particularly egregious example is forcing each Uber to "return to garage" between each trip, even if another customer is on its path and requesting a ride. This makes the service considerably more expensive, increases wait times and needlessly burns gas to send cars with no passengers back to their "garage".
To my point of view, it's insane protectionism. In recent weeks, the policy can even be seen as indirectly subsidizing an invasion.
(see: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-ride-hailing-future)
That seems a bit farfetched. They don't run on natural gas.
About 98% of oil consumed by Germany is imported. Which country is the largest source?
I hear people say this all the time. None of those people are Uber drivers.
I can't speak to Europe but that's been my experience in California.
This kind of "we know what's good for you" elitism is that turns people off from the left and why I don't want to be associated with the democratic party despite my voting history.
Also, god help you if you want a ride more then 10-15 miles...Phoenix is huge, but for some reason, drivers don't seem to like long rides.
that’s quite the (insulting) claim!
Most people are bad at calculating financial implications of decisions before them. There are lots of reasons for this (limited finance/math knowledge, impenetrable language in which conditions are layed out...) or actually don't have better options so they can literally be taken advantage of. Some may be even stupid, but there's no need or reason to reach for that as an explanation.
This is such a horrible take and reeks of nanny state oversight. Millions of small business owners make these decisions all the time. Markets have a way of quickly rooting out those who aren’t making good decisions. Government has proven itself to be far less financially competent.
(1) Most business owners ("millions of small business owners"), especially those that are independent LLC owners, do not fully understand the cost implications of their business's financial health. By their very nature, they do not have dedicated financial expertise, typically lack strong accounting principles, etc. My sister, a personal trainer, is a great example of this. I had to explain to her what "writing off" expenses actually meant.
more importantly:
(2) Uber knows this and exploits it.
Millions of small business owners, me including, make these kind (and other) mistakes all the time for various reasons. We are all very much fallible and don't go out of business because most of the time our mistakes don't have huge consequences and everyone else makes their own mistakes too.
All based on there being a large chunk of people[1] that don't really understand how money works.
[1] I'd put that number based on anecdata, at least at around 20-30% of the population.
They are focused on cash flow.
Drivers that aren’t able to calculate net depreciation (actually pretty easy and expected if you can afford to buy a car) would not be able to stick around and drive for 5 years.
On the other hand in first world countries and extremely well connected and overpopulated cities like London Uber is more of a disaster. They clog up the streets and create so much more unnecessary traffic. Uber drivers are extremely picky and don't accept rides which are not going from one prime location to another prime location. They are more expensive than black cabs and offer a worse service. In London black cabs are soooo much better, they can drive in bus lanes which Ubers can't do and therefore beat traffic whereas with an Uber you pay more and then it takes you still twice as long to get anywhere. Also black cabs have more space, they have card readers in the back and you can easily hail them down. It's so frustrating with Uber, especially at night when you want to get home from a party or something which is 10-15 mins away from a busy area and then you try to get an Uber and stare for about 20 minutes on your phone where the app makes you believe that you get a driver confirmed in 2 minutes but it keeps changing and nobody accepts. Literally happened to me so often, looking at my phone and it keeps lying to me that a driver is 3 mins away, then 2 mins, then 4 mins, nobody confirming but it also doesn't allow me to cancel after like 10-15 mins which means I'm then stuck waiting. Uber is so shit it pisses me off. If I don't get an Uber in like 2-3 min then I don't want it and just walk down the road and hail down the next cabbie. So much easier in London sometimes. Anyhow... it's very different in different places.
> . Uber made the payment process seamless I've been paying taxi fares with a credit card in an in car payment terminal for twenty years in Scandinavia. If I had a business trip to anywhere in the Nordic countries I never needed to get any cash because everything worked with a card.
All of that — you guessed it, because of medallion-like system. There's a limited amount of taxis for 25 million city, they cannot meet demand, so they don't have to compete for orders and therefore don't care about their rating (and therefore customer service) in the slightest.
I've seen other regional taxi markets disrupted by Uber and similar local apps — and it always made taxi experience so much better and smoother.
What matters in the end is whether Uber can sell the service for more than it costs to provide it. Traditional taxi could do it, Uber cannot
This is a great quote to describe engineer-minded approach to user experience and convenience.
First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing.
Second there’s now services like Curb (in NYC) or Flywheel which allow you to use an Uber/Lyft style experience with cabs.
And maybe the driver would show up on time, or maybe they'd see a street hail en route to picking you up and decide to make you wait an extra 40 minutes. Uber drivers cancel, too, of course, but "automatically fall back to a different driver after a cancellation" is a meaningfully different experience.
Or never show up. Twice with uber (I'm not a frequent user, so this is a high percentage) the driver never showed up. The app didn't let me request someone else until a very long timeout (don't remember how long). Good thing I wasn't going to a flight or other time-sensitive trip on those times, but waiting around in the dark in an industrial park, not so fun.
Pre-uber I'd reserve cab rides to a relative remote area and not once was there a delay or missed pickup.
I wish I had your experience. Pre-Uber, I had a 75% cancellation rate with car services to the airport. I live in a suburb about 45 minutes away from the airport. Car services would frequently just not show up. I would call, they’d say to wait and I would get the runaround.
I think it was due to manual scheduling.
Uber is much better in that I don’t think I’ve ever had a cancel when going to the airport. But I’ve had many cancels when using it around town. It’s very frustrating and I wish Uber would do something about it. Lyft seems the same to me.
I believe they were waiting for me to cancel and have me take the penalty, but I was purposefully not giving up this time. Or they just wan to pick and choose their orders and have no way to cancel an unwanted trip.
Another time the driver came and passed me and went to a different location without stopping or answering messages. I was just watching the car get further and further away.
That’s not how it worked, or works (see Curb). You didn’t schedule a particular cab you call the cab service and the dispatcher sends a cab to you and makes sure they got there. If they didn’t show up you call dispatch back and they call the guy and find out what the hell happened and/or dispatch someone else.
Cabs had a 45+ minute lead time in the evenings and at night too, when I could order them by phone at all. It was a joke. This was in Seattle/Bellevue, Washington, USA, FWIW
Worse of all not only does the cab company often decide to not show up, if you cancel (such as calling another cab company that does show up or take a bus instead) you get yelled at and cursed to hell for letting them know you are canceling.
Everyone in the system is just an average joe, probably being paid less than they deserve. But the system was terrible and broken.
There might be some variation with things like geography, here.
It's precisely how it worked everywhere I've lived. What you describe sounds like a low density suburb or smaller town. Yeah, social pressure in those situations still works.
The only time I've seen things work as you describe were small/vacation towns when I was visiting for a wedding or whatnot. The type of places where there are a dozen total cabs for the entire county.
Any major (call it NFL tier) city scheduling a pickup was a laughable joke. You quickly learn when you move to such places the first time you schedule a cab how totally unreliable it is.
Even the overly chatty cabbies would be happy to tell you how much of a scam it was, and go on to describe how every driver but them does X, Y, and Z to avoid taking such calls. This is the sole reason Uber got its foothold in my household.
Have you lived in NYC? It's not how it worked here prior to Uber. You could call one of the car services and schedule a pickup ahead of time and they'd show up. Of course it wasn't totally necessary, because you could call Northside or Arecibo at 4am and they'd come pick you up at your house within 5 minutes.
Outside of NYC, yeah it was a mess. I remember being at datacenters in New Jersey in the middle of the night to fix some server that went down when I was at the beginning of my career and you'd have to call a bunch of car services to find anyone working at 4am.
In my experience that's exactly how it worked.
You know what's a meaningfully different experience? A cab company scheduling a car for you at a specific time, rather that an app starting to look for a car for you a few minutes ahead of time, and coming up with something late or inadequate, something I repeatedly experienced with Uber.
I don't think this problem is true of every city, but Uber was clearly an improvement on the existing taxi system in San Francisco. (In fact for many years the main topic of conversation between me and cab-drivers was speculating on how the SF cab system could be improved, and we'd often end up inventing something like Uber, or now Curb. I'm pretty sure SF would not have got to a reasonable system without pressure from Uber and Lyft -- it took them many years to get to what we have now.)
In some places, e.g. SF, scheduled cabs mostly didn't show (at least pre-uber). They'd send a driver, but the driver would just pick up the first person they found on the street-- A fare in the seat is better than a fare on the street.
I didn't have that experience in the DC area or NYC, so I know it wasn't universal... but in some places uber really was a massive upgrade in terms of transport reliability even though uber drivers do cancel at a disappointingly high rate too.
[DC had it's own issues-- I never had many problems with them beyond them being thoroughly ignorant about the local roads an geography, but my partner frequently got sexist insults from the driver, refusals to take her directions, etc.]
But good points! Even if many are specific to New York
The tax medallion system was invented to solve such an oversupply problem. It led to times when it's impossible to get a taxi.
Practically speaking, this just isn't a problem you can solve because you're trying to limit supply. If Uber starts giving preferential treatment to full-time or more "senior" drivers, the part-timers will simply go somewhere else and use another ride-sharing app. If you get Lyft and the other little apps to go along with this scheme, well then it's collusion. The only legal alternative is government regulation and legislation and that's not likely to make anybody happy. You will probably find those that operate a fleet through Uber (and are thus de facto taxi companies) will likely support such measures because it will allow them to exercise greater control and have more predictability over their drivers.
Presumably if surge was focused on maximizing completed trips, then the goal is to find a price that matches riders to drivers.
In reality, riders are more interested in riding than drivers are in driving (this is how we got into this situation in the first place). You can easily charge 2x surge without killing demand, but supply won't rise by the corresponding amount.
Uber found a way to take advantage of this - fixed bonuses to attract the same amount of supply as before, but now surge is an independent variable that they can fine-tune to demand.
Your ride quality isn't improving with surge pricing, it's just getting more expensive.
There are also reports of groups of drivers working together to manipulate the surge price in order to increase earnings[0].
1. Taxi services are balkanized;
2. Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service;
3. Uber made the payment process seamless and I cannot overstate how important this is as a user. I hate dealing with NYC yellow cabs, card readers that don't work (or actually have skimmers) and a stupid touch screen where your minimum tip option is 20%, etc;
4. The ability to rate both drivers and passengers may have its issues but IME it tends to keep passengers on better behaviour and cars in better condition;
5. Taxis have weird edge cases. In NYC, for example, getting a cab at 3-4pm was nigh-on impossible because of the shift change. It also means that drivers near the end of their shift may not take you places too out of the way;
6. Whatever the costs of owning and maintaining a car are, the traditional taxi system has huge taxes in the form of medallion costs and quotas. These costs are directly passed on to consumers;
7. Uber may well have a lot of value in value-added services. They're trying this with Uber Eats, for example. I can't say if these will be successful or not. I've certainly seen cities where I've tried to use Uber Eats only to be told "There are no drivers available". Obviously the drivers haven't signed up because there are plenty on Doordash and Seamless/Grubhub.
8. I see the flexibility for drivers as a huge plus rather than the rigid shift system of being a taxi driver.
9. The barrier to entry as a driver tends to be low because for many people they have a car anyway.
Taxis died because it's a horrible user experience that was propped up by a government-enforced monopoly. Good riddance. I mean I feel bad for NYC taxi drivers who were lured into paying a fortune to buy a medallion before the market crashed, many of whom had limitd English proficiency and were the victims of predatory practices that should be illegal.