You seem to have a specific vendetta against cab companies and drivers. Who hurt you?

Cab companies and drivers, unsurprisingly. I love how Uber and Bolt changed the experience of using a taxi during the last decade.

Anywhere in Europe I go, I can count on a good service - 10 years ago it was absolutely terrible. Broken down cars that the drivers probably used to sleep in taking you on a much longer route than necessary and overcharging you for that. One time a gangster like that took me to his gang when I used a phone with GPS to call him out on his route. No thanks, never again.

Cab companies had to get far better after Uber appeared. Getting a taxi was a rubbish experience once.

To be fair, taxis being terrible almost everywhere across the world is a very common complain

In France taxis are much better than Uber.

I've had some really weird experiences with Uber while taxis where all very professional and top notch.

The problem is it's very variable and you don't know it if you are visiting somewhere. I had a great experience in Madrid, and terrible in Lisbon with normal taxis. Could be just luck of the draw, but with Uber at least if I'm in an unfamiliar place I have some accountability if it does go horribly wrong (taking a long journey for example), with English speaking support.

Yeah in the USA and Ivory Coast maybe.

I’ve not used uber a ton, but i have definitely waited 20min for an uber.

I’ve also never had to wait out surge pricing to catch a taxi

Why are you describing Uber? Here in UK that pretty much is exactly the Uber experience.....long wait times, drivers cancelling rides as they are on the way to you, cars that smell like piss.......can't comment on the gangsters stuff, but jesus christ Uber is 10x worse than local taxi companies here, at least they keep some standards.

In Norway, Uber is barely present here. The established taxi companies do a very good job with none of those problems (but like everything here, they are pricey.) I think it really depends where you are.

Here, before the rise of Yandex Taxi (which eventually bought Uber Russia), we used to have several independent "taxi aggregators", you'd call them and they'd tell you your car's license plate and when it would arrive. I don't remember it taking any longer than Yandex Taxi/Uber. Now it's actually worse, since Yandex Taxi has bought the majority of local taxi aggregators, it feels like the quality is worse than before because they're a monopoly and there's no competition.