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Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

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Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#71

Post by mlindner »

gaius wrote: post #29
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're both right and wrong. Uber is better than taxis for riders, and worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers. Also consider that some Uber drivers couldn't realistically become taxi drivers in their spare time, and perhaps some of them would prefer to be underpaid by Uber rather than not working at all.

worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers ... and taxpayers. Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. In the UK, someone else pays for the healthcare of their drivers, as they dodge Employer's NI. Etc etc. The entire business model of "disruption" is pocketing what everyone else pays for the dependencies and externalities.

This circles back to that Governments making rules will always find those who find ways to work around them. How about we try making rules that even if worked around, don't harm others?

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#72

Post by nradov »

Jabanga wrote: post #22
burkaman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon? Spotify? Square? Grubhub? Robinhood? And probably lots more. You can have respect for people and laws and still succeed.

One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented…

Public key cryptography wasn't illegal within the USA in the early 1990s. The legal issue was with exports.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#73

Post by wnevets »

potatolicious wrote: post #10
chipgap98 wrote: post #3

That's a huge "bug" not to notice for presumably a long time. I recently had a Lyft driver in NYC talk to me about how he quit uber after doing the math on what his fare should have been when a passenger told him how much they were being charged. He brought it up to uber and then quit when they didn't fix it. Anecdotal story but seems extremely relevant now

What your driver was talking about may not be a bug/math error like stated here. After rolling out guaranteed whole-ride pricing (as opposed to metering) Uber is allegedly testing algorithms to bid different prices for rides to both driver and passenger. i.e., passenger sees a fare of $X, while driver sees a fare of $Y, where presumably $Y Passengers' fares can be "optimized" by estimating a specific passenger-trip's…

>To be clear, I find this entire concept incredibly abhorrent

why?

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#74

Post by nradov »

smt88 wrote: post #67
wehadfun wrote: post #14

Uber drivers could go on strike from Uber and still earn by driving for LYFT. They could demand what ever they want.

You can't strike without a union, and Uber is fighting hard against drivers unionizing.

The drivers are vendors, not employees, so there's no way for them to form a union or go on strike. But there's also nothing stopping a group of drivers from getting together and collectively agreeing to stop driving for Uber.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#75

Post by nradov »

rbobby wrote: post #57

Uber's management team seems to stumble from one mistake/mess/self-inflicted-injury to another. I can't help but wonder why Uber VCs have kept them in place.

It's pretty simple. The VCs don't have enough voting shares to control the board. They could make some noise but their actual legal power is very limited.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#76

Post by PhasmaFelis »

iamdave wrote: post #9
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #2

This company is absolutely astounding. The objects you hold up as ideals says a lot about the culture of your environment and its values. It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley.

It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley The common refrain I hear is "they're better than taxis" and more and more evidence is mounting against them (at the corporate level) that suggests: no, they really aren't.

This isn't directly related to your comment, but it's odd to me, grammatically, that people say Uber isn't a taxi service. It's like saying Amazon isn't a retailer--certainly it's different than the pre-internet model, but fundamentally they're providing the same service as the traditional businesses.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#77

Post by ddalex »

bogomipz wrote: post #63
potatolicious wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What your driver was talking about may not be a bug/math error like stated here. After rolling out guaranteed whole-ride pricing (as opposed to metering) Uber is allegedly testing algorithms to bid different prices for rides to both driver and passenger. i.e., passenger sees a fare of $X, while driver sees a fare of $Y, where presumably $Y Passengers' fares can be "optimized" by estimating a specific passenger-trip's…

Thanks for your link. I hadn't heard of this. So there will basically be no transparency to anyone involved in the transaction except Uber if this is adopted? The company seems to be guided by a culture of manipulation - manipulate the drivers with erroneous information, the riders with surge pricing, regulatory agencies with different screen views and now the possible manipulation of the bid ask spread. Uber just se…

Information asymmetry at its best, not that there is anything wrong with it.

If Uber charges X for trip, and pays the driver Y for the service, it's obviously a taxi company. As such, I expect authorities to enforce the licensing laws, especially that the public support of Uber starts to diminish.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#78

Post by leggomylibro »

criddell wrote: post #48
potatolicious wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What your driver was talking about may not be a bug/math error like stated here. After rolling out guaranteed whole-ride pricing (as opposed to metering) Uber is allegedly testing algorithms to bid different prices for rides to both driver and passenger. i.e., passenger sees a fare of $X, while driver sees a fare of $Y, where presumably $Y Passengers' fares can be "optimized" by estimating a specific passenger-trip's…

When I read about stuff like this and also how Uber is losing a lot of money, I have to wonder if maybe there's a fundamental problem with their business model.

There is; they are hemorrhaging money, and only manage to stay afloat because of the billions of dollars being shoveled into the furnace by investors and nation-states. In a way, venture capital is subsidizing your rides.

They're not insane, though. They're buying market share and betting that they can pull self-driving cars into their fleets while they still have the market on lock. Without having to pay drivers or deal with their whiny attempts to enforce employment laws (against an app! Crazy,) they see themselves being able to print money hand over foot.

This is how you get away with being a dirtbag, in any situation. Move very quickly, and get to where you're going before anyone manages to claw you back far enough. Possession seems to be 100% of the law, when it comes to companies in this country.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#79

Post by Pxtl »

SilasX wrote: post #41
gaius wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers ... and taxpayers. Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. In the UK, someone else pays for the healthcare of their drivers, as they dodge Employer's NI. Etc etc. The entire business model of "disruption" is pocketing what everyone else pays for the dependencies and externalities.

>Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. Everyone pays gas taxes that scale with the amount driven and therefore their use of the roads. Any unusually high driving would be made up by the higher gas consumption and the resultant taxes thereon. If anything: 1) Taxi routes are concentrated in cities, where they have lower miles per gallon and thus pay more taxes pe…

In the USA, gas taxes cover only a tiny fraction of damage to roadway. In Europe it heavily exceeds it, and most of Canada is about break-even. And that's of course ignoring that gas taxes are meant to not simply be user-fees for the roadway. Also ignoring costs outside of infrastructure - stuff like traffic enforcement and health costs. And it assumes the land the road was built on was free - which it obviously isn't, particularly in the kind of dense environments where road widening is impossible.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#80

Post by rajathagasthya »

SonicSoul wrote: post #66
rajathagasthya wrote: post #65

> While drivers’ pay is determined according to the time and distance they travel, Uber has begun to experiment with how it calculates the price for riders. I don't get this. How can you "experiment" with price calculations?

aren't all prices determined via some sort of market testing?

That may be true, but I assume Uber commits to paying drivers $X per mile or hour or something similar (as stated in that article). Surely, you won't drive for Uber if you don't know exactly how much money you make and if it's always subject to changes and experimentation?
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