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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

#221

Post by mrbabbage »

nradov wrote: post #62
mrbabbage wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in San Francisco, there's far more of them. The extra wear and tear on the roads ends up as a road repair bill that taxpayers pick up. If the TNCs were a 1:1 replacement for traditional taxis, this wouldn't be a legitimate argument, but the evidence out there suggests that TNCs have grown the size of the car hail market at the expense of off-peak transit, so the TNCs really are putting more cars on the stree…

Road wear is exponentially proportional to vehicle weight. Almost all of the wear is caused by large commercial trucks and other heavy vehicles such as buses. Passenger cars cause very little road wear. TNC drivers are mostly using lighter vehicles. https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/

Your link supports the claim that "trucks cause exponentially more road damage than passenger vehicles"; it does not support your claim that "almost all of the wear is caused by large commercial trucks" or "passenger cars cause very little road wear".

In San Francisco, the Treasurer estimated 45,000 TNC vehicles in operation compared to just 1,800 taxis. That's an enormous increase in car hail traffic, and one that I claim has a substantial maintenance impact absent evidence to the contrary.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/45000-uber-lyft-drivers-may-now-op...

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

#222

Post by SilasX »

manarth wrote: post #60
SilasX wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays. If it works anything like the US, there is a portion[1] assessed to the employer and to the employee. If you report income as an independent contractor/self-employment, you pay both sides of it (since otherwise people would artificially class themselves as contractors to pay less). Are you saying Uber drivers in the…

If you report income as an independent contractor/self-employment, you pay both sides of it (since otherwise people would artificially class themselves as contractors to pay less). In general, that's true in the UK, but because of the various allowances, categories, and thresholds, if Uber is a contracting company, and the drivers are individual freelancers/contractors, less tax is paid. There are complicated rules t…

Strange. In most discussions, I've found UK law to be much more logical than US, but this discussion has revealed two notable counterexamples:

1) That your tax rate can be lower under self-employment classification (incentivizing spurious misclassifications).

2) That roads are paid for through income tax (rather than petrol or odometer tax), which is only loosely correlated with road usage and which punishes people who economize on it, while subsidizing above average users.

In any case, you can't really pin 2) on Uber, which isn't getting any more of a subsidy than any other business using the "road platform". They were abusing the law for 1) but courts have since put a stop to it.

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

#223

Post by Balgair »

j_s wrote: post #139
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the post, but there was a 'UBER finance guy' (self-claimed) on HN a few weeks back that 'spilled the beans' and quit on what Uber is actually: a sub-prime auto loan company. Again, this is my recollection, take it with salt. It goes like: Driver (D): I want to drive for Uber! Uber (U): Sure! Do you have a car that is safe and less than 5 years old? (I have no idea what the car reqs. are) D: No U: Ok, wel…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13764994 -> https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/5wrdk2/car_that_uber_... It's their xchangleasing leasing program. It's basically a sub prime car loan like from the housing bubble days. if Uber cuts it's rates they still have same payment but less fare money each month. They did this to a lot of people and it's well known within the company that a lot of Uber black drivers were…

Bingo! Thank you for the links!

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

#225

Post by Balgair »

microtherion wrote: post #133
Balgair wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the post, but there was a 'UBER finance guy' (self-claimed) on HN a few weeks back that 'spilled the beans' and quit on what Uber is actually: a sub-prime auto loan company. Again, this is my recollection, take it with salt. It goes like: Driver (D): I want to drive for Uber! Uber (U): Sure! Do you have a car that is safe and less than 5 years old? (I have no idea what the car reqs. are) D: No U: Ok, wel…

As far as I know, Uber car loans are fairly different from typical subprime car leases in that you can get out of them with little or no penalty.

Thanks for the data! I had heard the lease terms were for 3 years, no exceptions and no getting out of them. Still, they may change from location to location and over time. As always, read the contract!

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

#226

Post by microtherion »

Balgair wrote: post #225
microtherion wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Uber car loans are fairly different from typical subprime car leases in that you can get out of them with little or no penalty.

Thanks for the data! I had heard the lease terms were for 3 years, no exceptions and no getting out of them. Still, they may change from location to location and over time. As always, read the contract!

My original source for the cancellation terms was an Uber driver, and I just looked on Uber's web site, which more or less seems to confirm this:

  "Flexible leases from Xchange Leasing, LLC are potentially up 
   to 36 months with the flexibility to return the vehicle as 
   early as 30 days after the first payment due date with a    
   payment of a $250 disposition fee. Not all applicants will 
   qualify for this program. Certain items present on your 
   credit report, and other information, may cause you to be 
   excluded from this offer, including without limitation, a 
   repossessed vehicle within the last 12 months, a pending 
   bankruptcy, or a discharged bankruptcy within the last 12 
   months."
https://www.uber.com/drive/vehicle-solutions/leasing/

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

#227

Post by rhizome »

Applejinx wrote: post #197
rhizome wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by this they're just throwing "let's see if we can run an arbitrage on the concept of price sensitivity itself" against a wall and see who will fund it?

Yup. Wall Street will like everything about this, so the success or fail of it will be measured by 'can you survive if ONLY Wall Street likes you'.

It would be fun to compile a corpus of economics and business books, distill them down to their major points, then throw them into a dack.com style permutation generator. Optionally, post every one as an "Ask HN," or whatever could be called "Etsy for angel funding."

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

#228

Post by MockObject »

potatolicious wrote: post #111
wnevets wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Effective and fair markets rely on transparency, while this is the exact opposite - the deliberate creation of massive information asymmetry. Worse even, the information asymmetry isn't meant to favor one side of the transaction over the other (say, passengers over drivers), but is meant to favor the exchange (Uber) itself. Imagine if you went to your stock broker to buy 10 shares of XYZ. Your broker tells you that t…

> Imagine if you went to your stock broker to buy 10 shares of XYZ. Your broker tells you that the market price is $100 per share, but in reality found a seller at $80/share and is pocketing the difference, without disclosing this to either party in the transaction.

That's a poor analogy, because the stock is an exchange value, but the car ride is a use value.

A better analogy would be buying a pear, and getting angry that the fruit stand bought the pear really cheaply, without passing the savings on to you.

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

#229

Post by MockObject »

accountyaccount wrote: post #202
aianus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a part-time Uber driver and I've never been treated like garbage by them. They pay me exactly what they say they'll pay me and on time. If I don't like the rate I'm earning, I turn it off and go home.

>I turn it off and go home. A lot of people don't have that flexibility.

Irrelevant to this discussion about Uber, actually.

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

#230

Post by salesguy222 »

Bakary wrote: post #174
salesguy222 wrote: post #53

Haha wow, meanwhile at Oracle, having our commissions miscalculated by a team of experts is a feature, not a bug. And somehow those miscalculations are NEVER in our favor, and always result in delayed payment. It's like working for Crytek, but even worse.

What's specifically bad about Crytek?

In addition to what the poster below me said, they treated certain employees as second class citizens and played a lot of shell games involving overtime and even salary.

Basically they weren't very forthcoming to their Bulgarians when money dried up, opting to create a hunger games situation instead of asking for help and patience

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