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As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

nytimes.com

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. I use Lyft wherever I can but I can virtually always use Uber whereas Lyft is spotty.

Where do you go that doesn't have Lyft, but has Uber? I travel regularly and it is very rare not to have Lyft available. Virtually any city with >250k has both from my experience, although that could just be where I travel, I don't know.

I've yet to find Lyft in Europe but there's a lot of cities there with Uber available.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#32
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going public, they can get better at respecting local laws and regulations, and still sacrifice their customers (and of course employees) at the altar of their shareholders. (At least that is what I read the Op is saying).

Uber already has a pretty strong track record of doing poorly by its emplo-- er, sorry, "independent contractors."

I keep hearing this argument, but well guess what? Nobody is forcing anybody to become an Uber driver. If Uber treats their contractors so poorly, they are always free to go around and explore other options. We live in a capitalistic society, after all.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#33
I'm seriously considering dumping Uber after they charged me for a ride pass while my app was neither open nor was there even a ride pass available for purchase in my area at the time. Most of my friends are moving back to lyft at this point to be honest.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#34

The brand is already tarnished. I know many people that use lyft over Uber for this reason alone.

Your sample size is a little limited to conclude that the brand is tarnished, especially when we look at the size of IPO between Lyft and Uber. Although your perspective might mean a potential trend that the business should be taking into account.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many places where we know that a free market doesn’t properly function. Specifically, there are certain types of goods that end up priced wrong: those with externalities (positive or negative). So if all a company cares about is maximizing shareholder value over time they are drawn away from products with positive externalities (like a public park) towards those with negative externalities (like cars that p…

> There are many places where we know that a free market doesn’t properly function. Specifically, there are certain types of goods that end up priced wrong: those with externalities (positive or negative). So if all a company cares about is maximizing shareholder value over time they are drawn away from products with positive externalities (like a public park) towards those with negative externalities (like cars that…

> Problem solved.

That would imply that there is no climate change happening, as we would have priced in that externality and resolved the issue by now. Right?

As it turns out, that isn't right, because nobody who has incentive to price the externality right is allowed to be part of the process, and the ones who are part of the process are incentivized to cheat and not price externalities at all, or to price them poorly.

So we have runaway climate change. And we have structures preventing that from improving because the incentive structures are flipped to the opposite right now. There is no indication that will change, in fact the incentives to pollute and remove the externality of pollution from the cost of goods sold and services provided, so that we are actually accelerating this path towards higher pollution (see Trump's coal-and-oil-championing attitude).

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#36
post #22

The brand is already tarnished. I know many people that use lyft over Uber for this reason alone.

This might be the silicon valley bubble here though.

> This might be the silicon valley bubble here though.

I'm well outside of SV, use Lyft occasionally, and never use Uber out of principle.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#37
post #13

Uber has among the worst customer support policies I have seen - but alas they are a monopoly and there's no end in sight. I think they should be regulated. Recently, I raised an issue when I got billed twice for the same ride. In India, they have no phone support, just email. Instead of checking transactions on their end, they wrote back to me asking me to submit my bank statement so that they can verify. I was quit…

Likewise, I gifted someone a $50 Uber gift card to their cell number. They never received it. I filed a support request online and received no response. Apparently there is no phone support here either? This is in US.

Did you complain to your consumer protection bureau?

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#38
post #13

Uber has among the worst customer support policies I have seen - but alas they are a monopoly and there's no end in sight. I think they should be regulated. Recently, I raised an issue when I got billed twice for the same ride. In India, they have no phone support, just email. Instead of checking transactions on their end, they wrote back to me asking me to submit my bank statement so that they can verify. I was quit…

> they are a monopoly In India, don't you have Ola?

yes, but the Ola app (last I checked) required access to all your emails and SMS messages and didn't function if these are not granted. When one of my friends contacted customer support he was told " but all your data is safe with us, why are you worried?"

(this was some time ago, I don't know what the status is today)

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#39
post #13

Uber has among the worst customer support policies I have seen - but alas they are a monopoly and there's no end in sight. I think they should be regulated. Recently, I raised an issue when I got billed twice for the same ride. In India, they have no phone support, just email. Instead of checking transactions on their end, they wrote back to me asking me to submit my bank statement so that they can verify. I was quit…

In the US we have Lyft, so not quite a monopoly. Possibly an oligopoly though. I'm building an app that pits them against each other on price to promote a competitive transportation market. In some countries Uber does have a monopoly, or has been kicked out in favor of a different monopoly...

Google Maps already does that.

Re: As Uber Prepares to Go Public, Its Lead Lawyer Races to Clean It Up

#40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber already has a pretty strong track record of doing poorly by its emplo-- er, sorry, "independent contractors."

I keep hearing this argument, but well guess what? Nobody is forcing anybody to become an Uber driver. If Uber treats their contractors so poorly, they are always free to go around and explore other options. We live in a capitalistic society, after all.

One argument is that it may not be actually legal to treat them as contractors. See https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contr...
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