The first time I landed in the US, I took SuperShuttle from the airport to my apartment 60 miles away. The company I worked for had paid for it ahead of time and they dropped me at the door. Sad to see the business go away, because of VC subsidies.
SuperShuttle is going out of business
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Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one reason I take super shuttle to the airport is because I can schedule it ahead and I can at least be certain they will do whatever they can to honor the reservation. While for now uber/lyft are probably available often enough there is no guarantee that one is going to be available especially if you are flying very early or late.
You can schedule an Uber ahead of time.
I've never used uber/lyft. While I watched the movie Stuber, the protagonist had never used it either and tried using it like a taxi. I felt like an out-of-touch old guy learning how stuff works along with him.
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#13If its too good to be true, it’s probably subsidized by venture capital
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#14When I used to fly between SFO and Boston, I would always use Knights in Boston. They are a shared van service that often has 2-3 well-planned stops per ride.
I did Supershuttle once, and the length of time it took for me to get home was absurd. All the other stops just made, what should be a 30 minute ride home, absurdly long.
Good riddance. Supershuttle only made sense if you have a large group and can take up most of the van.
You'd think it'd be obvious that they needed to cut down on the number of stops.
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#15SuperShuttle is garbage. Unpredictable timing, you don't know how many stops so you have to budget in more time. If you aren't traveling alone (e.g. family of 2,3 or more) it is substantially more than a taxi, uber, or lyft. Miserable reviews on Yelp. I have a hard time buying the nostalgia here... It was a bad version of UberPool to compete with taxis back in the day, but obsolete now.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/supershuttle-south-san-francisco-2?...
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one reason I take super shuttle to the airport is because I can schedule it ahead and I can at least be certain they will do whatever they can to honor the reservation. While for now uber/lyft are probably available often enough there is no guarantee that one is going to be available especially if you are flying very early or late.
You can schedule an Uber ahead of time.
But if you schedule a ride for tomorrow they'll wait until the time of the ride and then look for drivers. It's handy if you might forget, but it misses the most handy part of the old model: they'll either tell you yes or know, and then you know ahead of time if it'll be possible to get a ride.
Neither Uber or Lyft will even tell you if historically drivers have been available if you request a weird time. In some places you can call an Uber at 5am, in others that'd never work, and figuring out which requires local knowledge which runs contrary to the whole point of Uber/Lyft.
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The one reason I take super shuttle to the airport is because I can schedule it ahead and I can at least be certain they will do whatever they can to honor the reservation. While for now uber/lyft are probably available often enough there is no guarantee that one is going to be available especially if you are flying very early or late.
You can schedule an Uber ahead of time.
That's not what scheduling an Uber actually does, though.
"The Scheduled Rides feature allows you to select a 10 minute window for a driver to come pick you up. At the start of the window, the app will send out a ride request on your behalf."
So if you "schedule a ride" at 7pm, it is exactly the same as just using the app manually at 6:50pm. There is absolutely nothing remotely close to a guarantee that anyone will you pick you up at all, much less at the time you chose.
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#18When I used to fly between SFO and Boston, I would always use Knights in Boston. They are a shared van service that often has 2-3 well-planned stops per ride. I did Supershuttle once, and the length of time it took for me to get home was absurd. All the other stops just made, what should be a 30 minute ride home, absurdly long. Good riddance. Supershuttle only made sense if you have a large group and can take up most…
Way back when, I used Knight's regularly and the waiting to pick up someone from a delayed flight and the swapping vans for the drop-off to my house got really annoying. At some point I had the realization that I didn't need to be so penny pinching (and, to be fair, I got more senior so I probably had more latitude).
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can schedule an Uber ahead of time.
That's not what scheduling an Uber actually does, though. "The Scheduled Rides feature allows you to select a 10 minute window for a driver to come pick you up. At the start of the window, the app will send out a ride request on your behalf." So if you "schedule a ride" at 7pm, it is exactly the same as just using the app manually at 6:50pm. There is absolutely nothing remotely close to a guarantee that anyone will y…
In my case, there is no way there are going to be drivers available at 4am to take me 45 miles to the airport which is fairly typical of what I need. There are barely drivers available to do it during the day and cancelations for going into the city are not infrequent. I just use a private car service even though it's about 2x the price.
Re: SuperShuttle is going out of business
#20this is hardly surprising. a ride to SFO from my home using uber/lift is about $23. $19 using supershuttle. And I don't have to schedule anything or take a long van ride while other passengers are being dropped off. Very unfortunately for the mom & pop supershuttle franchisees, though, with van payments and a dried up source of income.
The one reason I take super shuttle to the airport is because I can schedule it ahead and I can at least be certain they will do whatever they can to honor the reservation. While for now uber/lyft are probably available often enough there is no guarantee that one is going to be available especially if you are flying very early or late.
The only time I failed to find a ride to airport on Uber/Lyft was in Singapore at 4am when Uber just started their operation there. Other than that, no matter how odd the hour is, I was able to find a ride, albeit sometimes with longer wait time (10 min-ish). I personally think the risk is negligible, unless drivers leave them en masse.