Is the Ride over for Uber? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#231

Post by skippyboxedhero » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

prophesi wrote: post #108

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the case. Uber repeatedly, and likely fraudulently, claimed that they were profitable ex-growth markets (iirc, they made this claim shortly before their IPO, I remember it being leaked to compliant journalists). They have never attempted to obtain a global monopoly either (they bought stakes in companies outside the US, which clearly wouldn't have given Uber itself scale economies). The only place that you…

> The only place that you saw people make the claim about driverless cars was on Reddit, management never made that claim...because it makes no sense. No need to insult me, you can read my response to another comment in this thread where I direct them where exactly in Uber's prospectus they make these claims. Whether they actually do what they said would make them profitable is another matter.

I didn't insult you.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#232

Post by dh2022 » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

thenipper wrote: post #21

flatline wrote: post #6

I was on work travel last week. No Uber from the airport - three cancelations then I caught a Lyft. It was over $500 for a 50 mi ride to a neighboring city which I was mostly looking at out of curiosity. My friend was recently held up (well, attempted) by an Uber driver in Nashville who had canceled last second so he could not even find who the driver was to file a complaint. It seems like the former gap in user expe…

I just came back from a family vacation. I looked at getting an Uber or Lyft from airport home. They were all like a twenty minutes wait and 50 bucks. We took a cab that was already there and it came in at about 40 bucks.

Same in Montreal July 1st. Wanted a ride from airport, Uber quoted $70. I got a cab and it was $50 on the meter (all prices in CAD).

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#233

Post by claydolatry » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #125

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work a startup with less than 15 technical employees and have experience at tech companies ranging from 100s to 100s of thousands of employees. Suggesting that one could accomplish or maintain a platform like uber with so few heads is a farce.

A team of 15 probably couldn't. A team of 50-100 probably could maintain something of similar complexity to the core uber app. Copycats exist using many fewer resources.

How many countries would this be offered in? Would you shut down your service outside of US business hours or will your 50-100 person staff not need sleep?

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#234

Post by Broken_Hippo » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

Nick87633 wrote: post #170

bobthepanda wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is why restaurants would sign up to a niche boutique service. They are super unhappy about the cut UberEats and friends charge, and the only real impetus to get them on was a pandemic that shut down restaurants totally. Nowadays, I see restaurants charging easily $5-10 above their in-person list price on delivery apps, and some have left entirely now that normalcy has returned and they don’t have to put…

I would guess that restaurants would get bigger checks on higher margin (less effort to cook) items in-person due to drinks and appetizers.

People definitely order appetizers and drinks, though. And lets not forget that while some of these take less effort to cook, they take a bit more effort in other ways. Cost in cleanup and wait staff that you don't have with takeout, for example.

Also, bigger margin doesn't always mean less effort to cook. It might depending on labor costs and the cost of goods (gravy mix is more expensive than the ingredients, but takes a bit more time to prepare) and you might also wind up needing consistency: Waffle House (a chain restaurant) probably wants its gravy to taste the same in two different cities, and it doesn't matter so much if it takes away a bit of margin.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#235

Post by wikfwikf » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

29083011397778 wrote: post #135

naravara wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> irrelevant in the age of GPS navigation with live traffic (ie. google maps) The confused phone calls I get from delivery drivers just about every time I order begs to differ. And that's assuming they bother to call rather than just leaving my order with the basement apartment or one of my neighbors or in the same address only on Northeast [name] street 8 blocks away rather than Northwest [name] street. These driver…

Or worse, they don't see the negative feedback - meaning even if they stick around long enough to handle your second order, they still won't know any better.

This is the actual problem with the app model. No one is on the line for your order being late, cold or wrong. The delivery guy doesn't care - he's the most transient and precarious labor possible and he only needs to get a certain percentage right to keep working. The restaurant, traditionally, tried very hard to keep their customers happy, and would send the (in-house) driver back with forgotten items or free stuff if something went wrong. Now they are plugged into a third-party system they don't have any confidence in or understanding of. They do their best but they can't predict demand, be sure when the driver will turn up, or be sure that complaints are legitimate. Meanwhile the app operator doesn't care that much about your order either. Getting every single order right would massively increase their costs while hardly adding much revenue through brand loyalty. Signing up new restaurants or rolling out to new cities is always going to be a more promising strategy.

Meanwhile, you are hungry and tired and you just spent $50 on $30 worth of takeout. You really really want someone to care about your dinner as much as you do. But next week when you're hungry and tired again, won't you roll the dice again and hope they get it right this time?

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#236

Post by gsibble » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

thenipper wrote: post #21

flatline wrote: post #6

I was on work travel last week. No Uber from the airport - three cancelations then I caught a Lyft. It was over $500 for a 50 mi ride to a neighboring city which I was mostly looking at out of curiosity. My friend was recently held up (well, attempted) by an Uber driver in Nashville who had canceled last second so he could not even find who the driver was to file a complaint. It seems like the former gap in user expe…

I just came back from a family vacation. I looked at getting an Uber or Lyft from airport home. They were all like a twenty minutes wait and 50 bucks. We took a cab that was already there and it came in at about 40 bucks.

Uber has raised their rates significantly I've noticed in the last year or so to where it's no longer feasible to take as alternative or daily transport.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#237

Post by agentcoops » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

Anecdata of course: I've been a frequent and global user of Uber for far too long, but in the last six months I've unintentionally stopped using the app completely both locally and while traveling. At least in Europe, the Uber experience, for drivers and riders, has become egregious and competition from aggregators of local taxi infrastructure can finally offer a well-designed app at an almost identical price point with much faster pickup/better service -- and, of course, better comply with local employment regulations. Compound that with orders of magnitude smaller/cheaper engineering teams and I suspect we might be at a tipping point away from ride-sharing towards (aggregated) taxis; I will be watching FreeNow closely in the EU and would love to see their growth/financials.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#238

Post by nobody9999 » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

sveme wrote: post #33

addicted wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say there was just 1 delivery service. Could they charge enough delivery fees to actually build a sustainable business? How much fees would you need to charge? $4/delivery means having to make a delivery in 15 mins to be able to pay the delivery person minimum wage. Plus Uber’s profit, plus the cost of the car and maintenance expenses + tickets, accidents, etc, It’s hard to see how a monopoly can also make mone…

Though they also get a 30% cut of the food price, so that considerably changes the economics.

>Though they also get a 30% cut of the food price, so that considerably changes the economics.

IIUC, 30% is the top end, with rates ranging from 10-30%.

That said, many (most?) restaurants that aren't high-end (which won't be preparing orders for delivery anyway) have gross margins of at most 10-15%.

The cut that DoorDash, GrubHub, etc. take has driven many lower cost restaurants (a number of which had provided their own delivery and been in business for decades) where I live (NYC) out of business over the past 10 years.

The only choice for these folks is to raise prices enough to cover the extra costs, often killing their business (note that GrubHub requires restaurants to charge the same on their site as on their in-house menu, not sure about other services).

The result is fewer independent low-mid priced restaurants. And that's a loss to any community.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#239

Post by harmon » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

oldstrangers wrote: post #41

Barrin92 wrote: post #26

Uber would have been fine if they operated like a medium sized SAAS company as they're forced to for example in Spain, where they due to regulations sell their software to local companies. Smaller team, focus just on the ride hailing software, take a cut of the revenue and that would actually be a decent business that doesn't try to make money by either monopolizing markets or atomizing the taxi business and destroyi…

Modesty is an underappreciated aspect of running a successful company. The endless pursuit of growth is usually a byproduct of ego or at the behest of some intangible idea of "creating shareholder value." Just fucking create a killer product and work on refining that product to the best of your abilities. If you get bored, start a new company. You don't have to grow every company into the next Apple.

> The endless pursuit of growth is usually a byproduct of ego or at the behest of some intangible idea of "creating shareholder value."

If you don't want to grow that's fine, but then don't go public and don't seek VC funding. Investors make money when you grow; they generally don't make much when you don't. Ergo, they will always be pushing you to grow.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#240

Post by nobody9999 » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

admax88qqq wrote: post #52

martinald wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food delivery is practical, mainstream and has been for 40+ years in the West. It works great "inhouse". They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there, where to park, which bell to press etc. They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly. The person that runs the delivery joint can also w…

Only a few high volume high margin restaurants are able to do in house delivery economically. Typically pizza joints where delivery is already baked in to the price as that is their primary sales funnel.

>Only a few high volume high margin restaurants are able to do in house delivery economically. Typically pizza joints where delivery is already baked in to the price as that is their primary sales funnel.

That's not true where I live (obviously, YMMV). Granted, I live in a very urban area (NYC) and most deliveries are done on bicycle, as the distances are shorter and it's much faster for the delivery folks.

Most restaurants near me have had delivery services for decades. Depending on the restaurant, they might have dedicated delivery folks, but others would just send a busboy as needed.

In fact, the big problem used to be all the restaurants leaving their delivery menus in building lobbies or even slipping them under the doors of non-customers.

Now the problem is that many of these restaurants are going out of business because the fees on the "delivery" apps eat up their entire gross profit margins.