101–110 of 556 posts
All the complains in this thread seem like they can be solved by Uber easily, mainly by allowing drivers to set their price by themselves. Taxies in my country are so bad, it feels like you are asking them for a favor by using their service, not to mention they pick and choose if they wanna take you or no based on how profitable for them it is.
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Despite all of the negatives, many of which I agree with, the legacy taxi industry really sucked for riders. Riding in a taxi feels dirty to me, to be honest. Old, ugly cars that never seem well maintained, having to actually call someone on a phone and tell them where to pick you up, often not accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, credit cards. Rude drivers with no rating system to disincentivize it… It’s sad that Uber…
>having to actually call someone on a phone The horror!
Also, many times we tried to order food to office at work, we just got a busy line.
Doing transactional stuff by phone has horrible UX.
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Despite all of the negatives, many of which I agree with, the legacy taxi industry really sucked for riders. Riding in a taxi feels dirty to me, to be honest. Old, ugly cars that never seem well maintained, having to actually call someone on a phone and tell them where to pick you up, often not accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, credit cards. Rude drivers with no rating system to disincentivize it… It’s sad that Uber…
what's crazy is in this day and age, you'd think uber/lyft are available in most markets but last week, I had to go to Baton Rouge (LSU with 50k students is based there) and I was relegated to a beat up, cigarette smelling, local taxi because no uber/lyft's were available at the airport (due to storms and delayed flights).
All this to say, I should have prepared better and I don't know what I expected. We take the "always on" nature of these services for granted, but that's not how the world works outside of the major metros.
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> I can hail Uber from an app that works in Frankfurt, Paris and New York. That matters to travelers (and skewed towards business travelers, too), i.e. people who visit only for a short time, but not much to anyone else. > And it is far more ubiquitous, particularly outside the major metropolitan areas. Not my experience. I can be far outside the city and call (through the App nowadays) a taxi and I know it's going t…
Travelers hail a disproportionate amount of taxis. Living in a walkable European city with good public transport, approximately the only times I use taxis or Uber are when I'm going to/from the airport/train station and have luggage, or when it's a business trip and I can expense it (and even then I opt for trains when I can).
By the measure of growth and market penetration, Uber has been successful. By the measure of establishing a globally operating business that employs thousands of people, Uber has been successful (mostly). By the measure of establishing a profitable business we might argue that they likely will never achieve that. If you look at their SEA competitors who already earlier on introduced financial debt as a tool to create…
> employs thousands of people You made me wonder how many people are actually employed by Uber. I thought thousands sounded like a lot for what they do. First Google result - 29,000 employees. That blows me away. It sounds like Uber itself is ready for disruption.
This is a market with a completely unregulated taxi sector as long as you follow the base regulations. Maybe sometimes a bit archaic but I could finance a car and start driving within a month.
From what I've heard the only way to make a profit is to be a business owning about 50 cars which are staffed 24/7 and on top owning your own service workshops. It's extremely cutthroat.
The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…
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> None of which Uber fixes? Did you hail or call taxis before Uber? The simple ability to see where your car is while en route was game changing. Add to that ratings, embedded payment (“credit card reader broken”) and dynamic pricing and you have a dramatically better experience.
You just described a bunch of advantages that would still exist if they simply licensed their tech to taxi companies.
The piece is exactly right. Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce. From a macroeconomic perspective this is terrible because turning taxi firms into countless of one man businesses provides no efficiency gains, it's basically reverse economic development. There is a version of Uber that actually makes sense. As a lean SaaS company that sells its so…
Despite all of the negatives, many of which I agree with, the legacy taxi industry really sucked for riders. Riding in a taxi feels dirty to me, to be honest. Old, ugly cars that never seem well maintained, having to actually call someone on a phone and tell them where to pick you up, often not accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, credit cards. Rude drivers with no rating system to disincentivize it… It’s sad that Uber…
The company started switching out to the Prius a few years before I started driving for them in 2012. My first few leases were for old Crown Victorias, because I couldn't show up early enough to get in line for a prius (some drivers refused to drive the Crown Victorias, for various reasons).
The company had economy of scale in their fleet operations that was hard to beat: mechanics who knew the Prius like the back of their hand, boneyards (for parts), connections in the automotive industry.
They couldn't compete with people willing to wear out their personal cars giving 'rides' for peanuts. The company eventually sold off their fleet of priuses and their taxi yards, and refocused on the other businesses (app-dispatched medical transportation, etc). The Company tried to build their own dispatch phone app. But it didn't work especially well - I think they eventually decided to cut their losses.
VIP Taxi and Yellowcab are still doing okay, but I hardly ever see the green prius taxis anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Despite all of the negatives, many of which I agree with, the legacy taxi industry really sucked for riders. Riding in a taxi feels dirty to me, to be honest. Old, ugly cars that never seem well maintained, having to actually call someone on a phone and tell them where to pick you up, often not accepting Apple Pay, Android Pay, credit cards. Rude drivers with no rating system to disincentivize it… It’s sad that Uber…
>having to actually call someone on a phone The horror!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Travelers hail a disproportionate amount of taxis. Living in a walkable European city with good public transport, approximately the only times I use taxis or Uber are when I'm going to/from the airport/train station and have luggage, or when it's a business trip and I can expense it (and even then I opt for trains when I can).
And the parent commenter mentioned that they usually get a taxi from the airport at least (because it's right there I guess, there are strict special regulations about how german taxis wait at the airport to make things go smoothly), so... Another other reason to take one is when you're so far outside and at a time of day that public transport is spotty.