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Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

money.cnn.com

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Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#101

Post by eridius »

yapcguy wrote: post #57
defen wrote: post #7

Between this and how they handled the girl who was killed by an Uber driver on New Year's Eve in San Francisco...my opinion of them has taken a decided turn for the worse in the past few weeks. And for both, I can't help but think that company culture is set from the top.

Sophia Liu. 6 years old. Killed by Uber driver. At first Uber denied the driver worked for them. Then they admitted the driver was with them but he wasn't "working" because he didn't have a passenger. In constrast, some news reports claim that the driver believes he was working for Uber because he was searching for fares at the time of the accident.

I hadn't heard of this before. But I'm a bit confused, how does an uber driver hit someone while searching for fares? Searching for fares in Uber means sitting in your car waiting for your phone to ding. The only reason to be moving around without a passenger is if you think that a different neighborhood is a better place to be to find passengers (as distance to the prospective passenger is important), but driving to another neighborhood certainly doesn't qualify as "searching" for anything.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#102

Post by samolang »

eridius wrote: post #98
potatolicious wrote: post #11

Wow. This is low. The statement is absolute bullshit too: "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics." No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that". I live in NYC. The Uber app has now been banished from my phone. It's too bad the Gett app is kind of an unpolished turd.

It's pretty clear they were doing this to harvest phone numbers of drivers (why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?) rather than any attempt to actually disrupt Gett's business. I would be rather hesitant to call this "fraud", as that's a very serious allegation.

And they paid cancellation fees.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#103

Post by smoyer »

leephillips wrote: post #88
smoyer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to call it "price-gouging", let's at least admit it's a natural part of business. Take a look at hotel rates when there's a near-by convention, air-line ticket prices over the Christmas holidays or even the prices quoted by corporate sales at businesses like Cisco, Oracle, etc. There's not a law that says you have to charge everyone the same rate - just that you can't base it on certain types of discr…

It's not my term, it's defined by the statutes of many states, including NY: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/GBS/26/396-r The idea is that jacking up prices to take advantage of adverse conditions or emergencies is not the same as normal supply-and-demand based pricing in response to seasonal variations, etc. I don't know if Uber's practice fits the definition in the statute or if they're being investigated for it…

Uber has stated that their pricing is based on the number of people requesting rides (within some time slot if I remember correctly). So a snow storm might be deemed a natural disaster, but it might also lead to more people requesting rides (also triggering the price increases).

Yes, if there's not an increased demand during that snow-storm but they're caught with 5X prices, I think they'll be in trouble under those "price-gouging" laws.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#104

Post by pshin45 »

Gett probably should sue Uber, but what sucks is they (Gett) would have to divert precious money, time, and resources to fight a much bigger company with deeper products and better lawyers, which takes focus away from product and growth, which decreases their probability of success long-term.

Very shitty, lose-lose situation for Gett. The fact that they got "free PR" out of this CNN article is probably small consolation.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#105

Post by GarrettBeck »

potatolicious wrote: post #11

Wow. This is low. The statement is absolute bullshit too: "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics." No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that". I live in NYC. The Uber app has now been banished from my phone. It's too bad the Gett app is kind of an unpolished turd.

There are consequences larger than "hey, stop that."

Even Uber's legal representation said they could be liable for damages:

If Uber employees intentionally diverted Gett drivers from legitimate business by making phony calls, that is an unfair business practice, illegal under California law," he said. "It is also an intentional interference with Gett's business which makes them liable for money damages.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#106

Post by xux »

icebraining wrote: post #66
xux wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? You can say that about any large tech companies. Google wasn't the first search engine. Apple didn't make the first music player. Facebook wasn't the first social network. Being unique doesn't matter a single bit. Only thing that matters is that people are using them. And that's the case with Uber. Judge however you will their shady tactics, but it's ridiculous to downplay their success based on that.

Who is downplaying their success? The point is that it's not ridiculous to call Gett a rival instead of a clone.

>The extension from "call the car company to get a car" to "use an app to get a car" is a pretty obvious innovation, particularly in NYC.

Sounds like downplaying success to me. Everything is obvious once it's done.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#107

Post by jacquesc »

I almost remember when Uber was the good guy. Stories like this keep popping up everywhere.

It's a competitive market, but there's better ways to grow than attacking competitors and banning developers (earlier story) who try to do interesting things to extend your service.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#108

Post by untog »

eridius wrote: post #98
potatolicious wrote: post #11

Wow. This is low. The statement is absolute bullshit too: "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics." No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that". I live in NYC. The Uber app has now been banished from my phone. It's too bad the Gett app is kind of an unpolished turd.

It's pretty clear they were doing this to harvest phone numbers of drivers (why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?) rather than any attempt to actually disrupt Gett's business. I would be rather hesitant to call this "fraud", as that's a very serious allegation.

(why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?)

Presumably so that the customer can contact the driver if they need to pass on instructions about a specific place to be picked up, etc.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#109

Post by eridius »

defen wrote: post #7

Between this and how they handled the girl who was killed by an Uber driver on New Year's Eve in San Francisco...my opinion of them has taken a decided turn for the worse in the past few weeks. And for both, I can't help but think that company culture is set from the top.

I hadn't heard of this before, so I just googled it and read the top half-dozen news stories in addition to Uber's own blog. And honestly, I don't see that Uber did anything wrong. They opened with a statement offering condolences to the family. They then confirmed that the accident did not involve an active driver ("a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system"). They followed this up by urging the police to release information on the driver. So it sounds like they could confirm no active trips were involved in the accident, but had no way to find out if a driver without a trip was involved.

Then later (I think on Jan 2nd?) they updated their blog post, presumably in response to details of the driver being released, to confirm that the driver was an Uber driver (just not one on an active trip), and that he has been deactivated.

Then it closes by repeating the condolences to the family.

I agree that it would have been nice if Uber could have confirmed that the driver worked for them initially, but it's not obvious that they were even in a position to find that out before details on the driver were released.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#110

Post by eridius »

untog wrote: post #108
eridius wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear they were doing this to harvest phone numbers of drivers (why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?) rather than any attempt to actually disrupt Gett's business. I would be rather hesitant to call this "fraud", as that's a very serious allegation.

(why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?) Presumably so that the customer can contact the driver if they need to pass on instructions about a specific place to be picked up, etc.

Uber handles this by having a button in their app that initiates the phone call. You can't find out a driver's number without actually calling them. Similarly, they can't find out yours without actually calling you.

Theoretically, if the company can get a bunch of phone #s, they could even completely anonymize it by assigning two temporary numbers (one to driver, one to passenger) and call-forwarding them for the duration of the trip. I havent' checked but I doubt anybody actually does this. And in the absence of this level of anonymity, I would at the very least expect a car service app to require you to place the call before giving you the phone # of the other person.

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