Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#111

Post by 0xcafecafe » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

_vrmm wrote: post #10

I know this opinion is not popular but I'm so happy everytime I see bad news for Uber and all these companies that only exist thanks to basically exploiting THEIR workers. Private transporting is not sustainable and it is not something that has to be affordable for everyone, even less by lowering workers wages or playing with the tariffs by demand. Taxi regulations gives us passengers safety and fair prices. There ar…

>> There are taxi apps that work exactly like Uber's like 'Free-now' where you can see your trip, its aproximate cost, the driver's rating...

Pre uber hailing a cab from a location other than the airport in Atlanta where I live was impossible. You'd have to call their 1-800 number hours in advance with no guarantee of it being serviced. Even if such apps exist now it might be due to uber pushing the envelope. Uber and other ride sharing service might not be relevant in the NYCs, Chicagos and Londons of the world but for cities like ours they were a godsend.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#112

Post by nottorp » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #57

I'd be very happy to see uber kicked out of London long enough for a competitor to take hold. I simply do not trust the company. I accept that the market pressure uber has brought has improved transportation. I do not accept that uber and its repeated atrocious behaviors required for this. Its a shame that uber can so easily bypass tfl with appeals and minor changes.

If uber gets kicked out, the rest of its modern competitors will follow (Uber is big enough to litigate succesfully, but not all are), and you'll be back to the black cabs.

90% of the time, uber is being kicked not because of any concern for safety, but because of traditional taxi company lobbying.

Source: personal experience in 2 cities.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#113

Post by throwawayhhakdl » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #61

I don't usually use Uber —we live in a place where it just doesn't exist— but I've been exposed to it a couple of times this last weekend. It's private hire but worse. A family member booked. A driver committed. The wait got shorter. Then it got longer. And longer. And then our trip was cancelled without reason. Another was booked. Same gig. We had no opportunity to 1-star those drivers for being dicks. The third arr…

> Being able to talk to a manned rank in actual contact with their drivers is so much better in practice.

The counterpoint seems obvious here. That’s more expensive. Even more than hypothetical unsubsidized Uber. There’s lots of valid complaints against Uber. These feel like the lowest priority ones available. Uber is about cheap prices and secondly low interaction costs.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#114

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

>>> Uber initially lost its licence in 2017 but was granted two extensions, the most recent of which expired on Sunday. The firm will appeal and can continue to operate during that process.

What a time to be alive. Don't have and don't need a license.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#115

Post by UK-Al05 » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #95

UK-Al05 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"exploiting THEIR workers." - The UK has full employment right now. If they're working uber, they're doing it because they like working for Uber.

What a ridiculous position - the UK only has full employment right now in part because of the tactics of companies like Uber. Gig-economy companies pump the "self-employed" figures with poor wages, hidden costs, and no employment benefits. You could pay the whole country a penny a day if all you cared about was boosting a number metric. It wouldn't somehow translate to worker satisfaction.

You have to remember that people work for the best option they have right now. If uber wasn't their best option they simply move to a better job.

If you ban uber you simply remove the current best option for most people working for uber. You would worsen the conditions for them.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#116

Post by NeedMoreTea » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

bloke_zero wrote: post #89

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I remember London black cabs as mainly being a reliable service with reliable drivers. I'd rather have a driver with their route knowledge in their head than one blindly relying on GPS. At least they can make intelligent choices when problems crop up. Not that it was completely without problems, but compared to say NYC cabs they were worlds apart. Sure, there was a problem for a while with rogue unregistered c…

In London minicabs and black cabs are very different. Black cabs can be hailed whereas minicabs have to be booked and are regulated differently.

Yeah I know, that's why I pointed out that it was mainly private hire. Yet it wasn't solely them as most black cab firms also took calls and bookings and despatched just like minicabs, opening them up to the same scam. Genuine street hire only black cabs still exist, but they're pretty damn rare now.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#117

Post by mikojan » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

_vrmm wrote: post #10

I know this opinion is not popular but I'm so happy everytime I see bad news for Uber and all these companies that only exist thanks to basically exploiting THEIR workers. Private transporting is not sustainable and it is not something that has to be affordable for everyone, even less by lowering workers wages or playing with the tariffs by demand. Taxi regulations gives us passengers safety and fair prices. There ar…

Yes, super exploiting their drivers is a necessity for their success. But there are others. Governments have been intentionally crippling public transportation for the past 40 years or so in many western countries. And they have been shifting resources to private transportation. Liberalizing labor law - or more precisely: transferring authority over labor law to unaccountable private tyrannies - is another. And the UK was pretty much leading this assault. Even now the German government is working aggressively towards scrapping the Passenger Transportation Act which they are refusing to enforce consistently anyway and which at least in theory puts a cap on the life span of this horrible business model.

Uber at the end of a day is just a private enterprise operating (mostly) consistent with the law and with it's function as a private enterprise which is to make money for its shareholders. Blaming them for this is akin to blaming the puppy eating monster for eating the puppies we give them. Who the f- thought that would be a good idea to begin with?

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#118

Post by AllanHoustonSt » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

asah wrote: post #81

_vrmm wrote: post #10

I know this opinion is not popular but I'm so happy everytime I see bad news for Uber and all these companies that only exist thanks to basically exploiting THEIR workers. Private transporting is not sustainable and it is not something that has to be affordable for everyone, even less by lowering workers wages or playing with the tariffs by demand. Taxi regulations gives us passengers safety and fair prices. There ar…

NYer here: you should read how the taxi companies exploited their workers. And NYC was at least regulated. Moreover, the cabs were filthy, they often refused passengers due to race, disability or other illegal prejudice, refused certain destinations, spoke little English, didn't know the city, would drive inefficiently to drive up costs and on and on. Oh, and cellphones arrived and they did NOTHING until Uber pushed…

Also good luck getting reasonable (or any) cab service outside of Manhattan and NW Brooklyn. It was even worse pre rideshare days. Those are the areas that would need something like rideshare more since they're both less dense with less expansive public transit.

I don't know if private transport is ultimately unsustainable. That's something people much smarter than me will have to figure out how to measure. But I do know rideshare is objectively a better product for consumers across the board than the services it replaced.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#119

Post by jonplackett » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:23 PM UTC

London resident here. I would like to see Uber compared to the existing mini cab companies and black cabs rather than some perfect vision of a taxi company.

Uber took off here easily because existing minicabs were all really really crap. Not just expensive but often rude or incompetent drivers. I would guess a lot of them were unregistered and uninsured and their cars barely road legal.

Black cabs are Better but very expensive and still rip off tourists all the tine by charging without the meter. Even with the meter it was impossible to get any idea how much a trip would cost before you took it. And you needed cash.

Example: One time I got a minicab, it took the guy over half an hour to arrive, then he had to actually find me which took even longer. Then I realised the back seats of the car were full of vomit and he made me ride up front with the windows wide open - it was winter and cold. Then he didn’t know where he was going and got lost and then he charged me £30 for what would have cost £10 on Uber.

Uber, by comparison is great.

Re: Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

#120

Post by jankassens » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #98

Terretta wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want to rate my driver. I want to be able to rely on a third party... You sure can’t rely on the Uber, Lyft, Juno ratings. It’s 5 stars or bust. The social pressure on 5 stars is enormous. Netflix moved to thumbs up, thumbs down. YouTube did the same, after showing a graph of the 5s and 1s: https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/22/youtube-comes-to-a-5-star-... I relentlessly give an average delivery or ride 3 star…

Maybe they should scale your ratings based on your rating pattern. I don't know how to do it mathematically but there must be some way to normalize scores if you have enough data. Anybody knows how to do this?

I’d start with assuming everyone’s experience is normal distributed. Someone who always voted 3 stars probably had the same experience as someone who always voted 5 stars. I’d try out computing the normal distribution of the rater and see where on the distribution this particular vote fell.