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Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

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Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#111

Post by potatolicious »

baddox wrote: post #89
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.

> No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that". If you're suggesting that they should be prosecuted, then we can argue that, but Uber is not able to prosecute members of its team. What do you expect Uber to do, other than to stop the behavior?

Uber is fully within their rights to levy punishments (up to and including firing) for members of its team.

In this forum we talk constantly about onerous government regulations and the long arm of the law. There are many perfectly legal ways companies can punish or sanction its employees, and IMO it's an eminently good idea to do so.

If you don't want to the government getting all up in your face you're going to have to self-regulate to some degree. Punishing employees who behave unethically is a part of this.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#112

Post by gkop »

nailer wrote: post #27
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.

For reference: http://blog.uber.com/2014/01/01/statement-on-new-years-eve-a...

Note their sloppy job of hiding the livefyre comments only for this post (hint: they forgot to remove the comment count).

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#113

Post by eridius »

hristov wrote: post #64
icebraining wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The network effects will take care of the competition. Will it? Why? Unlike social networks, I don't see why would Uber benefit particularly from network effects; it doesn't even have switching costs, since the consumer can use both concurrently.

Each Uber user benefits when there are more Uber drivers. They can get rides faster and more conveniently. Each Uber driver benefits when there are more Uber users. They can get clients faster and closer to their current position and thus make more money with less downtime. These are the network effects. A consumer can use Uber and a competitor. This, however, is not unlike social networks, it is entirely like social…

This is not true. Users and drivers benefit when the number of drivers and the number of users are in a good enough balance, such that there are enough free drivers on the road to be able to have one near to each prospective user, but not so much as to be wasteful.

But the absolute numbers of each do not matter. Adding more drivers does not benefit existing users if more users are added as well to cause those drivers to be active on trips whenever a new user tries to book a trip. And adding more users without adding more drivers is, of course, bad for the users, because it produces a scarcity of cars.

This is pretty much wholly unrelated to the idea of network effects.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#114

Post by aetherson »

GarrettBeck wrote: post #105
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.

That's not Uber's legal representation, it's "San Francisco-based attorney Drexel Bradshaw." Nowhere does it suggest that Bradshaw is associated with Uber. Here is Mr. Bradshaw's profile page from his law firm (from a cursory Google search): http://www.bradshawassociates.com/Bio/DrexelBradshaw.php

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#115

Post by aioprisan »

kenrikm wrote: post #87
yapcguy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this will be resolved in a court of law. Just in the past few weeks... "Uber Driver Arrested in San Francisco Crash That Killed Girl" http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Uber-Driver-Arrested-in... "Lyft Driver Hits Elderly Woman in San Francisco Crosswalk" http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Lyft-Driver-Hits-Elderl...

Both links are the same story.

No it's not, they're different stories about different services' off-duty drivers being involved in accidents.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#116

Post by differentView »

amirmc wrote: post #83
maxbrown wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? This is the best part of the story...that their actions were what made me aware of their competitor.

> "... their actions were what made me aware ..." Point of pedantry: You're aware because someone wrote an article and someone else posted it here. I wonder how many other locations have tried similar tactics but not been widely exposed.

He is aware because of all those things, including his brain processing the words he read, but the only thing controlled by Uber is their actions.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#117

Post by eridius »

yapcguy wrote: post #58
hbags wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt that a company as unethical to the bones as Uber would ever consider firing them.

Shitty company employing shitty people. "Uber Driver Allegedly Locks Passenger In Car, Gives Himself Five-Star Rating" http://laist.com/2014/01/21/uber_driver_locks_passenger_in_c...

I had not heard of this before, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Uber said they're looking into the matter. I would assume that, if this story is actually true (I'm inclined to believe it is, but sometimes people do make things up), then the driver will be fired. I don't know what else you're expecting them to do.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#118

Post by eridius »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #74
livejamie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate; how would you have had them handle the New Year's Eve situation better?

They could acknowledge the driver was working for them. That would be a start.

As I said in another comment, that even assumes they were capable of knowing the driver was working for them. In their blog post they asked police to release details of the driver, with a statement saying that any driver involved in a serious law enforcement issue would be deactivated (i.e. fired). Then in the update, they confirmed that the driver (whose details were presumably released at that point) did work for them and was in fact deactivated as a result.

To my reading, it sounds like they simply had no way of knowing that the driver worked for them without the police giving them details on the driver.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#119

Post by enjo »

samolang wrote: post #102
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.

And they paid cancellation fees.

What is Gett's cancellation policy?

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#120

Post by eridius »

yapcguy wrote: post #60
pmorici wrote: post #14

It's interesting that all these ride services are so aggressive about recruiting drivers. I looked into driving for them to make a few extra bucks and the one thing they could do to get a leg up on their competition is clarify the insurance situation. They all essentially claim that a driver's personal auto insurance is good enough and combined with the companies umbrella policy provides sufficient coverage. But then…

Maybe this will be resolved in a court of law. Just in the past few weeks... "Uber Driver Arrested in San Francisco Crash That Killed Girl" http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Uber-Driver-Arrested-in... "Lyft Driver Hits Elderly Woman in San Francisco Crosswalk" http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Lyft-Driver-Hits-Elderl...

Interesting, an Uber driver hits someone (while not even on a trip), they release a blog post that starts with condolences to the family, and apparently a lot of people (i.e. hacker news commenters) get upset at Uber.

A Lyft driver hits someone (while active on a trip), Lyft doesn't issue a blog post (a news story contained a paraphrased "statement from Lyft", but I see nothing on Lyft's own blog), and hacker news doesn't seem to care.

This strikes me as pretty strange.

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