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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

#141

Post by eridius »

yid wrote: post #127
eridius wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

> Uber handles this by having a button in their app that initiaates 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. Actually, I think they use some sort of phone proxy service. I once looked at my driver's phone and he had a totally different number listed for me that I did not recognize (same area code though).

Oh? So it sounds like Uber is doing something similar to what I proposed then. That's good.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#142

Post by eridius »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #126
eridius wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

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. You wouldn't even need a bunch of phone numbers. Assuming caller ID works correctly, you can use that to decide where to route the call. Customer A is calling? Route to Driver X? Driver Y is callin…

Well, that just cuts it down from 2 numbers to 1, and it assumes that the caller ID hasn't been futzed with. Certainly plausible, just perhaps slightly less reliable.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#143

Post by eridius »

aetherson wrote: post #121
eridius wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

I work for Flywheel, an Uber competitor. We do not expose driver or passenger phone numbers to either party at all (the exact mechanism is a little different than what you propose, but the effect is the same). Driver can call passenger and passenger can call driver and neither will ever see the other person's actual number.

Good for you. Since you're doing this, and according to yid, Uber is also doing something similar, I'm even more surprised that Gett is not only exposing real phone #'s, but doing so without even requiring a phone call to be placed.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#144

Post by diminoten »

eridius wrote: post #125
Gorbzel wrote: post #42

Lots of bantering about whether or not it's ethical / low. tl;dr: It probably is; Travis probably doesn't care. Honestly, since all that really matters to Uber is $$ and being forced to deal with the law (and even then only barely), Gett should just sue them. It's clearly illegal (putting aside differences between NY/CA law) and it proves the point in a way they'll be forced to notice.

Is it actually illegal? That seems to be very much a question, not a matter of fact. It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business. They were trying to harvest driver phone #s (so they could later try to hire away the drivers; while ethically dubious, this part does not seem illegal). Furthermore, they paid cancellation fees to Gett for doing this. It does not seem clear-cut to me at all t…

Does intent matter all that much when seeking damages like this? The damages happened, and Uber admitted to being the cause of the damages. If the law weren't some complex beast (and we know it really is, so this could be false), all Gett would have to do is prove damages, and prove that Uber did it, and that'd be that.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#145

Post by techreporter »

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.

They claim they paid cancellation fees. Gett claims the charges are pending. At this point it would be stupid of them to not let those charges through though.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#146

Post by johnrob »

scelerat wrote: post #95

This is one of the reasons traditional cab services are heavily regulated: to avoid these sorts of battles. It's in the interest of a municipality to have stable, predictable, reliable public transportation. Price wars, selective service, and tactics like these disrupt that stability.

One benefit of removing regulations is that we get to relearn why we needed them in the first place.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#147

Post by doktrin »

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.

> I would be rather hesitant to call this "fraud"

How exactly is this not fraud?

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#148

Post by chadwickthebold »

colinbartlett wrote: post #40

I love the doublespeak in the statement: "Our local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers" "opens up new economic opportunities" is that what we are calling "sales" now?

At least he didn't call it growth hacking.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#149

Post by doktrin »

eridius wrote: post #125
Gorbzel wrote: post #42

Lots of bantering about whether or not it's ethical / low. tl;dr: It probably is; Travis probably doesn't care. Honestly, since all that really matters to Uber is $$ and being forced to deal with the law (and even then only barely), Gett should just sue them. It's clearly illegal (putting aside differences between NY/CA law) and it proves the point in a way they'll be forced to notice.

Is it actually illegal? That seems to be very much a question, not a matter of fact. It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business. They were trying to harvest driver phone #s (so they could later try to hire away the drivers; while ethically dubious, this part does not seem illegal). Furthermore, they paid cancellation fees to Gett for doing this. It does not seem clear-cut to me at all t…

> It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business.

That's certainly Uber's stance, but it's not "obvious" at all :

> [OP] "In some cases, Herman said the Uber employees waited until the cars had showed up to cancel the order. Uber said the orders were all canceled immediately."

Deliberately waiting until the last minute to cancel a ride would certainly indicate intent to disrupt. That Uber is denying having done this should not exactly come as a surprise.

Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

#150

Post by placeybordeaux »

eridius wrote: post #101
yapcguy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would imagine that a large number of the drivers actually do drive around while searching as some areas are just awful to find parking in. Really the safest thing that Uber could do is to make it policy to only search over drivers that aren't in transit. Might hurt their buisness, but it is technically possible and most likely would give them a pretty strong defense against their product causing harm.
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