151–160 of 281 posts
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Where exactly is Uber the only option?
There are lots of places in the US where if you don't have a car your only reasonable options are an Uber/Lyft or calling a cab that may or may not arrive.
Thus being blacklisted by them seems like a non issue, unless there’s local monopolies somewhere.
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These apps make the majority of their revenue from dense urban areas where people don't own cars. No one is driving across New York or San Francisco or to pick up their dinner.
If you live in NY or SF then you have multiple restaurants within easy walking / cycling / subway distance.
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If you live in NY or SF then you have multiple restaurants within easy walking / cycling / subway distance.
Umm, no, there are 4.6 million people living in the SF metro area and twice that in New York. I can assure you very few of them are within walking/easy transit distance of good restaurants. And most have responsibilities that don't let them get out of the house for dinner. If an hour of your time is more valuable to you than $5 then why wouldn't you order food delivery?
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Who is Visa / MC / AMEX going to side with? The company that gets them hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year or a random account holder? It doesn't really matter who is right or wrong.
If it becomes a systemic problem, the CC companies will absolutely drop merchants or entire industries. CC companies, especially in the states, almost always favor the cardholder over the merchant.
Visa/MasterCard/Discover/etc are little more than clearing houses.
Banks serve as both issuers (to the consumer) and processors (to the merchant), often times both.
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Have you ever considered that perhaps others conduct themselves differently? I live in a small city. When I travel, I generally have to be at the airport or train station between 4 and 530 AM. Uber put the taxis out of business, so the choice is Uber, Lyft, wasting a half hour and alot of money parking, or trying to find a black car service. I was in Rome for business. The choice is Uber or the local cab hailing app,…
Heh, Rome!! The meter wrote €40, the taxi driver asked for €60. He tried verbal-aggression and threatened to call the police. I took a photo of the meter and asked him to please call the police, I will show them the photo and tell them that he threatened me. He took the €40 and went his merry way. Once upon a time (around 2005-2006) I had a colleague whose father was a taxi driver. He (the colleague) was openly telli…
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The worst thing is that you can't even do a chargeback, otherwise you get banned. There is no recourse for the consumer. If this is their solution for fighting chargebacks, they should get banned from accepting Visa / MC / AMEX.
Another sketchy practice: if you get Uber Cash through a card like Amex, when you go to use it the price for the ride is automatically $15-$20 more than someone who doesn’t have an Uber Cash balance. I’ve checked this side by side with colleagues at the airport getting ride quotes to the same hotel. When you have Uber Cash they will quote you more. You can find numerous Reddit threads on the topic as well. This feels…
Basically any possible pitch for it is worse in every way than simple downward wealth redistribution.
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The last time I checked I just had to pay 1,50€ extra compared to ordering directly with the restaurant. The delivery itself is free with Uber One. Getting your food delivered for 1,50€ seems pretty cheap to me.
I've tried a few times (whenever somebody sent that sort of gift card my way), and it was always >$10 in explicit fees, plus all the menu items being silently marked up 20%. Mind you, that's still not exactly "expensive" for delivery [0], but I can make better food both faster and cheaper than waiting, I can pick it up and actually use an insulated bag faster than waiting for delivery, and pretty much any other food…
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Not to mention they don't refund you you when they fail to deliver the car on expected arrival.
This is my biggest aggravation. They consistently underreport estimated pickup times. Dropoff times are essentially universally significantly later than the estimate before booking. It's things like this that make agents potentially exciting. So much of enshittification is wrapping an essentially good service in a crappy and misleading UI to drive extra revenue. If you can replace the lying UI with a more honest one,…
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An accurate estimate isn't really possible with the food delivery business model. Couriers will have 2-3 orders, so if you are order 1 or two, there is a new variable that enters the equation after you purchase the food. They obviously add other items on a similar route, but wait times and such are fairly random). Of course they could do 1 order to 1 driver but that would double the labor costs (sequential orders wou…
That doesn't explain why the delivery consistently jumps 30% to 50% as soon as you hit the confirm button and they process your payment. If they were giving an honest estimate, you'd expect a gradual increase in the estimate as the delivery person showed up 2 minutes late at point A, then 5 minutes late at point B, then 10 minutes late at point C, etc. The Uber Eats delivery time estimates are a lie, plain and simple…
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This is the same thing the food delivery apps (including Uber Eats) do. I have screenshots showing the estimated delivery time pretty consistently jumping up anywhere between 20% and 50% from what it shows on the initial screen to what you get once you've placed the order. And then often they don't even make that time estimate.
An accurate estimate isn't really possible with the food delivery business model. Couriers will have 2-3 orders, so if you are order 1 or two, there is a new variable that enters the equation after you purchase the food. They obviously add other items on a similar route, but wait times and such are fairly random). Of course they could do 1 order to 1 driver but that would double the labor costs (sequential orders wou…