Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

161–170 of 520 posts

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

#161
post #144

On one hand i am glad that a transnational company is getting stopped like that, especially when breaking the rules. they are basically a giant money hoover that comes in and sucks the money offshore with offshore interests as #1 priority. on the other hand, often it often takes an outsider to disrupt a well established and corrupt market in order to move it forward.

they were regularly using uninsured drivers and not vetting. So unfit is fair.

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

#163
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your inability to follow the cultural norm is actually at fault here, not the rating system. What you’re doing is akin to tipping 5% in restaurants in the US and only tipping 15% when you have an outstanding experience. In reality, restaurants workers in the USA would expect 15% to 20% unless they dramatically fucked up. I don’t like the tipping system either, but I’m also not going to be that asshole who tries to ch…

From what I have heard from drivers, anything less than 5 stars is bad. Not only with Uber, but with all those companies pushing customers to review their employees. The system is counterintuitive and most people get it wrong at the beginning. Compare what makes you rate 5 stars when you buy a product to your Uber rating system. However, the think that irks me the most is that rating everyday experiences is just dumb…

[deleted]

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

#164

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…

it costs 100 quid to go from heathrow to zone 3 via black cab, and about 35 for uber. "Uber of course go with phone you then just don't show if they don't like the route and waste half and hour of yours. At least it was a two way conversation with a cabbie." I completely disagree. The uber app shows the route the driver is taking and offers way more transparency than a black cab.

It doesn't matter if it shows the route. Uber in my experience will side with the driver if they take a bad route. I was swindled for triple the price because of a fictitious gas leak. Driver took a very circuitous route that just so happened to take in some very fast roads to increase distance and price. When I complained to Uber they just said it was a normal route. On the map the route looks like a sickle. How can anyone look at that as normal?

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

#165
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can see your trip, its aproximate cost, the driver's rating Here's the thing: I don't want to rate my driver. I want to be able to rely on a third party that all available drivers are punctual and competent. It is not a choice I want to make. Too much responsibility is already dumped on consumers under the guise of choice. Quality control of services I utilize is something I expect to pay for.

> 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…

That's exactly what bugs me so much about Trip Advisor ratings. Even then, when they still had some utility.

When you have a 5* scale for rating a restaurant my description would be:

  *      A disaster level lousy place
  **     Sub par. Probably wouldn't visit again
  ***    Quite OK. Probably not my fave anytime soon, but 
         fine
  ****   Above average. Excellent food, service and 
         atmosphere
  *****  An out of this world dining experience. Perfect in 
         every aspect
I realise that there is a certain amount of relativity and subjectivity and that a 5* Trip Advisor review is not necessarily equal to three stars by Guide Michelin.

But it should mean something and when most restaurants have something between 4 and 5 stars (Let alone that the #1 rated restaurant in London was one, which didn't exist[1]) the value of such ratings become very questionable.

You can see the exact same with Airbnb ratings where 4 -, or 5 star does not mean that you will have a great experience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shed_at_Dulwich

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

#166

>At least 14,000 trips involved drivers who weren’t who the riders thought they were, any idea what the source of this info is? And not sure what the timeframe here is. Is it 14000 since Uber started operating in london?

Where I live people give their phones and unlock code to others to drive under their name. They usually do this for drivers who can't pass a background check or even don't have a driver's license, but still need money.

The legit driver almost always gets a cut for this, free money on your vacation days or while you're working other, better jobs.

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

#167
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that there are something like 20,000 black cabs in London, I'm seeing your one outlier from 10 years ago as a pretty solid argument in favor of them. And that's before we start debating about the merits of driver vetting processes and vehicle maintenance requirements.

Private hire drivers are vetted, and their cars have to undergo enhanced MOTs

And this is why Uber lots it's license. It wasn't properly vetting private hire drivers. It's not hard. Follow the rules and they'll get their license back.

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

#168

>At least 14,000 trips involved drivers who weren’t who the riders thought they were, any idea what the source of this info is? And not sure what the timeframe here is. Is it 14000 since Uber started operating in london?

IIRC you can complain (either on uber or uber eats) that the driver didn't look like their photo. It might be from that. Not sure how else they can get the info

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

#169
post #152
post #144

On one hand i am glad that a transnational company is getting stopped like that, especially when breaking the rules. they are basically a giant money hoover that comes in and sucks the money offshore with offshore interests as #1 priority. on the other hand, often it often takes an outsider to disrupt a well established and corrupt market in order to move it forward.

I share your feelings exactly. When I was in London, the ease of ordering a ride with your smartphone was a reliable comfort in a foreign land. Maybe if I hadn't undergone shitty experiences in Paris et al. being swindled by the train operations, I wouldn't be taking Uber's side, but it just is that Uber has just worked for me so many times when other options failed.

Same here. Most of the taxi drivers in the city where I live only take cash, and every time I have ridden with one, they have cheated and taken a detour.

Uber, automatic payment by card and no cheating on the route.

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

#170
post #144

On one hand i am glad that a transnational company is getting stopped like that, especially when breaking the rules. they are basically a giant money hoover that comes in and sucks the money offshore with offshore interests as #1 priority. on the other hand, often it often takes an outsider to disrupt a well established and corrupt market in order to move it forward.

I'm not entirely sure it's fair to say that London's minicab market was particularly corrupt. Uber's real success in London was marketing and investment meaning that it'd could grow rapidly, I believe Addison Lee had a booking app concept at the time, so not even that was particularly new.
Post reply on HN