181–190 of 281 posts
Uber is an interesting company in that they were always shady, but initially in ways that customers liked (somewhat illegal taxis ripping off their drivers, for below cost, subsidized lifestyle by VC). They then flipped the "make a profit" switch and are now shady in ways customers dislike (ripping you the customer off).
This is literally the business model of most VC and public companies.
The latest dark pattern in all these apps is that they will mess up your order/ride and then "refund" you in the form of account credit. There's no way to actually get your money back. Trying to contact support results in an endless loop of help screens and chatbots. If you are able to figure out the magic combination of options that will get you to a support agent they will say "sure we will refund your money" but t…
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.
Support would not refund the yearly subscription despite an obvious change to the economic terms of the subscription and so a chargeback was issued which the credit card company agreed with.
Ransomware screen now on the account to the effect of "Pay $100 Immediately To Regain Your Account" with no transactions possible unless the ransom is paid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience, in Australia; you don’t get to select the item that was wrong, and simply get a refund on the cheapest item. Seems the vendors are catching on, with orders often dramatically wrong without any consequence. This is pure speculation, however. I also found vendors would often substitute items out of stock with those of a lesser value, but write a semi-cute message on it. Nothing like buying some fancy…
I've never had any of these problems at all with uber eats, probably part of why I use it so often. I click "help with a past order" and the first option I get is "my order was wrong" if I click it, it presents me with my order and everything I paid for and asks me what to pick that is wrong, it then asks for a photo if it's a larger $ item (unless it's missing) and then it asks me if I want a refund via card or cred…
The latest dark pattern in all these apps is that they will mess up your order/ride and then "refund" you in the form of account credit. There's no way to actually get your money back. Trying to contact support results in an endless loop of help screens and chatbots. If you are able to figure out the magic combination of options that will get you to a support agent they will say "sure we will refund your money" but t…
I still can't fathom why so many customers voluntarily subject themselves to abuse by food delivery services. Overpay for cold, late food (which the driver might have already sampled). I mean I can sort of understand the use case for customers who are stuck at home due to illness or something. But I've seen plenty of young people in good health waste scarce funds on UberEats and similar services. Why? When I want tak…
It's always here within 10-15 minutes. It's never been cold, and the bags are stapled shut, so I don't think the meals have ever been sampled.
Plus it feels nice to be able to stay in sometimes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have lived in this state for 5 years. Lyft works great! The full story is I requested a ride to an Air Force base and the driver was not able to take us there due to restrictions at the base. We requested the driver drop us off at a restaurant just outside of the base. The ride we were on was cancelled, a new one created, and calculated as if we were originating at our point of embarkation at the same time all of t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have heard a lot of people speak about dynamic pricing, but I have yet to hear any benefit to the consumer or society as a whole. Basically any possible pitch for it is worse in every way than simple downward wealth redistribution.
I’m bearish on uber because despite all of these shady tactics they are still barely profitable at the current scale and with enormous tailwinds. Last quarter they made $770 million on $12 billion of revenue. It’s just a lousy business model and they are desperate to beat Wall Street’s ever inflated expectations each quarter.
I wonder how automation will affect things. Just recently, Uber (with some partner) started testing delivery robots in my (city) neighborhood. And I love Waymo, as much as I've been able to use them. Maybe automation will change the economics. Also, IIRC, for many years, Amazon barely squeaked a profit. They wanted to be at the low end of the margins to capture market share. Once they got big enough, they increased t…
They report things like foreign currency transactions and stock based compensation as free cash flow.
The hope with uber is that they become an aggregator of AVs which belies an assumption that autonomous vehicles will essentially be a commodity. Or perhaps that AVs take much longer to become practical at scale than people think.
But one of the biggest red flags to me with this company is how they aggressively buy back stock and publicly announce that they believe it’s undervalued. You’re in the midst of an extremely competitive emerging market and your best idea for your cash is to… buy stock?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think we're referring to the same concept. Dynamic pricing implies charging two different concurrent customers different prices for the same good or service. The only place you can see this now are basically reward/promo/point programs, which while also gross (basically, making transactiobs cheaper for the rich) at least seem to have some proponents.
You are thinking of price discrimination, which is a subcategory of dynamic pricing. Changing prices based on time of day, current demand, tiers/SKUs or really anything else is also collectively dynamic pricing.
Still, wildly volatile pricing is also an excellent reason to avoid taxi apps. Why politicians have no desire to rein them in is baffling. I guess the stock market is really all that matters at the end of the day....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For individual chargebacks and small scammy merchants, sure. Uber meanwhile processes $40 billion worth of transactions a year. There is zero chance they are facing any kind of "discipline" from credit card operators. At that volume they write their own terms.
What's Uber going to do to VISA if VISA honors the chargeback? Not accept VISA? Your card provider needs to keep you happy far more than your card provider needs to keep Uber happy.