201–210 of 218 posts
Just this morning there was a story on NPR about how Uber has price-gouging built into their system: during a snowstorm you may pay something like 5x the normal fare.
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They're paying cancellation fees. If I order a bunch of pizzas from Pizza Hut in order to find out who the drivers were, and paid for them , then there's no issue. Even though I don't intend on eating the pizzas, I still paid for the service. In this case, Uber is paying the cancellation fees for the privilege of booking, then cancelling, a Gett ride.
With the intent to disrupt business. They can be easily sued for this practice. This isn't a consumer doing so, this is a company having their employees vehemently attack a competitor.
I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a company that was founded on the principle of giving their customers the experience of being a baller.
I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.
I'll be looking to find a boring company that just shows up, doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period and has respect for other organizations.
I once loved you, but now I'm leaving you.
Sincerely, Brian McDonough
Dear Uber, I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a company that was founded on the principle of giving their customers the experience of being a baller. I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience. I'll be looking to find a boring company that just shows up, doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period and has respect for other organizations. I once loved you, but now I'm leaving you. Si…
>I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.
You can use the Uber app to get cabs or lower cost UberX. UberX is actually cheaper than most cabs while providing the convenience of ordering electronically, knowing roughly how long to wait, and paying electronically (with receipts.)
>doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period
There have been some interesting discussion about this on Travis Kalanick's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/traviskal?fref=ts, December 24, 2013) which basically say that the alternative to surge pricing would be not being able to get a ride at all. Some people on that thread suggested that the Uber client could be improved to let people get notified when the rate goes back down and other UX improvements and Travis said the team would consider those changes.
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...after what they were doing was exposed.
No, they paid cancellation fees because you get charged when you cancel. This wasn't "Oh, sorry, here's $10."
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It's not automatic. I've had to legitimately cancel before and have never been charged a fee.
Have you cancelled on the day of or within just a few hours of the scheduled pickup time?
Not sure about this company, but for Uber the cancellation fee should only happen if you cancel after five minutes of scheduling a ride. I've seen Lyft and other rideshare companies have similar policies.
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If you order pizzas and pay for them, you're completely the transaction as expected. If you order a car from a car service and then cancel it, you're not. The fact that a cancellation fee exists doesn't give you the right to use the system in such an unintended manner. A better analogy than the pizza analogy might be a "customer" repeatedly buying clothes with the intent to wear and then return them. Despite the fact…
There is nothing illegal about repeatedly buying clothes, then returning. If I do that enough the store may bar me from the premises for being exceedingly annoying, but they certainly can't charge me with anything.
Get a bunch of people to repeatedly queue up but when they get to the counter decide they don't want to order anything.
Just the sight of a long queue outside the door is going to put off legit customers
Clearly Uber are engaging in activities to disrupt and cause harm to the business of their competitor.
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.
I hadn't heard of this before, so I just googled it and read the top half-dozen news stories in addition to Uber's own blog. And honestly, I don't see that Uber did anything wrong. They opened with a statement offering condolences to the family. They then confirmed that the accident did not involve an active driver ("a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system"). They followed this up by urging the police t…
If a Yellow Cab driver killed someone do you think they would deny, admit and then caveat with 'but he doesnt really work for us because he didnt have a passenger in the car and his lunch break was coming up blah blah blah'
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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.
I haven't seen an instance of caller ID being 'futzed' with in domestic calls from domestic mobile phone numbers, but I agree it could happen for people roaming internationally.