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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#261

Post by jmharvey »

mikeryan wrote: post #259
jmyeet wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your points but let me give you some counterpoints: 1. Taxi services are balkanized; 2. Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service; 3. Uber made the payment process seamless and I cannot overstate how important this is as a user. I hate dealing with NYC yellow…

Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing. Second there’s now services like Curb (in NYC) or Flywheel which allow you to use an Uber/Lyft style…

> First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing.

And maybe the driver would show up on time, or maybe they'd see a street hail en route to picking you up and decide to make you wait an extra 40 minutes. Uber drivers cancel, too, of course, but "automatically fall back to a different driver after a cancellation" is a meaningfully different experience.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#262

Post by AnotherGoodName »

_qua wrote: post #253
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to tell the taxi driver to turn the damn meter on every time without fail. It's ridiculous. I don't know how someone more vulnerable could possibly use taxis since it's basically attempted robbery every time you enter one. Hopefully Uber/Lift win and Taxis die. For the sake of the disabled, women and children at least. I wouldn't even mind if Uber cost more.

What's the scam there? Do they not turn on the meter and then beg for payment at the end of the ride?

Yep. They'll say "it's $80" and to which you need to ask "where does it say that on the meter?".

At that point it's an intimidation game as the Taxi driver will blatantly demand money for the ride they didn't have the meter on for. It's not fun. It's also happened almost every time i've taken a Taxi in the past 5 years. I think the people who still take Taxis are the vulnerable who don't have phones so they get scammed badly :(

Re: The Uber Bubble

#263

Post by saalweachter »

wefarrell wrote: post #86
darth_avocado wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legacy taxis were and still are a more expensive and inefficient business. Outside of airports and maybe cities like New York, hailing a taxi was a terrible experience. The scale of Uber despite their shitty business model, allows them to have a lot more drivers constantly on the road than traditional companies. This allows for an quicker availability of a cab at a moment’s notice. Anyone remember leaving a party bef…

Even in NYC hailing a taxi was a terrible experience if you were a minority or were traveling outside of Manhattan or North of 125th.

You also have to discard the "customer is always right" mindset when using taxis in NYC.

It is notoriously difficult to convince a taxi to take you cross-town. The few times I succeeded... it was a mistake, a miserable experience and it would have been faster to walk.

Conceptually it would be nice to just be able to get a taxi from point A to point B, no questions asked, and sometimes when a driver doesn't want to do it it comes down to racism or profit, but other times it's because you're asking to do something that isn't actually a good idea.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#264

Post by danamit »

presentation wrote: post #111
danamit wrote: post #90

All the complains in this thread seem like they can be solved by Uber easily, mainly by allowing drivers to set their price by themselves. Taxies in my country are so bad, it feels like you are asking them for a favor by using their service, not to mention they pick and choose if they wanna take you or no based on how profitable for them it is.

That defeats the selling point of Uber, you don’t just get a ride in one tap knowing how much you’ll end up paying anymore, unless you’re cool paying whatever the driver feels like they should be paid. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the idea though.

You enter A to B, you choose the driver based on what you wanna pay.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#265

Post by danamit »

SilasX wrote: post #199
danamit wrote: post #90

All the complains in this thread seem like they can be solved by Uber easily, mainly by allowing drivers to set their price by themselves. Taxies in my country are so bad, it feels like you are asking them for a favor by using their service, not to mention they pick and choose if they wanna take you or no based on how profitable for them it is.

We had that, in the form of Sidecar, whose model lost to Uber et al in 2014.

I won't attribute a whole company losing because one feature, I still see it as a valuable option.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#266

Post by dfadsadsf »

slfnflctd wrote: post #159
westcort wrote: post #35

My key takeaways: 1. Uber is actually a higher cost/less efficient producer of urban car services than the taxi companies it has driven out of business 2. Individual Uber drivers with limited capital cannot acquire, finance, maintain and insure vehicles more economically than Yellow Cab 3. Expenses other than drivers, vehicles, and fuel account for 15 percent of traditional taxi costs but Uber charges drivers 25-30 p…

> Uber charges drivers 25-30 percent You might be a little low there. In my direct experience as a driver pre-covid, it was close to 50%, and many drivers in the relevant subreddits have reported it frequently being more than that since. Imagine hearing a passenger complain about their $15 fare when you only see $6 of it (out of which you still have to cover your gas usage). 25-30 percent seems reasonable in comparis…

That’s not full story though - with incentives Uber cut is much smaller and in many cases drivers actually got more than the customer paid.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#267

Post by xenophonf »

_qua wrote: post #253
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to tell the taxi driver to turn the damn meter on every time without fail. It's ridiculous. I don't know how someone more vulnerable could possibly use taxis since it's basically attempted robbery every time you enter one. Hopefully Uber/Lift win and Taxis die. For the sake of the disabled, women and children at least. I wouldn't even mind if Uber cost more.

What's the scam there? Do they not turn on the meter and then beg for payment at the end of the ride?

They'll say the meter isn't working and offer a fixed rate that's usually way higher than what you should be paying. It's illegal in many jurisdictions for precisely this reason.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#268

Post by arthurofbabylon »

When traveling in India, I foolishly took a cycle rickshaw. It was gross/shameful. A man far less fortunate than I was sweating, working hard, barely getting paid, and breathing horribly polluted New Delhi air while I just sat there.

When Uber started to squeeze its drivers, I again felt just like this. I hated hearing drivers complain about their life problems. I hated doing the math and seeing how little these people were making out of this transaction. I hated feeling like a perpetrator of class division.

The common argument in support of Uber’s poor economics is their superior user experience compared to taxis. However, exploitative industry is a terrible “user experience” for the ethically- or morally-conscious. And that’s just the privileged party’s perspective…

Re: The Uber Bubble

#269

Post by hprotagonist »

vt240 wrote: post #84
emteycz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk with the driver few times? I never had a Uber driver who said they would rather have a normal job. 500+ rides.

I have a good friend, ex-Navy submariner, and highly competent industrial technician. He's been driving for Doordash since 2019 now, because he just can't ever make it work with any kind of management in a typical corporate or small-business environment. I'm sure he'd be much more productive as a consultant, in his field of expertise if there were an app for that, but for him, the gig-econonmy, accepting all its down…

another Deliverator.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#270

Post by mikeryan »

jmharvey wrote: post #261
mikeryan wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing. Second there’s now services like Curb (in NYC) or Flywheel which allow you to use an Uber/Lyft style…

> First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing. And maybe the driver would show up on time, or maybe they'd see a street hail en route to picking you up and decide to make you wait an extra 40 minutes. Uber drivers cancel, too, of course, but "automatically fall back to a different driver after a cancellation" is a meaningfu…

And maybe the driver would show up on time, or maybe they'd see a street hail en route to picking you up and decide to make you wait an extra 40 minutes.

That’s not how it worked, or works (see Curb). You didn’t schedule a particular cab you call the cab service and the dispatcher sends a cab to you and makes sure they got there. If they didn’t show up you call dispatch back and they call the guy and find out what the hell happened and/or dispatch someone else.

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