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.
Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
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Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#32I love it, great scrappiness from the local team. As CEO i'd have a good chuckle, and tell them to tone it down a bit. Generous of the article to refer to Gett as a "rival" and not a clone.
I'm curious, do you think all of those "X but on the internet " patents are good inventions worthy of 17 years of government protection? Because this is basically the same thing. Uber provides a service that has been around for centuries, it's just " on smartphones ". Is that really sufficiently unique to call other people who do it "a clone"?
To be fair, integrating the Ebay-style rating of sellers/drivers does stand out as an important distinction - making that a core part of their app is a bit disruptive. Not a huge deal and not all their competitors do it, but that's something you don't usually expect in that kind of car service.
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#33One man's dirty tricks is another man's free market - http://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/
Who needs pesky Taxi and Limousine Commission busybodies to ensure people aren't arbitrarily blacklisted from being able to call a cab?
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#34That is not only morally wrong but it is flat out stupid. Uber is the leading firm in a growing market with network effects. They should be worried about growing as fast as possible first and above all and not about competition. The network effects will take care of the competition.
The worst thing a company in a leadership position like Uber can do is take actions that acknowledge their competition. Even if they are trying to screw over their competition they are doing them a big favor by acknowledging them.
It seems that Uber may lose their first mover's advantage by their greed and small mindedness.
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#35Just 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.
I don't know the specifics of that story, or whether they actually have built the factor of 5X into their system, but note that some "price-gouging" is simply built into the system of supply and demand. If drivers are more scarce during bad weather, it's natural (in some sense) that the price would rise.
Here's another NPR story about price gouging: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/29/163861383/why-econ...
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#36That is not only morally wrong but it is flat out stupid. Uber is the leading firm in a growing market with network effects. They should be worried about growing as fast as possible first and above all and not about competition. The network effects will take care of the competition. The worst thing a company in a leadership position like Uber can do is take actions that acknowledge their competition. Even if they are…
I had not heard of Gett before this story.
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#37That is not only morally wrong but it is flat out stupid. Uber is the leading firm in a growing market with network effects. They should be worried about growing as fast as possible first and above all and not about competition. The network effects will take care of the competition. The worst thing a company in a leadership position like Uber can do is take actions that acknowledge their competition. Even if they are…
Could these be sales people giving a per driver incentive? Or was it from the direction of a manager? If it was sales people, fire all of them. If it was a manager, fire him or her. Then issue a press release.
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#38It's interesting that all these ride services are so aggressive about recruiting drivers. I looked into driving for them to make a few extra bucks and the one thing they could do to get a leg up on their competition is clarify the insurance situation. They all essentially claim that a driver's personal auto insurance is good enough and combined with the companies umbrella policy provides sufficient coverage. But then…
I would make a 99% bet that your personal auto insurance explicitly denies covering you if you are driving a vehicle for money.
I'd make a 100% bet. These services try to muddy the waters though from what would otherwise be clear cut.
Lyft for example brands themselves as a "friends giving friends" rides type of arrangement and they call the money exchanged a "donation" so they tell drivers, "who is your insurance company to say you can't do that"!
Uber acts like personal insurance will cover it as well if you are an UberX driver but then in the fine print it says it is the drivers responsibility to confirm driving for a "P2P" ride service is ok with their insurance company. Of course if you call any of the major insurance carriers and ask them they will tell you, "hell no that isn't covered".
If you look at the taxi insurance market it is made up of a bunch of dinky little companies no one has ever heard of or in some cases taxi's are insured by quasi government insurers of last resort or by verifying you have the minimum insurance requirement on hand in cash. None of these options is cheap so it isn't surprising that ride sharing services would want to avoid them because they would have to end up paying the drivers a lot more and they would no longer be 30% cheaper than taxi's
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#39why Gett can't sue Uber in this case ?
Re: Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
#40I love the doublespeak in the statement: "Our local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers"
"opens up new economic opportunities" is that what we are calling "sales" now?