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

bbc.com

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

#321

Post by kofejnik »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #286
eviltandem wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market has spoken. Uber as a service has shown itself to be wildly better and more loved than traditional cab services in every city where it's gone head to head in open competition with traditional taxi services. Unfortunately people are morons that don't know how to make the "right" choice. We will be conveniently layering bureaucracy and laws on top of all of this to make sure the clearly inferior product wins…

You don't think its worth protecting the trade of taxi-driving? Used to be the case you could make good tradesman money to be able to afford a house and a family on a taxi salary. Post-Uber that wont be so. Is it "stupid" to want jobs that arguably require "less-skill" to not pay out a decent wage? Are we going to try to force more and more into university and leave those that don't fit in that box to work towards mi…

> You don't think its worth protecting the trade of taxi-driving? Used to be the case you could make good tradesman money to be able to afford a house and a family on a taxi salary.

No. Regulated taxis used to be a racket; of course they provided (somewhat) decent living for those who participated, although most money went to the medallion ownert.

I don't see why the needs of a few thousand cabbies (per city) should trump the needs of the millions who clearly prefer Uber.

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

#322

Post by geocar »

V-2 wrote: post #302
gorgoiler wrote: post #240

After living for years in London, it’s hard to compare Ubers with black cabs. In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately available, and skilled at getting you the hell out of dodge. Something for which I’m happy to pay a premium. Anywhere else they can be capricious and scarce. After 11pm this is the case with in fact almost all black cabs anywhere in the city, when a very diffe…

If it's indeed so hard to find a good Uber driver, you'd expect them to be driven out of the market by customers themselves. And if they compensate for that by eg. lower price, then how is it different from any other market. You want premium quality, you pay extra - you're fine with compromising on it, you go for the cheaper option.

> you'd expect them to be driven out of the market by customers themselves.

Customers will frequently do things that are bad for them and bad for everyone, just because they have received advertising. That's why I think Uber is basically the antivaxx of taxis; they ignore regulations and break laws, putting people at risk and do everything they can in bad faith, but remain incredibly popular in some circles so I expect the law to drive them out, not "customers themselves".

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

#323

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

criddell wrote: post #254
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> underpaid drivers This is and always will be a matter of opinion. Uber is not putting a gun to anyone's head. If it's not profitable for you to drive, you don't have to.

Since drivers can't set their own rates, I've always felt the government should regulate the split. Uber's portion should be capped at something like 5%. The marginal cost for them to connect a driver to a rider is close to 0 so even 5% feels very generous.

Drivers can set their own rates, or at least to the success a bidding process would work. If the rate is to low, don't work. If there was a bidding process I wouldn't be surprised if you saw rates actually drop.

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

#324

Post by stevenwoo »

safog wrote: post #287
eggy wrote: post #247

If the concern over rider safety was that somebody could pose as an Uber driver and update a photo to make it work, why are black cabs not also deemed unsafe? Couldn't somebody borrow a friend's black cab, slap on a fake photo, and work the city? Maybe a stretch, and more work, but the same concern is there, no? I guess the black cabs have some powerful lobbyists in parliment? Yellow taxis in NYC were a monopoly, and…

I'm honestly pretty cynical about EU laws these days. All they're designed to do is to whack around American tech companies until they cough up $X bn for their coffers. Not that America is any better these days, NJ recently decided to get into the game and started to go after Uber.

I thought from the article this has nothing to do with EU but with the local municipal transit board of London. This can happen across the world if the local licensing agencies are paying attention to behavior.

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

#325

Post by tompccs »

Jommi wrote: post #261
tompccs wrote: post #90

A few things going on here. This is a continuation of an ongoing battle between Tfl and Uber. Last year Tfl threatened to revoke Ubers' license unless it complied with regulations involving basic safety checks and coorporated with British Transport Police over crimes committed by drivers. Well, one year on and Uber has not been able to get its house in order. This move will doubtless be extremely unpopular with Londo…

I think you're overvaluing Uber's footing in the current London market. During the summer several competitors have been granted licenses, and they are reporting healthy and fast growth. Those millions of people can just switch over to one of the other apps and get a nearly identical (and usually cheaper) service. Same with the drivers, the competitors are offering a hugely better deal than Uber is.

Problem is if drivers are spread more thinly between them. But just the news today should have prompted drivers to sign up to other apps.

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

#326

Post by criddell »

ma2rten wrote: post #304
criddell wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since drivers can't set their own rates, I've always felt the government should regulate the split. Uber's portion should be capped at something like 5%. The marginal cost for them to connect a driver to a rider is close to 0 so even 5% feels very generous.

I doubt that their margin is much higher than that after factoring in discounts.

I may be wrong, but I don't think the driver keeps 95% of the fare.

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

#327

Post by Quarrelsome »

eviltandem wrote: post #299
Quarrelsome wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think its worth protecting the trade of taxi-driving? Used to be the case you could make good tradesman money to be able to afford a house and a family on a taxi salary. Post-Uber that wont be so. Is it "stupid" to want jobs that arguably require "less-skill" to not pay out a decent wage? Are we going to try to force more and more into university and leave those that don't fit in that box to work towards mi…

I think fundamentally you have 2 arguments here. First your argument is does one have a right to make money doing something the same way it was done yesterday? Or 10 or 20 years ago? At one time you could make good money operating an elevator. Do we ban buttons in elevators to protect these jobs? So no. No I don't think it's on societies best interest to outlaw buttons in elevators. New technology is happening that f…

I agree but we do pay subsidies to industries we wish to protect. Why not protect this way of life?

The EU's CAP is huge protection and in the US I'm sure there are all sorts of subsidises industries that "don't deserve it".

From the perspective of the working man this argument just seems to push down their wages but not allow other industries to pop.

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

#328

Post by twic »

harel wrote: post #198

I'm not a fan of companies like Uber or AirBnB who attempt a violent takeover of a market. However, as a consumer who needs to get from A to B, or stay at some random city, I find those services invaluable. The black cabs in London are expensive, never around when you need them, and until recently might have refused card payments (now they just seem unhappy about it). At the very least I was hoping Uber would make th…

Kapten and Bolt already exist, and give you access to substantially the same pool of drivers. Maybe some drivers are on Uber but not one of the others; that will change very quickly if Uber are banned. There's also Addison Lee, who have their own drivers, but offer a similar experience.

This tunnel vision of only seeing one provider of a new but fundamentally commodity service is interesting. It reminds me a lot of how Git and MySQL took off - people encountered them, thought, "oh, that's great, i'll use that", and never stopped to think if there might be better alternatives.

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

#329

Post by Quarrelsome »

kofejnik wrote: post #321
Quarrelsome wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think its worth protecting the trade of taxi-driving? Used to be the case you could make good tradesman money to be able to afford a house and a family on a taxi salary. Post-Uber that wont be so. Is it "stupid" to want jobs that arguably require "less-skill" to not pay out a decent wage? Are we going to try to force more and more into university and leave those that don't fit in that box to work towards mi…

> You don't think its worth protecting the trade of taxi-driving? Used to be the case you could make good tradesman money to be able to afford a house and a family on a taxi salary. No. Regulated taxis used to be a racket; of course they provided (somewhat) decent living for those who participated, although most money went to the medallion ownert. I don't see why the needs of a few thousand cabbies (per city) should…

So why do farmers in the EU deserve protection or coal in the US? We do subsidise some things. What makes that choice happen?

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

#330

Post by geocar »

eggy wrote: post #247

If the concern over rider safety was that somebody could pose as an Uber driver and update a photo to make it work, why are black cabs not also deemed unsafe? Couldn't somebody borrow a friend's black cab, slap on a fake photo, and work the city? Maybe a stretch, and more work, but the same concern is there, no? I guess the black cabs have some powerful lobbyists in parliment? Yellow taxis in NYC were a monopoly, and…

> why are black cabs not also deemed unsafe?

A black cab driver has made a more significant investment in that license and will be much less likely to jeopardise it than some shmuck loaning out his uberx login -- especially when Uber not only doesn't do anything to stop it, but encourages it with more dark patterns.

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