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Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

thestar.com

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Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#41

Post by sbarre »

annapurna wrote: post #16
sbarre wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beck has been waging a pretty high-profile PR war against ride-sharing in this city.. But Beck Taxi are also the face of everything that's wrong with taxis in Toronto, so most people here don't take their position very seriously, and they do not have much goodwill from the population (or from taxi operators in a lot of cases). That said, in the last few months whenever I talk to my Uber driver about "how things are g…

Yeah, Beck's been fighting a losing battle. Once I called them to give it a shot and they made me wait for 15 minutes. To be fair, the taxi did arrive and I was not in any rush so overall, the delay didn't matter much. However, that's probably the last time I'll call them unless something changes drastically. I also just noticed they have released an app. Curious how's the experience is on it so far.

The Beck app is basically just a text interface to their human dispatcher..

Last time I used it (admittedly over a year ago) it was not very responsive (very poor UX) and didn't seem to have any advantage over calling.

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#43

Post by KyleTheGreat »

ahoy wrote: post #24
t1o5 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would use Lyft or Uber in Toronto, whichever is convenient at that point of time. If you start to boycott companies which are not ethical in doing their business, well almost all companies are. Lets start with Amazon with their sweat shop warehouses, Garment manufacturing outsourced to workers in Bangladesh working in deadly conditions. No corporations are saints.

(This isn't meant as a personal attack on the parent comment. Their opinion is common and I've held it myself in the past) I really dislike this line of thinking. It's profoundly cynical and sees change as impossible. Corporations do bad things. I can comment on that and refuse to do business with some of them and not others. I don't have to uproot my whole life and become a mountain ascetic to earn the moral purity…

This whole website is full of cynical people.

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#44

Post by rjuyal »

cavisne wrote: post #38
nugget wrote: post #3

I've noticed that Uber seems to have much more competitive pricing in markets (especially airports) where Lyft is also present, compared to markets where they are the only provider. So personally I would welcome Lyft's rapid international expansion.

In my market Lyft line is consistently half the price of Uber pool, I’ve started using Lyft again because of this, experience is identical

In Seattle I am paying $0.00 for uberpool. $14 makes all uberpool rides from home to work and return just $0.00 for 28 days. This also makes all uberX rides $3.49.

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#45

Post by rjuyal »

vmarsy wrote: post #35

I don't know if this is the same in every cities, but here in Seattle using Uber is becoming very annoying: in the past rides we tried getting in the past few weeks, the original wait time shows something like 2 or 3 minutes, but as soon as the ride is found it jumps to 7-8 minutes. And that stays blocked on this time for a couple minutes (or sometimes increase!). In the meantime, for Lyft rides it seems to be the op…

I have exactly opposite experience in Seattle.

Almost always Lyft's estimated time of arrival is way off the charts.

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#46

Post by traek »

rjuyal wrote: post #44
cavisne wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my market Lyft line is consistently half the price of Uber pool, I’ve started using Lyft again because of this, experience is identical

In Seattle I am paying $0.00 for uberpool. $14 makes all uberpool rides from home to work and return just $0.00 for 28 days. This also makes all uberX rides $3.49.

How?

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#47

Post by njj023 »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #36
kitcar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is because they are hesitant to blatantly disregard local laws - it's part of their brand persona, they try to be seen as the "nicer uber" - hence they try to play nice with the jurisdictions they expand to, resulting in slower expansion. https://a16z.com/2017/09/25/government-relations-local-lyft/

You are misinformed. If you had followed both companies from the beginning, you would know that Uber started with licensed drivers - even UberX started that way with only cheaper cars - and it was lyft who broke the city ordinances by using unlicensed drivers under the disguise of tipping-as-payment. Uber refused to do it, until they realized the governments were not enforcing the laws at all. The case in Miami is th…

Thank you for calling out what seems like an incredible -- almost intentionally ignorant -- hive mind HN tends to have at times.

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#48

Post by nametube »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #39
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #28

Meh. I think I will continue to use Uber because from what I can tell, and what annoyingly no one seems to talk about in this conversation, is the difference in the services/experience. The user experience of taking a ride is not the same/not as seamless because you have to do all this payment/tip stuff at the end. Uber has always been a hail/get in/get out experience. No incentive to change to Lyft

and ok, fine, if the experience is exactly the same - what's the incentive to switch or even set up the second app? Uber wins on first in, same as if anyone local remembers, Hailo eventually gave up and pulled out of the city because couldn't get users over etc

People who aren't entrenched now have another service to choose from. people who are entrenched will be fought over on price and quality of service.

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#49

Post by caycep »

Granted my experience in Toronto and Montreal are that cabs are easy to come by, relatively inexpensive and accept NFC payments...so maybe on the consumer side they have less cruft than US cab companies and may be less immune to complete disruption by the big rideshare companies

Re: Lyft's first expansion outside the USA in Toronto next month

#50

Post by dmix »

sol_remmy wrote: post #42

Fantastic news. I dropped Uber because of how they organize their business. My experience with Lyft in US cities has been fantastic. Uber could use some competition in Canada as well (outside of our generally terrible taxis).

The competition will most certainly result in coupons with free/discounted rides and other benefits like the old Hailo vs Uber days, before Hailo left Toronto...

A large part of Uber's ability to act without regard for public scrutiny was the fact they were frequently the only horse in town for most cities. The tech press in SF is often isolated from this reality.

This competition from Lyft is a great counter balance for Uber, without having to rely on the heavy-handed counter-weight of government-backed last-era taxi conglomerates/unions.

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