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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

#411

Post by rmtech »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #358

For those of us in London who are totally fed up with bullish companies like Uber who refuse to play by the rules and systematically tread on workers' rights, there's a worker's cooperative called TaxiApp ( https://www.taxiapp.uk.com ) which works on a non-profit basis and attempts to give a similar experience to that of Uber/Lyft/Hailo etc. Unlike the others, it's operated and owned by the workers - so you know that…

Just looked on Google play, it has a 3.5/5 star rating, multiple people saying the app doesn't work with international numbers and that they got cancelled at the last minute.

Uber has a 4.0/5 star rating

Lyft is 3.9/5

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

#412

Post by ryanmercer »

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.

>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.

I doubt that there are many Uber drivers that do it long term. Eventually at some point they have to realize that they're making peanuts (if not operating at a loss) after they factor in routine AND long-term maintenance costs of their vehicle. Or they simply get 'real' jobs and were using Uber between jobs or to supplement income temporarily.

The people I know that have personally done driving for these services has done it in addition to full-time work, largely hoping to earn decent extra money from tips.

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

#413

Post by nerfhammer »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #399
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…

> Couldn't somebody borrow a friend's black cab, slap on a fake photo, and work the city? There is concern that this is happened in the past and penalties are extremely severe: the owner of the original license will lose their badge and may face criminal charges. It's a bit hard to describe the taxi market in London to anybody who doesn't live here, but it's a closed shop only to the extent that if you're prepared to…

> VC-subsidised

This boogeyman trope needs to die. Uber is not funded by VCs anymore.

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

#414

Post by _delirium »

Symbiote wrote: post #298
rovek wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost is only one, relatively small, part of Uber's USP in London. The general shittiness of Black Cab drivers about taking you anywhere close to the edges of zone 1 is the biggest issue for me. Night tube only runs on Fri/Sat nights so I literally couldn't get home from a late week night without Uber. I wouldn't be surprised to see Uber riders blocking taxi ranks if Uber actually stopped operating, Black Cabs serve v…

> I literally couldn't get home from a late week night without Uber. Don't be ridiculous. Private hire minicabs have existed since the 1960s.

Nowadays you can book most of them via apps as well, either a company's own app (e.g. Addison Lee), or an aggregator like Kabbee.

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

#415

Post by cactus2093 »

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…

You call it a violent takeover, but then go on to describe them as simply providing a better service than existing competiors. ??!?

And this seems to just be the commonly accepted narrative among upper middle class progressives, so much so that nobody even bats an eye at the extraordinary contradiction.

I feel like I'm living in an alternate reality lately. All tech is evil, that's just a fact, but it has improved our lives so much that we all continue to use it all day every day.

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

#416

Post by jimmaswell »

bart_spoon wrote: post #283
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…

Uber is cheap because they are subsidizing your fare with investment dollars at an unsustainable level. They are selling $2 for the price of $1. The ride sharing economy is convenient, but I can't see it lasting for much longer. At least not without losing some of what makes it so convenient, like low prices.

I don't get this. Supplying a ride sharing app, especially just supporting one, should have very minimal overhead. If Uber didn't have other interests like self driving research, they could be distilled down to a small startup's worth of support devs and one manager and just let the app make money. A revenue of 3 billion would be way more than sustainable being split among a company size of 10 or even 30. If anything, if forced by circumstances they could just cut all the fat and massively, massively downsize while staying the same from the consumer's perspective. VC's know this so growing for now and investing in R&D is fine when at a moment's notice a company could be reduced to 30 people and just keep supporting an app.

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

#417

Post by ben_jones »

Damning comment from /u/caldos4 on reddit:

> Tons of breaches documented here [1], at least 14 000 trips with unlicensed (uninsured) drivers. Drivers with suspended licences were allowed to re-register with Uber, drivers were allowed to drive without insurance on their vehicle.

I genuinely wonder if Uber could keep enough drivers if they stopped allowing uninsured or suspended drivers.

[1]: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/novemb...

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

#418

Post by lazyasciiart »

ekianjo wrote: post #273
Crashbat wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except then you can't eat? It's not that it's not profitable, it's that the earnings drivers make are meager compared to what people need to sustain themselves. You make it sound like anybody who's on minimum wage just doesn't realise that they could go elsewhere for higher wages!

> Except then you can't eat? In an era of record low unemployment (in the US at least), claiming that it's "Uber at low wages or you don't eat" is kind of a ridiculous hyperbole.

Unemployment numbers aren't relevant when you're saying that people can ignore an entire class of jobs though. What percentage of those employed people are driving for Uber or equivalent and would love to get another job themselves? That's your employee competition pool.

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

#419

Post by lazyasciiart »

BurningFrog wrote: post #270
Crashbat wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except then you can't eat? It's not that it's not profitable, it's that the earnings drivers make are meager compared to what people need to sustain themselves. You make it sound like anybody who's on minimum wage just doesn't realise that they could go elsewhere for higher wages!

Always fascinated by the idea that paying someone $8/h is a crime, but paying them $0/h is perfectly fine. Such enormous cognitive dissonance. We humans are so good at that.

Paying someone $0 to work for you would be illegal too.

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

#420

Post by neonate »

According to the article, the real decision will be made by the courts and the courts have already returned Uber's license in the past:

"When TfL decided not to renew Uber's licence in 2017, the company addressed some of the issues raised by TfL back then and then a magistrate later granted Uber a new licence.

On the face of it TfL is standing tough against perceived failings by Uber. But in effect it is letting the courts decide, at a later date, whether Uber should have a licence, or not."

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