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Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

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Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#411

Post by teeray »

MBCook wrote: post #308
matthewdgreen wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re experiencing the early pre-enshittified product. Ubers used to be cheap and excellent too, but then they started optimizing for profit. I assume this will happen even faster for Waymo, just because tech firms have more experience now.

Not yet enshittified > currently enshitiffied If they get worse, I’ll. Choose something else if I want. They’re not in my area today, but just because they may get worse does t mean you should avoid them today.

All the while though, they’re taking the air out of the room for any alternatives you might choose in the future. It only gets really enshittified once market dominance has been established.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#412

Post by bsder »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #259
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's my rampant misanthrope leanings, but even in more trivial things like choosing automated kiosks other staffed in CVS, I'm just more comfortable not having to make small talk with a person, worry if they're having a good day or not etc. I'd happily pay 20 percent more to Waymo for that personless experience too.

It's interesting how American cultural expectations of forced social interaction may be having the effect of promoting automated systems as a reaction. As someone who lives in Spain and has lived in the UK, the idea of choosing self-checkout at a supermarket to avoid small talk with a cashier sounds alien to me; we simply don't do that here. While cashiers will certainly chat with certain customers while scanning the…

> It's interesting how American cultural expectations of forced social interaction may be having the effect of promoting automated systems as a reaction.

That's not it. The issue is that it is FAR easier for me to interact with automation than some completely incompetent service worker.

Yes, I get it. The service jobs pay so poorly that nobody competent wants to work them. However, at the end of the day, I simply want to accomplish my task and get going. For example, if you're drunk or stoned off your ass, to pick a totally random (not) example, you're probably in my way.

Because of general levels of incompetence, automated systems are quite often better than most service workers I'm interacting with. Additionally, the service worker probably is limited to the same authority as me ie. totally unable to help because they are completely stuck with the same shitty web interface to solve my problem as I am.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#413

Post by iwontberude »

bilalq wrote: post #404
ryandrake wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to continue using a service that is ripping you off? If you're at the point where your only recourse is to charge back, that's kind of a bridge burning moment.

You get barred from a whole suite of services. Anything Google/Alphabet owns or may acquire in the future. People often don't have a choice here.

We are talking about Lyft in this example ("I took Lyft instead") so your point is somewhat moot but a good reason to never charge back Google!

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#414

Post by aspenmayer »

JohnFen wrote: post #9

I don't use Uber because I think they're a bad actor and don't want to support them. Waymo is Google, so there's some of that there too, but in a pinch I'd probably use Waymo. I'd never use Uber.

Greyball[0] is an interesting solution to a usually intractable problem while freebooting, how to prevent avoidable contact with interested parties, to the degree of identifying and tracking said parties. I’m surprised In-Q-Tel never made an investment, as these kinds of dual-use products and services are in their wheelhouse.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber...

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#415

Post by phil21 »

ryandrake wrote: post #385
pureagave wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid extra and scheduled an Uber with a child seat. After waiting 30 minutes, when the car showed up, there was no car seat so the driver canceled right away and drove off. Lesson learned.

I'm pretty sure by now the various "classes" of service offered by Lyft and Uber are instead just ways for the customer to donate money to Lyft and Uber. There's no difference in what kind of yahoo shows up in what kind of beater.

I pretty much just use it to book black cars these days - at least in my local city where those require licensed livery drivers. Good experience there for the most part. Most of the time I’m using Uber it’s either a business expense to the airport or I’m booking for a large party anyways.

That and I guess UberXL - otherwise it’s pretty fungible.

The interesting bit is that black is often pretty much the same price a UberX about a third of the time.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#416

Post by [deleted] »

harmmonica wrote: post #137

As a Waymo-booster on HN for a while now, here's my latest anecdote. I tried to figure out how to take Waymo to LAX even though it's not actually in their territory yet just because I value the experience so much. I was borderline going to take it within walking distance (about half a mile), but got lazy at the last minute. I took Lyft instead, and, as if the universe cursed my laziness, I booked a "comfort" car for…

[deleted]

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#417

Post by nearlyepic »

overfeed wrote: post #396
ryandrake wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to continue using a service that is ripping you off? If you're at the point where your only recourse is to charge back, that's kind of a bridge burning moment.

Let's retain a sense of proportion here; it was $3.

Give me $3.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#418

Post by doctorpangloss »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #374
doctorpangloss wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simpler explanation is that Google mismanages its pay-per-use consumer-facing products. Consider Google One and YouTube Premium are also overpriced, and everyone tells them so. It's obviously a mistake to charge more than Uber or Lyft, it's crazy obvious, like mind meltingly obvious. Sometimes it's just the obvious thing. Google's problem is that its management is so bad, it doesn't understand: just because somet…

"One of the most valuable companies on the planet is mismanaging its products" see the issue with that assertion?

Yeah… on the other hand I don’t let the stock market do all my thinking for me. As an aside, I thought /r/superstonk was a parody subreddit.

Re: Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

#419

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

black3r wrote: post #49

my eastern european mind cannot comprehend 2 things: - if the average price per ride is $20.43 and average price per km is $11.22 does it mean that the average ride length is 1.8km? that seems kinda low..., like that's something I would walk if I didn't hurry.. - if the higher prices are really influenced by costs of operating AV and not simple greed fueled by "offering a better product", how long it's gonna take to…

Say you want to pick up some groceries. In most US cities there is no nearby small market; in some cities there are, but it varies widely. So either you can get takeout, or you can go from 1 (median) to 2.6 (average) miles to a grocery store. You could bike, but most US cities don't have good bike infrastructure (and let's face it, we're lazy). If there is public transit it's slow and unreliable.

Rideshare prices can also be 2x more expensive depending on the city. One city's average price is $7, another's is $17. Some cities are more compact, some are more spread out, some have fewer drivers, some have more, some have a lower cost of living, some higher, some have more suburban drivers, some fewer.

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