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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

#471

Post by kulahan »

kulahan wrote: post #468
ghushn3 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was that driver, you bet I'd be contacting Uber to try and get your friend banned for life. Threatening a driver is never ok, even less so when it's not his fault.

Threatening someone for being a complete asshole is always okay, and even cool. I really do not care how uncomfortable it makes the driver to move a family a few extra blocks to somewhere vaguely safe. I’d similarly threaten him if he tried to drop my family off in a forest, or on the side of a highway, even if that’s what the GPS, God’s Position System, tells them to do. If your job ends in a way that someone who wa…

Edit: and if you dislike the fact that you need to have a vague level of care for your fellow man, stop working exclusively with people.

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

#473

Post by jen20 »

Unfortunately in Austin, Waymo have screwed the pooch by making their service only available through Uber, with no way of saying you only want Waymo instead of a human driver. I used an Uber the other day out of necessity, and the driver smelled so bad I had to stop the ride and get out.

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

#474

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

kanbara wrote: post #438
1024core wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day I almost got ran over by an old lady in her old Volvo wagon at a stop sign. She seemed to have gotten confused a little and was turning left but couldn't figure out the right move to make. People behind her honked and she decided to just go for it. I happened to be in the crosswalk and just happened to look over at the honking, and saw her coming, so managed to jump out of her way. She was easily over 9…

this is 10000% the wrong approach— the approach is to build better, more walkable cities, with better zoning, and public transit so elderly or disabled people aren’t left out of society. these people shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car; to me one of the biggest annoyances with american life

My father can barely walk a block before he needs to sit and rest. Your plan would not work for him. A more walkable city would be great for me, someone who can walk well. Him? Nope.

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

#475

Post by powersnail »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #139
greybox wrote: post #107

This doesn't surprise me at all. I work in the EU but recently the Americans we hire are very hesitant to have conversations with service providers. They will pay more to use a service that has an app, rather than call up another taxi company by phone for example (and it's not a language barrier problem, because everyone speaks english). I can see this extending to not wanting to have a driver in their taxi. I see th…

Years ago when I worked in the food industry, customers would voluntarily pay 20% more for the entire meal just to use the doordash app instead of calling us up. We informed repeat customers that they pay a premium to use 3rd party apps - they just kept using them anyway.

Talking on the phone is the most painful form of conversation for me. The sound quality is often awful, due to the ambient noises picked up by phone, which occurs particularly often for busy restaurants. You don't know if the other side has heard you because you can't see them and there's no visual signal, so there's more back and forth, prolonging the pain. Since you are ordering via the phone, you have to pay by reading out your credit card number. People sometimes hesitate, and you don't know if it's a bad connection, or if they have just paused......

So yeah, I'd gladly pay a bit more to order via an app. When I'm ordering delivery, I'm already paying premium on that day anyway, the margin of which is way higher than 20%, so I might as well go all the way and avoid dealing with something I don't like.

If I'm not using an app, I'd rather run a mile to make the order in person, than make a phone call.

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

#476

Post by patrickhogan1 »

Uber is increasingly annoying where it will delay putting in an order for a ride and then try to upsell you. As in upgrade to Uber plus or black to get a faster time. If there is a concert or game and big demand spike I get it. But it’s doing it on almost every ride in SF. Upsell nags are annoying but seemingly extending my trip time to upsell is unforgivable.

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

#477

Post by rfurmani »

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…

I've had a couple bad experiences with Lyft recently, including one time the driver must have clicked that they picked me up while a block away, because I could see the lyft driving to the destination without me. I tried to get a refund since I was obviously waiting my start location the whole time, but the system claimed the drive went from start to finish (even though I wasn't in the car), so no refund.

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

#478

Post by dataflow »

paulgb wrote: post #336
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…

> Their determination? I wasn't entitled to a $3 refund. Frustratingly, Lyft’s position on this is that if you don’t like the car that arrives you should reject it when it arrives, otherwise you’re not entitled to a (even partial) refund, even when they know on their end that the car they sent doesn’t match what you paid extra for.

This seems... interesting, legally speaking. I imagine the idea is that you're implicitly accepting alterations to the previous contract by opting to take the car? Would that argument hold water, legally?

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

#479

Post by deepsun »

johnfn wrote: post #453
calmbonsai wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. To alter-quote The Simpsons, "My eyes! The classes do nothing!" Shortly after pandemic, I noticed "corridor fees" on vastly different routes which, mysteriously, bumped-up the price by the same percentage across each route--but only after the ride had completed. The price I was quoted was not remotely close to the price I was charged. I did the customer service messaging thing. The first time, they removed…

As much as I love to hate on Uber and Lyft, tacked on fees like this are often due to state / federal government, and the rideshare service hands are tied. Uber tags on a very long list of random fees when I Uber out of SFO, but when I investigated them, they were all random taxes from the city / state. If they want to jack up the prices they can just increase them - they don't need to add random fees.

SFO is not really municipal. It's a private commercial property.

If we don't like we can choose a competitor /s

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

#480

Post by Dusseldorf »

bsder wrote: post #412
Mordisquitos wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

Gotta disagree here. Running a checkout lane isn't exactly rocket science, and as such the vast majority of the experiences I have in staffed checkout lanes are neutral to good.

When using automated checkout on the other hand, if I even so much as move the wrong way, the system stops and makes me wait for a staff member who is busy dealing with 6 other red-flashing checkouts. When they finally make it over to me, I'm forced to sit and watch a video from 3 angles of me not shoplifting. Accidentally scanned some alcohol instead of waiting until the end? Scanning is halted again until they get a chance to make their way over to me. Using my own bags, but guess the wrong number up front and need to add one later? STOP THIEF!

Recently our local Aldi removed all but one staffed register and replaced the rest with automated. This is absolutely baffling to me--the cashiers at Aldi don't make small talk, they're trained for speed! It's fun to watch while I'm bagging up my groceries, because the staffed register is consistently crushing carts at 3x the rate of any of the self checkouts.

Automated checkouts are consistently worse, and it's not even close. I guess the one benefit they have is that they make small talk with the single person managing 14 self checkouts easier--you already have in common your frustration with the self checkout system.

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