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

bbc.com

501–510 of 520 posts

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

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private hire drivers are vetted, and their cars have to undergo enhanced MOTs

And this is why Uber lots it's license. It wasn't properly vetting private hire drivers. It's not hard. Follow the rules and they'll get their license back.

The onus is on TFL to vet the drivers.

Uber lost the license because they were 'not fit or proper', nothing to do with vetting, seemingly because of a feature of the website that seemingly allows drivers to upload new photos and get other people to drive for them

> A key issue identified was that a change to Uber's systems allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other Uber driver accounts.

Other minicab firms of course don't have a photo on an app, and the passenger has to check the photo once they've got in the car (I believe PHV drivers have to show their PHV license from TFL), which puts passengers in a far worse situation when the driver doesn't match. I wonder how many small minicab firms have been determined to be not fit or proper.

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

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I assume mentioning AL is a joke. Hadn't heard of Kabbee before though, doesn't look outrageously expensive for one of my common journeys.

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

#503
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, not sure if you just had a lot of bad luck or what... I downloaded both Uber and Lyft, signed up for them just to check them out, but not in this area... but useful if I ever traveled somewhere. Which at some point I'd like to be able to go on a solo trip a year. I heard bad things about Uber though in the news, but not sure how much it differs since i'm sure Taxi drivers do bad things too... but I think since U…

>but probably a huge crowd? The crowd was INSANE. It was effectively crotch to butt for a block or more in some spots with no movement at times and the collective body heat actually making it difficult to breathe on the street that had the barricades, then you'd duck down a street going the opposite direction and it was much more sane. I landed I guess as the parade was starting, by the time I actually got to my room…

Wow, so many typos in that. I was trying to hammer out a reply so I could get out the door and it shows.

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

#504
Uber banned one of my friend, he was driving with Uber with rating 4.91 and great reviews. Uber stupid AI (or that stupid developer whoever developed that stupid AI) thought user ratings and reviews are wrong and they are right, blocked him and he lost his income. I will never ever use Uber anymore.

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

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to what I witness in the current comments, a first step for taxis would be to mandate a working credit card machine, under penalties. However, it seems so many many taxis were frauding their taxes, that it became cultural and enforced. Which means taxis, which are already known as the top thief job in the world, also steal the citizen on a third level after the ride itself and after choosing the night rate…

Taxes aren't theft. Taxes is when we as a society pool together resources to invest into the projects we as a society agreed to implement by means of the democratic process. If you don't like it you can organize and pick different projects or fewer of them or create a system that doesn't have taxes. Taxi drivers have nothing to do with it.

I believe that GP is saying that not paying taxes is theft from society.

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Keep in mind that Uber's revenue was $3.6 billion in the last quarter, but they lost $1.2 billion. I wouldn't be surprised if their margin was negative. Really the problem is not that Uber gets paid too much, but that drivers are underpaid. I think a minimum wage for drivers is a better solution. In California such a law is currently underway.

I mentioned minimum wage in another comment. If a driver has the app open for four hours, they need to be paid a minimum of four hours of minimum wage.

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

#507
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes aren't theft. Taxes is when we as a society pool together resources to invest into the projects we as a society agreed to implement by means of the democratic process. If you don't like it you can organize and pick different projects or fewer of them or create a system that doesn't have taxes. Taxi drivers have nothing to do with it.

I believe that GP is saying that not paying taxes is theft from society.

Oooh...

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

#508
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata: information or evidence that is based on personal experience or observation rather than systematic research or analysis.

>And I don't think this is abnormal either, a little searching on reddit/facebook/twitter and you can find report after report of such activity on the various ride platforms.

This is an unusually ignorant argument. You never hear about the great rides or uneventful rides. There are millions of rides a day. So even if you came across 1000 negative posts, which may look like a lot to you and your “research”, it still would still only be 0.01% of rides for that day, not taking into account the time delta of those posts.

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lobbying

^^ which is kinda my point and also arguably reasons for shit like Brexit. If we, the intelligentsia make "no subsidies" arguments for taking away well paying jobs for the working classes while allowing other (lobbied) industries to accept subsidies then we're making ourselves complicit in the hypocrisy.

you can subsidise the poor cabbies all you want, as long as you don't take Uber away from me

also, don't call me 'intelligetsia', it is insulting

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

#510
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in London recently. I took Uber 15 times in 2 weeks. I never had a single issue. The only problem I had is that the culture in London appears to be to give 4s as default instead of 5s. Other than that I felt it was better than SF Bay Area.

I wish the culture was to give an honest star rating everywhere. A 4 is an excellent rating to get and should be treated as such. Instead we’ve set everything up so that if you aren’t getting 5 stars you’re a failure. What’s the point of stars 1 through 4 then? We should just ditch this system for a 0 or 1 star system instead since that’s how it’s treated. Same problem has infected everything from rating your apartme…

4* = No problem at all 5* = I actually enjoyed it.
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