Of all the SV bubbles, I feel Uber actually delivers incredible social value.
In what way? Having read several of the comments here from various angles, I can't imagine what you mean.
The Uber Bubble
551–556 of 556 posts
Re: The Uber Bubble
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution to this is Square, not Uber.
The taxi drivers have Square. They just choose not to use it to avoid the processing fee. Also, cash payers are more likely to round up for a tip.
Then again, the solution to this is not necessarily Uber, but a regulation forcing taxi drivers to provide credit card payment. As far as I remember, these systems allow a default "do you want to tip" option (but I see what you mean, people probably tend to tip more with cash than with credit cards).
Re: The Uber Bubble
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the scam there? Do they not turn on the meter and then beg for payment at the end of the ride?
Yep. They'll say "it's $80" and to which you need to ask "where does it say that on the meter?". At that point it's an intimidation game as the Taxi driver will blatantly demand money for the ride they didn't have the meter on for. It's not fun. It's also happened almost every time i've taken a Taxi in the past 5 years. I think the people who still take Taxis are the vulnerable who don't have phones so they get scamm…
Exactly, and when you're an American and you're in a cab in America that's the best case scenario -- you can probably avoid paying it with enough effort.
When this happened to me in Vietnam is was a pretty ugly situation. I'm not new to world travel, but the driver had the whole con down to an art (dubious toll fees, relationships with local law enforcement, etc) This was just before Uber came to Vietnam and I would never use a local taxi driver again regardless of cost.
Everyone in this thread who defends the airport cabbie cartels of the world must have not actually spent a lot of time around them.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
The complexity is not the depth of the problem, but rather the scope. Matchmaking — while complicated — is a very small subset of the domain. Pricing, demand forecasting, routing, payments, etc. are all equally important on the pax side. Similarly, there are many teams needed to support the overall ecosystem for things like driver onboarding, compliance, and support. Also comparing a 1% return to a 30% charge isn’t e…
I could be completely clueless here, but it looks to me like a lot of the Lyft/Uber/etc cut is going to: 1) Overpaid, wasteful software engineering (no offense to us). Like someone here said, there are a lot of cheap software solutions out there to handle this stuff 2) R&D into crazy moonshot ideas 3) Advertising 4) Making a completely opaque techno-dystopian game out of people's livelihoods in order to manipulate dr…
> 2) R&D into crazy moonshot ideas
Self-driving cars is not such a moonshot at this point, and indeed may be the only way they reach profitability (still a while off, though, and Lidars need to come down in price)
Re: The Uber Bubble
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber is being disrupted by for example Bolt, which is their frugal Estonian competitor. An example close to me is that Uber essentially already lost the Swedish taxi market. They had a couple of years as the the top dog making everyone install an app but due to the huge overhead got undercut. This is a market with a completely unregulated taxi sector as long as you follow the base regulations. Maybe sometimes a bit a…
When Uber and Lyft left Austin briefly to protest the driver background check requirement, it took no time at all for a bunch of alternatives to pop up.
What are some? (Not doubting, just curious)
In Russia and some other countries there are cheaper competitors. In Phuket (circa 5 years ago) there were way worse replacements. Thailand had managed to keep Uber out of the tourist areas for many years with their local taxi cartel.
Re: The Uber Bubble
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
The taxi drivers have Square. They just choose not to use it to avoid the processing fee. Also, cash payers are more likely to round up for a tip.
Then again, the solution to this is not necessarily Uber, but a regulation forcing taxi drivers to provide credit card payment. As far as I remember, these systems allow a default "do you want to tip" option (but I see what you mean, people probably tend to tip more with cash than with credit cards).
Most cities in the US have that regulation. The drivers trivially circumvent that regulation by saying the machine is broken.