Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 916 posts

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

#691

Post by School-Cotton »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #649
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So basically, you’re admitting key elements of your original story were made up? Sure, and I regret it. I didn’t think it was a “key element.” The part that struck me, was the inflexibility of the driver. A real cabbie might laugh at you, but happily take more money to get out of there. If he had refused to leave (which he did), then the driver might be legitimately worried. It sounds like the driver didn’t really…

Heh. Just as another point. I mentioned the story to another friend, who used to be a cabbie, and he said "Oh, that was a gypsy cab robbery. Classic." Apparently, the way that it works, is that the cab takes you to a bad neighborhood, then tells you to get out, unless you pay. If my friend had tried getting physical, he would have been staring into the muzzle of a .38, so the talk of physical threats was likely bulls…

The original story was that your friend gave Uber the wrong address, and the Uber refused to take them onward after that, even for more money.

Now the story is that the Uber intentionally took them to the wrong address, and then offered to take them onward in an attempt to extort more money.

Those are completely different stories! Which is it?

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

#692

Post by TheDong »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #601
dgoldstein0 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ Pedant detected

I suppose, but I only responded because they went out of their way to say xor, and put it in all caps too.

XOR in common programmer speech is ambiguously used to mean XOR or NAND, so I think their use of XOR was casually correct, while not technically correct.

While NAND is technically correct, it's just not commonly used as a grammatical conjunction.

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

#693

Post by gilfoy »

squigz wrote: post #641
csomar wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next rider will alert if something outrageous has happened.

No, most people would just move on and stop using the service. A very small % of users report issues.

Incentivize reporting with a discount, combine that with review of video to verify it’s not a false report. Maybe not scalable, but could work.

Image recognition is getting better. I rarely have to get my receipt checked at Sam’s Club anymore now that their camera exit thing is in full swing.

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

#694

Post by throwaway2037 »

dmurray wrote: post #540
majormajor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(All this assumes some some not-yet-here future where "AI agents" are less flaky than today's LLMs.) Things like "call center jobs" are where "superior" gets muddy. They can be superior for the business. The business does not want to spend money. Now they aren't paying a person, and they have to worry less about a sob story convincing their agent to make an exception. Health insurance company, for instance, where the…

> And most of us aren't the megacorp-owners here. We're the customers. Actually, you're not. In the US, something like 40% of the stock market is owned by pension funds [0], and another chunk directly by individual savers. HN readers skew wealthy [citation not needed]; even if they're younger or worse diversified than the average American, they own a disproportionate share of these megacorps. At the margin, any polic…

Your argument is weak. Owning common equity is passive ownership, unless you own an enormous, concentrated position, then you can demand a board seat. Our votes at the annual meeting are mostly non-binding.

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

#696

Post by redeeman »

gxs wrote: post #606
ribosometronome wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you're forever barred from using the service.

Apple screwed me once so I did a chargeback My account was soft banned - everything I own It should be illegal to allow services to ban you for a chargeback Those don’t happen just willy nilly - it means your credit card reviewed your dispute and you won

They should obviously not be able to do that, I hope you now will stop relying on such services that put you utterly at their mercy. I hope you also tell everyone you know to not fall in the same trap

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

#697

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #658
School-Cotton wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Your friend paid uber to take them to an address, and they did.

Actually, it sounds like my friend was robbed. Classic gypsy cab robbery.

The confusion around getting the address wrong is an interesting tell. If you think you’re not likely to make that mistake, anyway. It’s also a bit late to realize at that point since you’re already in the bad area.

But it reminds me of tech support scams which usually have an element of convincing the victim that they made a mistake.

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

#698

Post by lmm »

dataflow wrote: post #478
paulgb wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If I've learned anything from watching startups on HN, the US is a lawless wasteland where as long as you've got a couple of billion in VC funding you can do anything. I eagerly await the first murder-for-hire startup.

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

#699

Post by klabb3 »

cyberax wrote: post #569
fnordpiglet wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are excited by driverless cars but it also means a car with no social barriers and no person who considers the cars condition important. For now they’re well surveilled and a premium vehicle. Soon they will be filthy pods in a race to the bottom with all the charm of a public bathroom. They’ll be cheap, but you’ll get what you pay for. Private driverless cars will be the premium alternative.

> For now they’re well surveilled and a premium vehicle. Soon they will be filthy pods in a race to the bottom with all the charm of a public bathroom. So, like transit? I will likely have my own personal self-driving vehicle. And I'm 100% sure that there'll be an upmarket segment with slightly more expensive cars that are kept more clean than the rest.

> I will likely have my own personal self-driving vehicle.

The self-driving car ”utopia” (or rather moderate improvement) very much hinges on the space savings on roadways and parking, to increase utilization, reduce congestion and allow dead space to be reclaimed. If people think like you (no value judgment, I suspect this might be the future norm), then you’ll see almost no change to the urban landscape as a whole. It’ll continue to be a one-flesh-body-per-2-tonne vehicle utilization, a ~5:1 provisioning of parking spaces, 25-50% of urban areas being roadways+parking, and a double-digit productivity loss from commuting and running simple errands.

That leaves you with an individual comfort improvement (allowing you to be on your phone while in the car) for a premium price, and increased surveillance tech on personal vehicles. (And, to be fair, it can still be huge for drunk driving deaths, access for elderly & disabled, once costs come down). Overall, very mediocre imo.

Controversial take: the US has painted itself into a corner, where by ignoring the well being of people in their own communities, they need so many workarounds to prevent space sharing between the ~2-3 social groups where intermingling means friction and fear. There are very real logistical challenges to a gated community segmentation of the physical world. This paints the resistance to public transit in a different light: it’s not so much about being public, but rather being shared with strangers, especially of different social cohorts. It also explains the sacred status of air travel which mainly has been left outside the debate: imo because of the higher socio-economic average clientele. Now that cost has come down and low-cost airlines like Spirit share the same airports, the friction has come there as well.

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

#700

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

whimsicalism wrote: post #443
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another recent anecdote. A friend was recently in Milwaukee (first time ever. He was there for a conference). He, his wife, and another friend, wanted to go out to eat. They were given a wrong address. Could have been the source, or it could have been they screwed up writing it down. It was definitely a wrong address, though, that they gave to Uber. The driver picked them up, and took them to the address, which was d…

The only difference with the Waymo experience would be that there would be nobody your friend could threaten to assault for putting in the wrong address.

Heh, from the sounds of things it’s more likely the Waymo would have simply driven to their actual destination.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44281694

Post reply on HN