I dont like Uber as a company, but I feel this journalist is trying to hurt the Uber brand more than reporting the facts and inform people.
Brazil has a very high crime rate. Our northeast capital cities (where Uber started to accept cash as customers were asking for this) are among the most dangerous in the world regarding murder rate.
The "express kidnapping" is very very common here in São Paulo.
If you consider the crime problem in Brazil, Uber is quite irrelevant on all of this. And it is fairly obvious that if have a big enough operation here, crime will happens to you too.
I am not saying that Uber has no responsibilities in supporting its drivers and passengers (preventing before and supporting after the crime). But this story seems to just want to capitalize on Uber bad reputation.
"I feel this journalist is trying to hurt the Uber brand more than reporting the facts"
"Brazil has a very high crime rate."
"If you consider the crime problem in Brazil, Uber is quite irrelevant on all of this."
The article is pretty clear about these points.
"It's undeniable that Brazil has a crime problem, regardless of Uber."
"The problem was that Uber started allowing cash payments without upgrading its weak registration system for passengers."
"Data showed a massive increase in the number of attacks against Uber drivers since the unveiling of cash payment"
The article also publishes Uber's counter-argument:
"The company says they can't be held accountable for incidents that could happen to any other driver, including non-Uber taxi drivers"
On the whole, it feels a fairly balanced article, discussing facts, and providing rational, articulated, reasoned perspective.
I spoke to some Uber drivers in Johannesburg (also insane murder rate) and they said the same thing - things got dangerous when they started having to carry cash.
Worst thing is they were sold on becoming Uber drivers with the promise that it would be less dangerous because it was cashless...
A friend of mine's brother recently was kidnapped driving a long-haul up to SP. They held him at gunpoint for five days, and when his parents (who live in the South) called the police they were told at first not to worry, that they usually were released after a few days; they only want the cargo and the truck. Three days in the mother, now convinced the son is dead, is trying to get the police to do anything.
Their line is that they can only start to search if the parents come up to SP, and file the report in person. Later, it's admitted that maybe some money could avoid that process.
Uber is doubtless not helping, but they're not creating the problem either.
Physically yes, but perhaps not surprisingly he has the early signs of PTSD... waking up screaming, flashbacks. Fortunately his family is taking that seriously and he's going to get some professional help. Hell of a thing to go through for days. It seems the people who kidnapped him kept telling him that they were going to kill him, so he was terrified most of the time.
I would like to understand the perspective of the people doing these kidnappings. They're "bad people" - they didn't have mothers who taught them to play nice? Or driven by economic conditions and what they perceive is a normal path forward, they are participating in the system?
What I mean is that it seems cultural. There are places in the world where everyone leaves their front door unlocked, because nobody would come in and steal stuff, how rude is that! Then there are places where apparently the normal thing is to kidnap someone for five days.
So please talk about this difference, especially from the point of view of the kidnappers. I would like to understand this.
I've made a throwaway as I don't want my curiosity to be mistaken for pushing some agenda, and in case for some reason people react negatively to my question. Thanks.
I used to think it's just economic, meaning the poorer area/country would have higher crime rate. But now I've travelled quite extensively around the world, I think crime is mostly related to two things: inequality and social trust. They are also strongly related as inequality leads to distrust in society/government and in tern that distrust leads to people trying to accumulate personal wealth/power at all cost, even at others' expense.
and lack of the rule of Law. and lack of a culture where the rule of law is respected. that's gotta be the difference between the US and Brazil. I hear their version of the FBI is basically terrified to go into favelas. In America, we are all terrified of the FBI and swat teams that very few of us try to pull shit. America has a culture and history of grabbing your briefcase and going to work at your profession. We are brainwashed by Eisenhower era film footage. As well as X-Files that sedates us into thinking--and probably rightfully so--that US intelligence, police, military etc will handle us if we get out of line. Over there it's very quite literally a jungle. There's no where to hide over here.
So I don't disagree with your points. It's just part of a larger picture. My points probably don't even complete that picture.
But for now, for me, it boils down to: inequality + a culture of being civilized.
> and lack of the rule of Law. and lack of a culture where the rule of law is respected.
Culture has nothing to do with it, it's only inequalities. Look at the list of the 50 more dangerous cities in the world [0]. How come the US is the only developed country in the list with St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans. All of those have a higher murder rate then Sao Paolo.
People might be scared of the SWAT, and brutal police, and incredibly long jail sentences. But when they lives in extreme misery, they feel it's worth the risk.
It's not very different from poor populations working dangerous jobs.
Well, inequality is a major theme, because pretty much everything is explained by energy potentials and gradients.
The inequality is partially cultural, e.g. when children don't even learn to read, which counts for some US city as well. Hence, criminal risk assessment seems rather informed by tradition and a myopic outlook (quite literally). So I agree that they "feel" it's worth the risk. On top of that, any local variance in potential will be deceived and abused. The problem then is that informing the deceived and stopping the abuse is hindered by exactly this lack of consciousness. Of course that's an issue of trust.
Error margins are huge either way, when the potential profit seems high and alternatives very low. "Nothing to lose" implies a zero division, resulting in an arbitrary decisions. So at least we can probably assume that for every criminal effort there are as many good intentions on the other side of the equation. Only if you look at people as numbers it's purely economical.
On the other hand, culturally, there are a lot of parallels to developed countries, too, e.g. in business culture. Then the overall difference is rather economic, which the developed countries profit from, thus increasing the differeyial. The US ie. is a more important market than the home countries for the drug cartels, or the weapons being produced in the developed countries).
Education is cultural and economic. It's hindered by poverty and stands counter to crime. Now, the education and the systems devised to control it are a different topic.
I am Brazilian but have lived overseas in the last 15 years, currently in Sweden.
I can understand both your point of view (not being able to believe someone can do things like this to a completely innocent person) and the point of view of Brazilians, who are used to seeing this every day and come to think this is normal.
Here in Sweden, people don't seem to understand that some people are just capable of doing the most evil things. What they don't understand is that these people were born and raised in a place where society sees them as a disease to be exterminated. Even people who live in the "favelas" (extremely poor slums) would do anything to move to nicer areas and be seen as normal people. They are not all bad, but the ones who have a tendency to be violent become monsters. They don't see you as an innocent person. They see you as the enemy, the symbol of a society that wants them dead. They absolutely hate you and all of your kind. When you understand this, you can see how kidnapping someone for 5 days and terrorizing the person the whole time is not that surprising. If they found out by coincidence the guy was a police officer, they would have cut his head off and sent it in a package to the family.
On the other side, it's common for some educated people to talk about these criminals as scum, that they deserve to be sent to the dirtiest, darkest prison they can find and let there to die. There's absolutely no belief in rehabilitation. In Sweden, prisons are quite similar to nice hostels. People see prisons as a place to re-educate offenders. In Brazil, they are places to dump the rubbish and hope they kill each other. If they manage to get out alive, they become a hell of a lot more dangerous as they make contacts with the organised crime (to which they always aspired to belong to). This is called "graduating" for them (because graduating in a real university is not even a remote possibility). They graduate in the university of crime. They actually feel respected after that... and go on to commit more advanced crimes (robbing a bank, managing a drug-dealing region...).
We have similar people in Sweden that think that they are better than other people simply because they are born in Sweden (I'm Swedish). I would say that a significant fraction have the mindset that the Syrians deserved what happened in Syria.. It is completely unbelievable to me that they think that burning down the shelters for the refugees is helping in any way. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39095173
It's not an explanation, but the fact is that some places are very violent and some are not. I think there is considerable inertia there. The violence level will stay the same if nothing changes. Violence created violence. Peace creates peace.
I don't see how Uber is special in this regard vs. traditional taxis. If you're willing to rob a taxi driver you can rob an Uber driver too and vice versa.
At least Uber gives the police more to go on during their investigation (GPS logs, ID info).
Maybe, but I think the point of this article is that networks are agnostic barring intervention to protect them from certain kinds of "traffic". It's easier/more efficient to coordinate crimes on Uber's network in the same way that it's easier to serve malware through ad platforms. Criminals in Brazil are turning Ubers into a real world botnet and Uber is shrugging it off.
Living in Sao Paulo, I only take Uber when it's really hot and I don't feel like using the subway.
Uber drivers are constantly at war with taxi drivers, to the point that if I know there's a taxi stand close to where I'm going to, I'll set the destination a little further away.
I can't remember a single Uber driver telling me he started making more money when he started accepting cash. Most of them said they would never accept anything besides credit card, for safety.
> Uber drivers are constantly at war with taxi drivers
Currently living in Pretoria, South Africa (close to Joburg). Drop off and pick up points can't be where there are several cabs and when we went to Joburg directly there was even a police presence to prevent violence towards uber drivers.
> Recently, Uber announced that another layer of security would be added. Users who want to pay in cash must also provide their date of birth and CPF.
Uber is under pressure to do something, so they did something that is both ineffective and frustrating!
Name + CPF + birthdate is not an effective security measure in Brazil because anyone can find a valid combination on the web. And visitors to Brazil obviously won't have CPF numbers, so this security measure is going to be a hassle for them.
I'll explain a little bit more about why the CPF is so easy to discover and misappropriate:
Brazilians are asked for their CPF number everywhere. (The CPF is the Brazilian equivalent of the U.S. social security number.) You're asked for it when taking an inter-city bus, special ordering a book at a bookstore, or signing the register in a building lobby. Birthdate is asked less often but still much more commonly than in the U.S. The reason is often not for security but to disambiguate people.
In Brazil, 10% of the population has Silva as a last name[1]. An incredibly large percentage of people have Maria, Ana, Jose, Joao as first names. If you're American, a name like "John Smith" sounds so common that it's the subject of jokes ("you made up that name?"), yet you might not actually know any John Smith's. But a Brazilian probably knows a bunch of Maria Silva's, Jose Da Silva's, and Ana DaSilva's.
You need a way to reliably differentiate between two Maria Silva's, so Brazilians ask for the CPF (and sometimes birthdate). And universities and governments regularly publish lists with peoples' full names and their CPF numbers to show graduations, admissions, fines, licensing info, whatever. All you need to do is google for <any name> + CPF, and you can find thousands of PDFs files with thousands of CPF numbers and birthdates (examples: [2][3]).
Furthermore, this is terrible for law-abiding visitors to Brazil because it becomes impossible to use services that demand a CPF number. For instance, as a visitor, you can't buy a ticket on any of the Brazilian airlines through the web[4]. The only exception is TAM (now LATAM) that has a portal for foreigners that charges 50-100% more than a Brazilian would pay for the same flight. I don't know how Uber has implemented their new security procedure, but I'm betting that it won't be convenient for visitors!
If your a tourist, you probably can pay via card in the app anyway. These cash options are for people where they don't have any kind of digital payment.
I've easily bought flights Rio-SP and to Iguaza with Expedia. Using airline's website is always a bad idea, anywhere. From broken JS to 500 web server, they just suck. Always use proper aggregator.
Oh, I beg to differ. Although airline websites are frequently awful, I always prefer to avoid a middleman if I can. There are things that can go wrong between an aggregator and the merchant. More than once in Brazil I've seen a guest arguing at the check-in counter of a hotel -- he's showing a printout of his payment through an aggregator and the hotel manager is saying that they never got the payment and that if he wants to stay, he'll have to pay again and take up the problem with the aggregator himself.
Airlines aren't like hotels. Aggregation systems are very mature and I never ever heard someone booking and not being able to fly. Plus the price is nearly the same. Plus you don't need to expose your CC to local airline website full of holes.
I am in Rio now since a week. I think this country has much more urgent needs then electronic payment systems...
Anyways, card payments are more common here then in some European countries, like Portugal or Italy (many EU countries can be traveled cashless). So I was surprised Uber accepted cash payments in Rio (nowhere in Europe, I think).
Maybe its because of the tipping ? Adding 10% service fee to any bill seems extremely universal.
EDIT: thanks ufo for the comment. I thought it extended to other services as well.
I'm native from Rio Grande do Sul. I often tipped taxis (usually by "rounding up" the value to make change easier too) and I don't think I've ever tipped at a restaurant. Might depend on the region, but I was under the impression that this was pretty universal.
You tip taxis by "rounding up", but the parent says he never tips. By American standards, rounding up (i.e., up to 50 cents) is not tipping. Taxi drivers in the U.S. and Canada expect 10-15%, or even more in New York City, though their expectations have probably gone down since Uber arrived.
The parent say "tipping is only common on restaurant bills". I'm pretty sure that the parent is referring to the 10% service fee, which is always optional, but that everyone pays unless the service was really bad[1]. You don't call that tipping but since it's optional, it's very similar to a tip.
I took Uber while I was in Rio. It was perfectly safe. Uber Black is much different in Brazil than it is in the United States. You aren't getting into an Escalade, but typically a Toyota or Honda. Also, you could only pay via credit card. Maybe this is limited to Sao Paulo, but most Brazilians I spoke to were happy that Uber was in Brazil.
> You aren't getting into an Escalade, but typically a Toyota or Honda.
Keep in mind that popular cars in the US can be luxury cars in Brazil. My Brazilian friends' first reaction when I tell them I have a Honda Civic here is "damn, freaking awesome, you're loaded!"... and then I tell them that's a pretty basic car in America :)
Same here, Uber Black everywhere in Rio. Never had any problems, quite opposite actually - going with the little one, folding buggy, drivers were always helping etc. - very pleasant experience. Also very cheap. There are too many yellow cabs in Rio anyway, they're just making traffic driving empty up and down.
Brazil has a very high crime rate. Our northeast capital cities (where Uber started to accept cash as customers were asking for this) are among the most dangerous in the world regarding murder rate.
The "express kidnapping" is very very common here in São Paulo.
If you consider the crime problem in Brazil, Uber is quite irrelevant on all of this. And it is fairly obvious that if have a big enough operation here, crime will happens to you too.
I am not saying that Uber has no responsibilities in supporting its drivers and passengers (preventing before and supporting after the crime). But this story seems to just want to capitalize on Uber bad reputation.
And the title is quite exagerated and click baity