I'm European, and in general I like (well thought out) regulations, but in the case of the taxi industry Uber is actually not a bad guy but a huge blessing.
In a lot of countries (80%+) taxi drivers are rude, try to price gouge, try to scam you or try to take longer routes.
Uber takes all of this away. The rating system ensures drivers are polite. The estimate € (plus route tracking) ensures they don't take the scenic route, and the fact that all payment happens via the app means there is no longer 'my meter is broken/the credit card reader is broken/sorry I miscalculated its €10 more'.
And because Uber is global I can use the same app wether I am in Paris, Prague, Hanoi or Seattle.. which means I don't need to install and learn 3 different apps.
Edit: to be clear, I am aware why Uber gets such a bad rep, and as a tech company they might deserve it, but as a taxi company they are absolutely top notch.
>In a lot of countries (80%+) taxi drivers are rude, try to price gouge, try to scam you or try to take longer routes.
Made up percentages don't count as credible data, unless you can cite the objective and peer-reviewed analysis that demonstrates that over 80% of taxi drivers are "rude, try to price gouge, try to scam you or try to take longer routes," you're just trying to disguise your opinion as fact.
Which is fine, but just say what you mean - that you imagine most taxi drivers in most countries are probably rude.
This is anecdotal, but I have taken many cabs in Philly, and every single driver I've had in my entire life here has been on the phone for the entire ride. That and they don't listen to directions because they are on the phone, and the cabs are often in poor condition. I've only had one or two uber/lyft drivers ever pick up the phone while I was in their vehicle.
There's no point in denying that the majority of cab drivers were more rude and scammy 10 years ago. They were, and in some places they still are.
But in my opinion, Uber was not even close to the top reason for the improvement you see. It was mobile navigation, more organized taxi companies, including internal rating systems and more often inspections, and job insecurity. Uber definitely helped with job insecurity.
Personally I'd rather have a somewhat annoying driver that talks on hands-free the entire ride over a smiling quiet driver that can't make ends meet and his livelihood depends on a couple of ratings. There's a good compromise somewhere between the two ends but it's not like we weren't in the former end for a long time. Taxi licenses were extremely expensive, fares were extortionate and you got scammed immediately if you looked out of place.
GP probably hasn't been to 80% of the nations in which taxis may be hired, but that would more charitably be considered extrapolation from experience rather than "imagination". If you haven't experienced poor taxi service, you might consider yourself lucky.
> Made up percentages don't count as credible data, unless you can cite the objective and peer-reviewed analysis that demonstrates that over 80% of taxi drivers are "rude, try to price gouge, try to scam you or try to take longer routes," you're just trying to disguise your opinion as fact.
There is little to no such data, but we can extrapolate from two things: 1. Uber, Lyft and co. would never have grown globally at such an astronomical rate (and eaten the taxi branch its lunch) if there wasn't a large demand for a 'clean' taxi experience, and 2. Wether you are aware of it or not, taxis and their drivers are one of the most oft complained about branches of industry. Seriously, ask 100 random people who have travelled internationally about their taxi experiences, and I guarantee you a large contingent will mention the same pain points I did.
On a sidenote, I did not 'try to disguise your opinion as fact'. Its a normal figure of speech, when you (and others) experience almost nothing but bad experiences with something you present it as 70/80/90% or 3/4 or 4/5th or whatever is 'bad'. Trying to shut that down with a quasi-strawman adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, except for appearing pedantic or combative.
> Which is fine, but just say what you mean - that you imagine most taxi drivers in most countries are probably rude.
Sans the imagine, considering I've traveled most of Europe, a lot of Asia, and a little bit of North America. Add in experiences from friends who have also been to those places and/or S. America, Australia, etc., then yeah.. a pattern starts to make itself clear.
> Uber, Lyft and co. would never have grown globally at such an astronomical rate (and eaten the taxi branch its lunch) if there wasn't a large demand for a 'clean' taxi experience
In my country the main selling points of the pirate-taxis (and they have been judged that by the courts) was a fare half the price.
They do that by skimping on things that real taxis need (by law), for example customer insurance (private insurances don't cover passengers, if they paid anything to drive with you), professional level drivers licenses, multiple yearly DMV checkups, sick pay to the drivers, maximum daily driving hours, taxes etc.. ...
We know for a fact (due to the court ordering Uber to give the data to them) that the biggest Uber earner in in Denmark took home just shy of 590 thousand dkk (93k USD) in a year. A real taxi needs to have revenue like that in a quarter to have any chance to survive...
I drive 50+ trips per year (mostly in Copenhagen, but also a few in other european cities) and sans 1 (one) slightly bad experience in the 5+ years, I don't see how the Ubers are better (other than cheaper). I took around 20 uber-rides until I went back to the taxis...
I do welcome the kick in the butt, that Uber gave the taxis, as multiple new taxi concepts have risen (all real, legal taxis btw).
> 1. Uber, Lyft and co. would never have grown globally at such an astronomical rate (and eaten the taxi branch its lunch)
That’s a dangerous assertion when Uber spent a sizable chunk of its investment money on promotions to make rides available at less than cost. Selling services below cost and competitors price is a way to gain market share that does not prove that your business model is in any way superior.
> in the case of the taxi industry Uber is actually not a bad guy
Pre-Uber New York City taxi cab story time!
Rewind lots of years. I am living on 30th & Madison. One of my roommates is an immaculately-dressed Brown graduate and young executive. Every few days, he makes an odd request of me: Can I hail him a cab? Why? Cab drivers routinely ignored his hails. The probable cause? He's black.
Add to that "busted" credit card readers, refusals to drop off outside Manhattan and cell phone use. (San Francisco, Paris and Las Vegas were similar.) Note: yellow cabs have become much better since Uber.
It's easy to be top notch when you don't have to pay all the expenses you incur. By offloading all of their infrastructure costs onto their employees (that is, the cars and the phones), they can operate very cheaply. But it's not because the service is cheaper, it's because they're avoiding their bills.
What are you comparing to? In NYC, for example, these cost were always offloaded to the drivers - they had to pay to rent the car/medallion for the shift:
"The average rate a cabbie paid to take a taxi out for a 12-hour shift climbed 11 percent, to about $85, between 1990 and 1993, based on the most recent figures available from the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission."
It took some real talent on the part of Uber to get so many people to view them so negatively. I think most of us are at least a bit sympathetic to some of their early rule-breaking given how entrenched the existing cab companies were and how bad they were in many cases.
As you say, there are a lot of things to dislike about Uber as a tech company and I try not to use them. (And I don't actually use cabs/Uber/Lyft all that much in spite of doing a lot of travel.) But they've definitely made it easier for people to get around in many cities.
AirBnB's market, on the other hand, wasn't really broken even if the (legitimate) short-term rental agencies were more fragmented and less modern than they could have been.
>In a lot of countries (80%+) taxi drivers are rude, try to price gouge, try to scam you or try to take longer routes.
I have had every experience you explained with Uber. People driving me weird ways around my city to make the trip longer, rude, attempting to add a cleaning charge with no reason, or the classic "Hey if you cancel the ride and give me $10 I can get you there."
How? Uber is a current-year tech company. Like Google, there technically is a support line that technically exists, but just forget about it.
I called Uber 10 times, in Houston. Got scammed 5 times. Part of the "the driver just keeps driving and never acknowledges letting you out of the car" scam is that the app takes the same approach to "uh, I'm not in the car anymore" as it does to "uh, I would like to complain to Uber". (The way to say that the ride has ended is to cancel the trip, an operation that feels like you're trying to scam the driver, so an honest person will avoid doing that while searching for the nonexistent "the ride has ended" UI.)
4/5 scams: the driver goes past your position and then waits a mile down the road to pick you up. The moment the driver was near, Uber switches to "ok go get in the car" mode. It never switches out of it. If you cancel, rather than hike an unreasonable distance to catch the car that deliberately drove past you, then Uber charges you $5.
I don't believe you. No offense, but it's easier to learn that the Earth is flat, or that a place called 'Australia' exists, or that reality is entirely a consensus affair and that strenuous wishing can change it, than it is to learn that Uber is easy to contact. Some lies people don't bother spreading.
If you lucked out and found that your specific issue had a UI entry in the app, that's not the same thing as being able to explain a situation to a human and have that human do the (paid, drudge) work of wading through obscure interfaces to find the button that fixes a given problem.
Why do you trust it? You got into a car on an arranged deal and the driver immediately wants to back out of it--this is already a shady situation. Why do you think he'll drive you anywhere after he gets the $10? Why do you think he won't charge you for the trip on top of the $10 after alerting Uber to their own GPS records that show your phone and his car taking you to the destination you said you wanted to go to?
I would never pay for a ride in someone's car before the ride completed. Taxis don't expect that; who does this guy think he is? If he wants something up front he's out of luck. In fact I probably would reject the offer as I suggested above, but if I accepted I would immediately cancel the trip. If Uber want to charge for a cancelled trip they can bite my ass.
It is probably "privilege" as a big heavy white dude with a perpetually surly expression that I'm not alerting on "danger" in such a situation. If I were a different person I could totally imagine reporting the driver and trying to get him fired. People worry when getting in strangers' cars. Actually once in India I did get such a misdirected cab ride, but my Indian friend noticed and convinced the cab driver to stop. He chewed the driver's ass for a while, then we got another cab.
In a lot of countries (80%+) taxi drivers are rude, try to price gouge, try to scam you or try to take longer routes.
Uber takes all of this away. The rating system ensures drivers are polite. The estimate € (plus route tracking) ensures they don't take the scenic route, and the fact that all payment happens via the app means there is no longer 'my meter is broken/the credit card reader is broken/sorry I miscalculated its €10 more'.
And because Uber is global I can use the same app wether I am in Paris, Prague, Hanoi or Seattle.. which means I don't need to install and learn 3 different apps.
Edit: to be clear, I am aware why Uber gets such a bad rep, and as a tech company they might deserve it, but as a taxi company they are absolutely top notch.