Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

I've been thinking about just using the Taxi-approved app instead (Gett?), except that I do sometimes need the child seat. But I probably only take like 2-3 Ubers a year with the family, plus a couple more for work. For work I think I'm going to shift my business away from them.

Does Lyft really have better practices though? Do they compensate drivers better and do less to rope them into bad financing arrangements?

I didn't dig into it too deeply but I saw an article about my city floating the idea of subsidizing low income residents with bus credit and/or uber credit. afaik the bus system is utilized but expanding routes and doing off-hours transport isn't in the cards for lack of riders but there's enough of a lack of transport among those who most need it, they'd consider offering credit for people to use uber

I have heard that Juno actually *does* treat its drivers better, but they're also pretty small right now right? Maybe I'll download the app just to see if there are drivers available.

what I'm thinking is that the demand for an uber-like business is out there, but they're still looking for the money in the wrong place and falling down on the job when it comes to finding allies in the groups that organize city transportation

i have been told by drivers (who seem to always use both) that lyft is better. i mean "better" may not mean good. Lyft doesn't do financing for drivers the way Uber does. (They have a rental program joint with GM, whether that's a scam I don't know.)

Hmm, Juno has 25% off rides here now, fare estimates are actually much cheaper than Uber. Gonna use this next time.

I think I remember hearing that, unlike Uber, they don't reduce driver's rates when they do promotional pricing.

I guess in a place where everyone drives alone everywhere, an army of self-driving cars that do pools would be a sort of improvement. In NYC it would just make things 10x worse, although I can't imagine people abandoning the subway unless Uber is like really successful at lobbying to defund the MTA.

NYC worldview of mass transit or even trivially moving people around is not the context to view Uber or any of the other services.

my city floating the idea of subsidizing low income residents with bus credit and/or uber credit

i feel silly even saying this but the uber version of this is, like, man what a classic case of neoliberalism finding a new social guarantee to lop off of the state's obligations to provide a service, replaced with the promise that you can become a consumer of a service whose actual provision is nobody's obligation. it also seems mathematically insane - how much does a bus ticket cost versus an uber ride?

last night we called for an uber from the bar and the guy not only didn't pick us up but he marked us as being passengers so i got to watch myself on the app gps drive home while i was waiting in the town over to actually be picked up. anyway someone else came later and they gave me a refund. idk wtf was going on with that first driver tho.

maybe picked up some other drunk dude who just nodded when asked if he was "Mordy"

I've also never been able to get the pool function to work in a useful way fwiw

haha that has happened to me at least twice. what either happened is someone else ordered an Uber in the same area and the passengers thought your Uber was theirs and the dumb driver didn't verify, or the driver hit a wrong button, or he was trying to pull a scam (kinda unlikely since they know it won't work).

it happened to me on my birthday last year while I was drunk and I got the email confirming my trip and I wrote back drunk "WTF, no I didn't" and probably accused them of being prejudiced against half-Italians. Got a refund before I went to sleep.

I've also had the local cab service do the latter when they "couldn't find my condo complex" (despite having my number and not calling me once to get help). After I called the dispatch to complain and they sent another guy, he almost did the same thing until I actually saw him flying by and frantically waved at him. This was a trip to the Megabus station where there is no parking available, otherwise I woulda said "fuck it" and drove myself.

I kind of wonder about that -- what's the ideal Uber city from their business standpoint? It'd be a city with a pool of people interested in being drivers, where the demand is relatively even across the area (you don't want drivers to be doing all A->B trips, ideally when they arrive at B there are customers who want to go to A or another analogous locale) to ensure a flow of business, with public transport either being nonexistent or loose enough to have a lot of needs it fails to cover.

I have the feeling they're looking at the bay area when making a lot of decisions, but that's heavily weighted due to the high adoption rate and a consumer class that's willing to spend. NYC has transportation but their target there is to disrupt and supplant the taxi system, which is probably the case for Chicago as well. Los Angeles might be a good target in that it's very car-centric but idk?

Yeah I would imagine you want some kind of balance between density and sprawl, plus not very good public transit options. It's notable that LA was an early adopter of Uber, for example -- my brother who lives there was telling me that like everyone was using it back when I barely even knew what it was.

Plus LA of course has a huge pool of ideal candidates to be Uber drivers -- the same hopefuls who wait tables and such.

I can tell you that it's essential in Miami.

Passengers try to game the Uber Pool concept, which has unpredictable results. Ask a driver about it sometime.

Uber initially solved a huge aggravation point that consumers had with taxis, granting accountability, reliability and supply to an industry that was in dire need of those three things.

lol there is not accountability with uber!

like the most that is going to happen is someone gets a bad score or reported and they're not an uber driver anymore, but if a driver does anything to a passenger or vice versa then uber washes their hands of the whole thing

self-driving car Uber would not replace public transit

xpost hell I just had a friend get a bogus $80 charge for 'water damage' to a vehicle that the driver apparently staged

accountability

re: Juno - on cue, my best friend just posted this: A New Ride-Hail App Is Disrupting The Industry By Treating Drivers Like People

There's significantly more accountability with Uber than with a taxi. It's not perfect by any means, but it's way better. Taxi companies wash their hands of bad incidents all the time and until Uber came along, it was commonplace for taxi drivers to treat their customers poorly.

I've had several bad/subpar experiences with Uber drivers and my money has always been refunded immediately when I complained. I've found their customer service is way more responsive.

The self driving car fantasy/let's eliminate pesky drivers/machines can drive better is among the worst thing tech people have ever foisted upon us.

was kidnapping passengers a regular thing pre-Uber?

Is it a regular thing with Uber?

I don't think Uber can replace effective public transit either, but they have expressly put out statements that they intend to try. I don't see how it happens without them lobbying to damage public transit though, a la the auto and oil industries conspiring against streetcars.

I suspect the main problem with 'customer service' with taxi companies has to do with the fact that cabs from differing companies all look alike, and whenever you hail one, whether you use *TAXI on your phone, or just the old-fashioned method, you could get any one of a billion companies, you probably aren't paying attention to the name on the side of the cab, and then if/when an incident happens, you've already forgotten the name of your driver, the company, where you were picked up, etc. when I lost my cell phone (while drunk) in a cab in Maryland, it was pretty much a lost cause getting it back, mostly because I couldn't tell them the name of the driver as by the time I'd noticed it was gone, I had forgotten it, so I just wrote it off and got a new one. That and a lot of cab companies have very low-fi websites - I have yet to be on one that looked like it was created beyond 1998.

but, if you go straight through a cab company to book, it often goes better. I use Mears in Orlando and I've had a few incidents to report (nothing ever serious, just like "hey driver is late" or "guy left without me"), and their customer service has been decent. Uber's is better, yeah, but there have also been recent reportings of manufactured damage claims, where the driver makes it appear someone puked in/damaged their car, submits the photos, and the money is deducted from the victim's account before they know what happened (and then it's difficult to get back). Also less regulation w/ Uber too.

I've also a few times had Uber drivers do weird things with pickup where I almost feel like they want me to cancel, like just refusing to be in a logical, visible place and then not communicating clearly about where they are.

I was reading about the factors that led to Uber's ultimate retreat from China. Two things that stood out: they relied on Google Maps for a long time (which is apparently garbage wrt navigating China) and they relied on credit card payments in a country that largely uses a very popular app for most of their cash- and plastic-free payments. Way to research your market, dudes. But kind of in keeping with their 'fly by the seat of your pants' business model. More like Guber if you ask me!

I've had that happen before. Where the guy literally said he was down the street and I was like "where I can't see you" for about 5 minutes and then a guy driving a cab said "hey I'll take you home". they tried to charge me cos I cancelled within 5 miles and I complained "I tried to find the guy for over five minutes and it was getting ridiculous, I even told him what cross-streets I was on".

I really don't like that Uber has access to your paypal/bank info though, for the reason I stated above. when I put that on file, it's so I can pay for the current ride, not so you can arbitrarily decide that I damaged someone's ride based on grainy pics they sent you and deduct $200 from my account without warning or giving me a chance to rebut the claims. Yeah, you can get it back, but it's a pain in the ass (my friend in question couldn't make her car insurance payment due to the debit until they finally reversed it).

but I use Uber a lot cos I travel a lot for pleasure and when you're in a strange area of town at 2 am, it's easy to get a quick ride and usually affordable. I outright relied on it in Maryland a few months ago.

xpost

And the thing is Uber merely creates the incentive for bad behavior but avoids responsibility for it by not being an "employer" according to itself.

I thought uber lets you put in a credit card? I mean, that's a prob in itself in that someone without means might have cash for one ride but not a credit card, but the main benefit of credit cards is that you can dispute charges

i'm not personally bothered by Kalanuk's libertarian asshole rhetoric; whatever his ideology he's just another exec. it's the converse of not believing firms when they talk about corporate social responsibility

Lately it seems like my Uber drivers--and this is in a half dozen large cities over the past few months--seem like they talk CONSTANTLY. And not that they are entirely uninteresting, but it's reminiscent of that person on the plane sitting next to you who won't shut up.

I'm totally bothered by Kalanuk because he strikes me as a consummate asshole and the world needs less of those.

oh yeah – seven out of 10 times I bring a book or mag the drive wants to chat, which I suppose is cool cuz I practice my Spanish.

I once asked a driver what kind of training uber gives them for dealing with crazy ass passengers. he said they dont give them any training whatsoever.

I kind of feel sorry for Uber drivers in some ways because unlike a plastic/vinyl taxi, they can't just hose out the backseat after someone pukes on it. And I always ask Uber drivers if someone has puked in their car, because the number of affirmative responses is shocking.

I would guess over half of the uber traffic in my small city is drunk ppl or people who were drunk getting a ride to their car the next day

I don't see how it happens without them lobbying to damage public transit though

Why would you harbor the slightest doubt they will do exactly this

I have zero doubt! Question is rather whether they will succeed.

Someone should do a study to see how many previously libertarian-leaning Uber drivers are still inclined to lean in that direction after firsthand experience with an unregulated industry.

cognitive dissonance is a thing

Some parent friend of mine is convinced that services like Uber is keeping more high school kids from driving drunk.

That seems reasonable to me and what's more I think it's the single best argument for rideshare services

but hey i'm just some parent

there was some article I didn't bother to read that had a headline about Uber not affecting the number of drunk driver arrests, buuuuut... I would be tempted to say that doesn't mean there are fewer drunk drivers on the road when you consider the number arrested was always a small percentage of the people who were driving intoxicated