Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

sarahell, what's your opinion about the types of insurance the drivers for these companies carry?

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141122/lakeview/cyclist-struck-by-two-cars-on-lake-shore-drive-early-saturday-police

Awful situation but wondering how the insurance stuff may shake out here with the Uber driver.

http://www.policygenius.com/blog/insurance-secret-uber-doesnt-want-know/

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Leaked-transcript-shows-Geico-s-stance-against-5910113.php

I took UberX a few times recently just to try it out (once when we didn't have our car and needed to get somewhere), here are my thoughts:

1) From work (midtown manhattan) to home it was exactly the same price as a regular yellowcab, and unlike the yellowcab the uber guy didn't gun it and didn't take what I know to be the fastest route, so not doing it again from work
2) From my neighborhood, however, it was great -- car services around here suck and often just tell you they don't have someone available, whereas uber had a guy with a car seat her in five minutes.
3) However, they charged about 30% extra for the car seat, which seemed kind of ridiculous
4) I was annoyed at how unclear it was how much it was going to cost -- the first time I specifically got the fare estimate, but the second time I somehow missed it, and once you pass that there doesn't seem to be any meter or anything else telling you how much you're paying and why
5) Uber is just the douchiest name ever, and their logo looks like something out of Robocop
6) All three Uber drivers I had were professional drivers who had previously driven for black car services so the "ridesharing" thing is nonsense
7) Ultimately yeah there is a douchey vibe to the whole thing -- you can even hook up your spotify account to the driver's stereo so you're the fucking DJ in your uber while you do lines off a hooker's ass or whatever
8) The cars were all very nice, though almost pointlessly so -- the "family" one we got was a Toyota Avalon hybrid, and the one that took me home from work was some monstrosity luxury SUV

TL;DR, I'll probably use it again in my neighborhood just because cabs and car services are so difficult, but otherwise it has no major appeal for me over a regular cab, and I barely ever take cabs anyway

Also, one of the drivers told me "Last year, it was great, I made good money and I could work a normal day and go home. Now they cut the rates and I have to work 15 hours to make the same money I made in 8"

my friend is a Lyft driver & she said basically the same thing -- she's driving for both to try to make up the shortfall

I still dont think I understand whats better about Uber (or what was percieved to be) than taxis. Here in Melb we can order a proper taxi with iphone apps as well as by calling or hailing on the street; you can pay by card (credit or debit) on proper wifi connected machines in all the taxis, and its reasonably cheap.

Is it something else that makes uber better? Cant be the price from what im reading here.

There are some cities in the US where the cab system really doesn't work well, and I think San Francisco is one of these.

Trayce, in NYC we mostly have a pretty good yellowcab system and black car car services make up the difference, but there are places like my neighborhood where it's still difficult to find any kind of cab. I also don't think you can hail regular taxis by smartphone app right now in NYC but not sure. Beyond that though, the improvements are not huge -- the cars are a little nicer (in my three experiences) but modern NYC cabs tend to be well-maintained, clean, up-to-date cars. I guess the choice of music thing is sort of neat but I didn't use it because it seemed assholish. I do like the fact that there are so many uber drivers with carseats ready - I don't think regular cabs ever have this.

But yeah there are cities with poor cab service. My brother in LA says everyone there uses Uber because both public transit and cabs are not great there.

But yeah, taxis are so different in different cities that I think there's a lot of yawning gaps of incomprehension -- people in cities with good taxis say "what is the point of this" and people in cities with crap taxis say "how are you not using this"

Similarly -- I think Uber-like services are really well-adapted for the use case of "it's 3am and I'm drunk at a bar whose street address I don't know and I need to get home and I don't live in a city where cabs are just driving by all the time" -- I think this is the kind of situation most people are either in reasonably often (in which case they're in the "how can you not use this" camp) or basically never (in which case "what is the point of this.")

e.g. someone whose typical use of a taxi is "I'm out of town for work and I need to get from my hotel to the airport" (e.g me) seldom to never encounters the situation where this service would be useful.

Yeah makes sense.

Lest it be thought btw that Melb's taxi system is *good*, it kind of isnt, but for other reasons (very large majority of the drivers are very recent immigrants who have absolutely no idea where they are going; lot of cleanliness issues, abusive/rude drivers etc)

Some people have told me they had luck hailing Ubers at the airport when the taxi line was really long, but if enough people start doing that it will also be hard to hail Ubers at the airport I assume.

is über just for rich ppl who don't want middle eastern cabbies or is my impression off?

the uber drivers I had were all middle eastern or central asian

One thing I did notice, I think the drivers were a little more reticent about chatting with us, even when I engaged them a bit, and that may be because of fear of bad ratings if they say the wrong thing. This felt a little off to me.

it amazes me that nouveau tech people are so credulous as to willingly throw away decades of accumulated consumer protections and regulations for the novelty of calling an unlicensed cab with an iphone app.

― adam, Wednesday, April 23, 2014 5:33 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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in Chicago ubers are banned from doing airport pickups (drop offs are fine)

xp isnt the essential appeal (beyond availability/speed etc depending on ur area) how it feels like the opposite tho? - like ppl find a kind of superficial airless safety in being machine processed by this abstract "system" rather than having to deal with the nebulous fallibilities of their own human initiative interaction etc. like hurting says it's like ocp running johnny cabs only cos the android tech isnt there yet so they have to subjugate actual driver persons

Yeah in fact I had almost that exact same thought - that this feels like an intermediate step toward automated cabs

I dislike Uber's upper management as much as anyone, but have used the service numerous times in the bay area and it's inexpensive, easy, and the drivers I've had have always been perfectly nice. Taxi's have refused to drive me from BART to the house with luggage because it's not far enough.

If you're willing to pay the multiplier Uber is great during a rainy day when it is impossible to catch a cab

How much is the multiplier. It's exceedingly rare that I'd be in that situation -- only time I take cabs in Manhattan is when I leave the office very very late.

I'd really take the subway any time except my train often either doesn't run or runs very very infrequently and only local after certain hours.

It varies according to how high the demand is

For me it was 2.2 then 2.0

There was that story of the woman who was charged $320 because it was like a 7x multiplier on Halloween and she didn't know

i opened uber in the middle of a blizzard in Manhattan around 10pm the Saturday before Xmas last year and the multiplier was around 7.5x

When the multiplier is in effect does it flash big on the screen? Like is it plausible that that woman could have missed it?

IT does but she was drunk coming home from a party

You have to tap through it

recently ive seen it make you re-type the multiplier amount as a sort of confirmation/captcha

hey look an unbiased opinion

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/11/22/in-defense-of-uber-an-unbiased-opinion/

Does anybody actually use Uber's rating system?

Seems weird for a system that's otherwise supposed to be frictionless

Stop the Yelpification of Everything

i had a guy drop me off once who wasn't terrible but did miss a few turns and was also sort of cold and unfriendly say "five stars, right pal?" as i was exiting the car. i responded "you too, pal."

I had a guy turn around and show me his phone and tap 5 stars as I was getting out and I guess I was supposed to do the same for him

Finally!

Xxxxxxpost to unbiased opinion

So far I gave 5 stars to all three guys based on nothing expressly wrong and assuming that anything less is probably bad for them. I kind of hate the five-star rating system for that reason. My favorite mexican place has an even four stars on yelp, which I would probably treat as a sign of "meh" if I didn't know better. People give two or three star reviews based on the stupidest shit.

It's a fucking cab ride, if it gets you from A to B safely and in a reasonable amount of time without harassment by the driver, and the cab isn't somehow revolting, that should be enough. When did we start having such refined tastes in everything?

I've said this upthread, but in Chicago, Uber is an app that works as a decentralized taxi dispatch. Cab drivers licensed by the city can sign into the Uber network, then passengers log into the app, request a taxi, and if there's a taxi driver signed into the network nearby they'll accept the ride request and come get you. Then Uber charges your credit card (and takes a percentage off the fare as a user fee). There used to be a competing network/app called Hailo but they pulled out of the North American market due to competition.

There's also UberX, which is what Uber is everywhere else (not taxis), and Uber black cars, which is the black cars. And then Lyft, which is Lyft.

Anyway, I love the taxi hailing aspect of it. Where we live now isn't a taxi desert, but it can take ten minutes standing on a corner (and lots of glaring at other people who are also competing for cabs) to hail a taxi where we live now. I've only used the UberX part when there have been zero cabs available on the app and couldn't take public transit for whatever reason (usually because I was running too late), but I generally don't like it. I have an issue with exploitation inherent in most of these "sharing economy" set ups (like Task Rabbit, probably Instacart), especially with the way drivers used to be able to make a living as an Uber driver (it is also really hard for Chicago taxi drivers to make a living without driving an insane number of hours per shift because the fares are so low here) until those assholes cut the rates.

I don't know. I wish Hailo had stuck around. Trying to call a taxi through the taxi company's dispatcher is an exercise is frustration and waiting an hour only to find out that somebody cancelled your call and didn't tell you. If nothing else, I'm hopeful that Uber will prompt taxi companies to get their shit together on that front.

Oh that's UberT right? Does anyone know if you can use that in NYC?

Oh also even though cab drivers in Chicago must by law take credit cards, you still run into a lot of drivers who will give you a raft of shit or straight up refuse to drive you if you're paying with a card, so getting a licensed city cab through Uber takes away that irritation. Also also the credit card networks that taxis use are notoriously insecure, so there's that, too.

Jeff and I got an UberX ride home from a beer festival thing a couple weekends ago and the driver was probably the best driver I have ever ridden with. There was a lot of traffic but he was calm, he didn't do that nauseating thing a lot of taxi drivers do where they accelerate rapidly as soon as there's an opening and then slam on the breaks, his car smelled really nice (and not like Black Ice air freshener trees, which give me a pounding headache), and even when a total dingaling pulled out in front of him, his only response was to say, "Hey" sort of the way you'd say "Hey" to a coworker who stopped by your cube to chat for a second. We gave him five stars and I hope that he is able to make a comfortable and happy living as a driver.

I thought NYC was weird in that you can only hail yellow cabs in certain areas and only call for a ride service in other areas?

Yeah I've never had good luck trying to get a yellow cab in BKLYN/QNS and gypsy cabs make me a bit nervous (irrationally since I've only had bad experiences with that type of service in China)

xp it's more complicated than that, and also it's changed somewhat in recent years. You can and always could afaik hail a yellow cab anywhere, but it used to be you just didn't see them outside Manhattan very much, being that mostly poor and working class folks lived in "the boroughs" -- less likely to take cabs to begin with and cabs also sometimes refused to take people there. As that's changed, you start to see more yellow cabs in some parts of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, although they're still not easy to find in many neighborhoods. So ride services fill the gap. There's also this new green cab thing which is sort of confusing, but my understanding is that they're hailable only in the boroughs (to make up for the lack of yellow cabs) but not in Manhattan because of the limit on medallions.

Interesting.

I find taxi regulations fascinating. They're so labyrinthine.

so far my favorite uber drivers (i am almost always referring to UberX when i say uber btw) have been middle aged dudes who are doing it as a hobby/excuse to get out of the house on nights/weekends

We also use Uber Cab to send out babysitter home if it's late. Easy to just to call a cab, it takes her home and just charges it to me.

Supposedly this is a new dispatching app that partners with taxi companies, not individual drivers. I've read mixed reviews, but I'd like to try it.

http://gocurb.com/