Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, 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/

I honestly don't care who I use, I just want to use the technology, whoever offers it. If it can be the cab companies, that's great. If not, I find alternatives.

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

this feels OTM, cf the reassuringly anonymous, Lysol sameness of Holiday Inns vs Bobby's Sky-Line Mo-Tell

How was your stay at Bobby's Sky-Line Mo-Tell?

sshhhhhhhhhh

(it was a no-tell mo-tell)

My feeling about substituting tech for human systems is that when ppl imagine how great a technological solution is going to be, they envision it working in the ideal way. In reality it will only be ideal for the rich or those for whom the cost of the service isn't a barrier to its use--anyone who cares about price or uses a lower price point-oriented version of the system will get a sub-ideal user experience. And when you do have the inevitable issues with it, its inconsistencies and inefficiencies, the fact that there's no human relationship or human intervention will mean you have no recourse at all to mitigate the quality of the experience.

Like, it's not nec choosing a uniformly smooth tech experience over an inconsistent human one.

Right, and the benefit of a city-granted monopoly is the power to regulate those experiences even for people who can't afford the "premium" services, although, to be fair, there's already a black market in cab service and a lot of people with less money are already using the black market cabs and already have less recourse.

There is human interaction, though. You don't get in a car/cab you ordered through this ap and sit silently behind a partition while your personal driving servant silently drives you to your destination. You have to confirm this is actually your ride and not somebody who's hanging out in front of your building in the same kind of car, tell the person where you're going, and make as much small talk as you are inclined to make. And I've ridden in glorious silence in licensed taxis, too.

The inconsistency of human interaction comes when you try to order a cab through the company's dispatch service, and the problem there is not having to talk to somebody on the phone. It's getting the actual taxi to come pick you up.

I don't care how I communicate with a service. I just want to know that I can get a ride in a reasonable amount of time and that my call won't be mysteriously cancelled. In that respect, Uber (and the much missed Hailo) has the benefit of me being able to see the GPS of where the driver is, so I guess to that extent I prefer an app, but that's not about what I can avoid (contact) but about what I get (a decent idea of when my ride is coming).

xp Oh yeah I don't mean necessarily NOW but in terms of seeing this as an step toward an even less human, more automated experience, whatever that might look like. Also inspired by watching a rich person hail an Uber car twice in a few hours with no concern whatsoever for any possible surcharge.

Also from seeing someone I know repeatedly posting on fb about the difficulty of working late and getting a yellow cab in Manhattan to pick her up to get home from work at like 10pm (lol marketing art direction) bc she's Black and taxis won't stop for her at night. And she could call an Uber car but she'd have to be willing to pay more just to mitigate the negative effect of racism, and how that's only available to the moneyed. I mean, nothing new here, just seeing it again in a new context.

That's interesting because I was just thinking about how Lyft and Uber are cheaper than licensed cabs in Chicago (UberX is significantly cheaper if you aren't stuck with surge pricing), so you end up with a situation where the consumer protections of licensed taxis are only available to people who can afford it.

Just to get my bias out there, I welcome with open arms the day cars drive themselves and I can use my smart phone to call up my personal autodriving pod to take me to my destination. But that's not about avoiding people (I like people and I work from home so when I do get around people I tend to TALK TO THEM A LOT ABOUT THINGS plus also I love talking to cab drivers (see: fascination about taxi regulations). That's about me generally hating cars and a constant low-level anxiety about being run over by one.

I've been wondering whether Uber's prices will eventually rise if they manage to take over a big enough chunk of the taxi market. Seems like they strategically lowered their prices recently to gain market penetration. Don't know whether they're highly profitable at current rates or not.