5 ms·

"Um. Perhaps it would be better if the black cabs focused their efforts on enhancing their own user experience rather than trying to artificially cap it? :)" T

"Um. Perhaps it would be better if the black cabs focused their efforts on enhancing their own user experience rather than trying to artificially cap it? :)" That's certainly valid, but on the flip side, shouldn't Uber at least compete on even ground? They basically storm into town, ignoring things like taxi medallions and such. That's why laws like these start to get enforced, so that Uber can't try to sneak past laws by saying "we're not a cab company we're a <something only slightly different>".

robbrulinski 11y ago
Why is it Uber's job to allow other companies to keep up with them?
- daveguy 11y ago
  It's just uber's job to comply with all regulation. Insurance, training, safety, etc. Generally those laws are in place for a reason. Claiming they are a "ride sharing" app to avoid commercial transport regulations is disingenuous at best. Edit: Obviously artificial quality reduction legislation is a bad idea, but uber as a company has been pretty adamant about ignoring all regulation. Even if it is a bad regulation you don't ignore it, you lobby to get it changed.
mattlutze 11y ago
Uber is competing on even ground. They've apparently designed a system that falls on the legal side of these medallion market protectionist schemes in most/many/a lot of locations. They're operating in the confines of municipal law. There's a few taxi and black cab app hailing services that make Uber et. al. moot here in southern Germany. TaxiMagic, for example, is great and provides the full core set of capabilities (favorite drivers, estimated costs, time-to-pickup, in-app payments, etc.) and is actually a network of medallion-holding taxi drivers. Consider that, if taxi companies offered competitive phone-based reservations (removing the convenience market differentiatior), they'd actually end up being the more reliable provider. No surge pricing, more consistent availability of favorite drivers, more predictable trunk/boot sizes ( no worrying if your luggage will fit when all the taxis in the city are ___ cars). etc. There's a bunch of these app companies champing at the bit to find taxi providers to partner up. Which is to say... incumbent taxi ecosystems can absolutely be competitive and possibly offer a richer/more lucrative range of services beyond the awkward ride-along you get with an occasional Uber driver.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- thesimon 11y ago
  >Consider that, if taxi companies offered competitive phone-based reservations And instead, they are suing apps like MyTaxi in Germany. [1] The app allowed you to call cabs and pay via the app. But because MyTaxi promoted their app with discounts - even though MyTaxi paid for these - they sued them. Because f*, we don't need any new customers. And considering they sued Uber as well, it seems like most taxi driver associations just don't want to improve and hope for the best. Another example: In Berlin, they went to court over a new law forcing them to accept cards and collect a 1.50€ surcharge for it. And this is even though a 1.50€ surcharge greatly covers their costs. https://sumup.de https://sumup.de for example charges 0.95% for the debit cards that are very popular in Germany, so they make a profit for all payments under 158€ which seem very rare. And SumUp is quite expensive already. They seriously need to improve their product. "Sorry, no app orders", "Sorry, card machine is broken", "Sorry, xyz" [1] http://news.newsdirectory2.com/daimler-subsidiary-mytaxi-threatens-new-front-for-discount-offers/ http://news.newsdirectory2.com/daimler-subsidiary-mytaxi-thr...
- SilasX 11y ago
  >Uber is competing on even ground. They've apparently designed a system that falls on the legal side of these medallion market protectionist schemes in most/many/a lot of locations. They're operating in the confines of municipal law. It seems like that's not true in London, even though it would be trivial to comply. There, (my understanding is) you get to obey fewer regulations if you're offering a pre-booking service, and that exception requires that people be able to make a request for "a car at 3pm". And IMHO, that's a pretty reasonable requirement; it's not saying customers have to specify a time, and it allows requests of the form "3pm or ASAP". It's also a feature many customers have asked for. But for some reason, Uber has this bizarre insistence on not allowing pre-booking: https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Uber-allow-customers-to-pre-book-cabs/answer/Mark-Rogowsky https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Uber-allow-customers-to-pre...
  - mattlutze 11y ago

robbrulinski 11y ago

Why is it Uber's job to allow other companies to keep up with them?

daveguy 11y ago
It's just uber's job to comply with all regulation. Insurance, training, safety, etc. Generally those laws are in place for a reason. Claiming they are a "ride sharing" app to avoid commercial transport regulations is disingenuous at best. Edit: Obviously artificial quality reduction legislation is a bad idea, but uber as a company has been pretty adamant about ignoring all regulation. Even if it is a bad regulation you don't ignore it, you lobby to get it changed.

mattlutze 11y ago

Uber is competing on even ground. They've apparently designed a system that falls on the legal side of these medallion market protectionist schemes in most/many/a lot of locations. They're operating in the confines of municipal law. There's a few taxi and black cab app hailing services that make Uber et. al. moot here in southern Germany. TaxiMagic, for example, is great and provides the full core set of capabilities (favorite drivers, estimated costs, time-to-pickup, in-app payments, etc.) and is actually a network of medallion-holding taxi drivers. Consider that, if taxi companies offered competitive phone-based reservations (removing the convenience market differentiatior), they'd actually end up being the more reliable provider. No surge pricing, more consistent availability of favorite drivers, more predictable trunk/boot sizes ( no worrying if your luggage will fit when all the taxis in the city are ___ cars). etc. There's a bunch of these app companies champing at the bit to find taxi providers to partner up. Which is to say... incumbent taxi ecosystems can absolutely be competitive and possibly offer a richer/more lucrative range of services beyond the awkward ride-along you get with an occasional Uber driver.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
thesimon 11y ago
>Consider that, if taxi companies offered competitive phone-based reservations And instead, they are suing apps like MyTaxi in Germany. [1] The app allowed you to call cabs and pay via the app. But because MyTaxi promoted their app with discounts - even though MyTaxi paid for these - they sued them. Because f*, we don't need any new customers. And considering they sued Uber as well, it seems like most taxi driver associations just don't want to improve and hope for the best. Another example: In Berlin, they went to court over a new law forcing them to accept cards and collect a 1.50€ surcharge for it. And this is even though a 1.50€ surcharge greatly covers their costs. https://sumup.de https://sumup.de for example charges 0.95% for the debit cards that are very popular in Germany, so they make a profit for all payments under 158€ which seem very rare. And SumUp is quite expensive already. They seriously need to improve their product. "Sorry, no app orders", "Sorry, card machine is broken", "Sorry, xyz" [1] http://news.newsdirectory2.com/daimler-subsidiary-mytaxi-threatens-new-front-for-discount-offers/ http://news.newsdirectory2.com/daimler-subsidiary-mytaxi-thr...
SilasX 11y ago
>Uber is competing on even ground. They've apparently designed a system that falls on the legal side of these medallion market protectionist schemes in most/many/a lot of locations. They're operating in the confines of municipal law. It seems like that's not true in London, even though it would be trivial to comply. There, (my understanding is) you get to obey fewer regulations if you're offering a pre-booking service, and that exception requires that people be able to make a request for "a car at 3pm". And IMHO, that's a pretty reasonable requirement; it's not saying customers have to specify a time, and it allows requests of the form "3pm or ASAP". It's also a feature many customers have asked for. But for some reason, Uber has this bizarre insistence on not allowing pre-booking: https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Uber-allow-customers-to-pre-book-cabs/answer/Mark-Rogowsky https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Uber-allow-customers-to-pre...
- mattlutze 11y ago