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Lyft's Nice-Guy Strategy Leaves It Struggling to Catch Uber
- chris_wot 11y agoI really hope that Uber goes under one day.
- phodo 11y agoYou are entitled to your opinion, but I am curious as to why you would say that. Based on business / ethical practices, or is it something else?
- ctolsen 11y agoNot the same guy, but I feel like Uber is a pretty cutthroat company, and they are probably not an example of a sustainable model in a more freelance/gig based economy. I like that they're paving the way for a new way of doing things and I use them almost exclusively here in London. I wouldn't say I want Uber to go under, I really don't. But if another company like Lyft can do it in a way I feel is more ethical, I would easily switch over.
- steven2012 11y agoIn 2016, how exactly do you think Uber is unethical? I find the idea that trying to disrupt taxi monopolies as unethical is ridiculous. And sure they had some shady shenanigans back in 2013-2014 (as did Lyft), but that hasn't been the case since then. What have they done recently that is unethical?
- chris_wot 11y agoFor one, they keep on slashing prices making it very, very hard for drivers to make a living.
- darkclarity 11y agoI'm not that bothered by them personally, but I would rather see these international taxi brands gone. They take away income and entrepreneurship from local economies. The world is slowly becoming a boring homogeneous place run by multinational brands. It's like fast food outlets, coffee shops and so on, most of them are run from another country and look exactly the same - there's no character.
- sho_hn 11y agoI feel you. I moved to Seoul, South Korea a few months ago, a city of many thousands of coffeeshops. Among the natives, Starbucks is really popular -- meanwhile I go out of my way to avoid going there, because it's frustrating to move 8500km and not feel the distance traveled after putting the effort into it. The rising popularity of IKEA, which arrived in Korea about two years ago, is concerning for the same reason. It's really not about naively craving exoticism (which inevitably wears off anyway), it's just a desire for an environmental confirmation of a major life change, the absence of which is psychologically disconcerting. Luckily there's still a boatload of little unique, charming. non-chain coffeeshops to go to, too.
- hocuspocus 11y agoIf there's one thing I really missed during my time in Korea, it'd probably be Ikea. There's just no good alternative.
- sho_hn 11y agoYou can always play gmarket roulette ...
- kofejnik 11y agoI'm hoping for Uber and Lyft to take over the world and put the traditional taxi companies out of business completely, to the extent that I dislike going to places where Uber isn't present. Most recent example - Athens, Greece, where a 15 minute ride to the airport is 50 euro, in a stinky old cab, with driver not speaking English. I've already contributed a couple k to your economy, but you still need to fleece me on my airport ride? Will be avoiding that country in the future.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- chris_wot 11y agoCompletely on their lack of ethics. There are far too many to recount.
- ajdlinux 11y agoIf Lyft ever expands to Australia, I will make a concerted effort to use them over Uber.
- LeoPanthera 11y agoI use Lyft (as a rider) exclusively, and have never been picked up by a driver who did not also have an Uber phone on their dash.
- pbreit 11y agoIn SF it's quite different. Many Lyft drivers only drive for Lyft and those with both badges on the window typically favor one service.
- chrisseaton 11y agoI don't understand how that's possible. I thought Uber was about big expensive black cars with drivers in suits, and Lyft was about regular people giving you a lift in their hatchback. I've never take a Lyft, but I can't imagine the Ubers I've been in putting a pink moustache on their top-of-the-range Mercedes.
- HappyTypist 11y agoThat is uberBLACK. Most rides are UberX
- chrisseaton 11y agoI knew about UberX but I thought that was just a side-project. I always thought Uber's tagline was 'your personal driver' and all the photos on the website used to be black cars.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pbreit 11y agoThe story does't quite match the headline. The take-away seems to be that in the face of a substantially better resourced competitor, Lyft is holding its own and even gaining, in large part due simply to happier constituents.
- IanCal 11y ago>"We were trying to figure out a way to reward Lyft for having better business practices and not violating our laws," You shouldn't need to particularly reward businesses for not breaking the law, surely. You should be able to punish those that break the law sufficiently harshly that breaking the law is not profitable. On a different note, I wonder what the requirements are for a distributed marketplace. Extremely similar things are regularly built, is there enough common in the area of "request quotes/bids for services/items, set time limit, pick one" to become just an open protocol? I guess the harder parts would be dispute management and reputation, though they don't seem like impossible hurdles.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 11y agoHeresy. Anything affecting Uber is useless red tape.
- adrenalinelol 11y agoThe fact that this is even uttered is troubling, a business shouldn't be able to intimidate any form of government so easily that the basic premises law and order gets skewed.
- tmptmp 11y ago>>You shouldn't need to particularly reward businesses for not breaking the law, surely. You should be able to punish those that break the law sufficiently harshly that breaking the law is not profitable. This point is very important. But why do we see people tempting to reward businesses which do not break law? Because, we seldom see the ones breaking the law getting punished severely. What happened to Volkswagen? The CEO didn't even get the proverbial slap on the wrist, instead he got fucking multi-million dollars in reward! Was Volkswagen forced out of business? Hell no. What happened to Goldman Sachs and other such criminals? Nothing serious. Uber is getting free ride by breaking laws. What happened to it? Nothing. So, people tend to think that way. Beyond that this is a very serious threat to free and open market economy and even the western democracies. As this is used by the covert and overt opponents and enemies of western free market economy based democracy to push forward their communist (or other equally bad ism) propaganda. It reminds me all that 99% vs 1% propaganda. And unless, this is fixed, I guess, many general people in the western world will continue to fall prey to their vicious propaganda.
- slackstation 11y agoAlot of people in this thread talking about how they won't use Uber for whatever reason. Those are the minority of opinion. More people will use ride services when they are cheaper. Rides are a commodity. You will get there just as much with Uber as with Lyft. It doesn't make that big of a difference to most people. It's like the level of luxury in a car. I'm sure it's rare to find people not taking a Lyft or an Uber because the car didn't have leather seats. I'm a daily user (to and from work, carless for over 18 months now) and I use the cheapest option. Historically it was Uber. Checked and for the past 4 months or so, it's be Lyft so I switched. Now it's back to Uber because of one reason, price. The drivers on Lyft seem a bit happier and nicer but, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. I'm not using a car service for the quality of a 10 minute conversation with a random stranger that I'll never see again.
- joshuaellinger 11y agoFunny. I'm exactly the opposite. I use Lyft only because it is nicer. If I cared about the price, I wouldn't use either. I don't shop at Walmart for similar reasons. Ultimately, I think that payoff from being nicer is with the drivers, not the consumers. How it plays out is going to depend on which side of the market is the limiting factor on growth.
- karmajunkie 11y agoI'm a pretty loyal Lyft user primarily because of the "nice" reputation and because when I ask drivers they usually tell me they like driving for Lyft better (even though they almost universally drive for both). I've only taken a few uber rides and they were all noticeably less comfortable.
- wwwdonohue 11y ago> It doesn't make that big of a difference to most people. It'll be interesting to see whether it starts to make more of a difference. Rides may be a commodity now, but so was coffee until Starbucks made people "feel good" about drinking over-priced burned coffee. Kimmel did a funny bit on this: https://youtu.be/HxlGI4OzeBk https://youtu.be/HxlGI4OzeBk If Uber has an Achilles heel it's branding. I like and use both Uber and Lyft, but every time you see Uber in the news it's because cabbies are rioting in some European city or because a driver sexually assaulted someone. Their recent logo redesign was cringe-worthy. It's all bad optics. Not sure that will ever make a difference, but history has shown that consumers are stupidly open to "feeling good" about their consumption, so we'll see.
- dthakur 11y ago5 days ago: Lyft gaining on Uber as it spends big on growth (sfgate) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509461 Today: Lyft's Nice-Guy Strategy Leaves It Struggling to Catch Uber (nytimes) Confusing world.
- ryanx435 11y agoThey are both propaganda pieces. The first was paid for by lyft, the second by Uber. PG wrote an essay about this type of thing, but I can't seem to find it right now
- ryporter 11y agoIt's interesting that these two companies are so competitive that they can't even work together in trying to win over regulators. Doing so would likely be mutually beneficial by increasing the size of the pie. Evidently it will require an even bigger threat, such as the one DraftKings and FanDuel face, to bring them together in common cause. I just feel like this rivalry has become overly personal.
- dec0dedab0de 11y agoI have only been using Uber for about a year, and haven't given Lyft a try because my credit card gives me 20% cash back on uber. That promotion ends soon, so I will probably try Lyft then.