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Are the residents of Austin doing anything to let their state representatives know that the situation is as bad as you're painting it? From what I've read (not

by joeblau 10y ago

Are the residents of Austin doing anything to let their state representatives know that the situation is as bad as you're painting it? From what I've read (not sure if it's factual or not), it seems people impacted by the loss of U/L either didn't turn up to vote or were potentially confused by the language on the ballot.

jdrock 10y ago
The consensus is that U/L's aggressive political campaigning prior to the vote backfired big time. They really screwed up on messaging by not understanding their audience. Had they made it about losing 10,000 jobs, they might have won. Hell, if they had just not called people multiple times without consent, they might have won. There are multiple efforts going on as a result of the vote. Former U/L drivers are trying to put together a rally. A non-profit group (Ride Austin) has sprung up to replace U/L. Certain council members are trying to fight the rest of the council. The state legislature is consider a bill that would pre-empt city legislation.
- joeblau 10y ago
  Thanks for the summary of what's going on. I remember when the news broke, but I haven't seen much about what's going on since then.
- tn13 10y ago
  That is absolutely right. Uber most certainly needs to fire their PR people. If I had to design a campaign to ensure Uber loses the vote, that is how I would designed the PR. It was unbelievably bad. Asking for votes is essentially an emotional argument and you need to play on people's emotions just the way Coke sells their soda or Axe sells deodorants. Uber should have shown "we are creating well paying jobs". "We are helping women", "we are helping environment" type of emotional arguments showing babies, blondes, mothers and cats. Just to give an example how horrible Uber is at PR: Uber's surge pricing is an excellent feature. But why on earth would you name it "surge pricing"? It is like BMW calling its cars "Overpriced Metal". Both "surge" and "pricing" are bad words and combined they are the worst possible naming for a feature. The correct naming for surge pricing should have been "Uber Urgent" or "Uber VIP". The way it should have been designed is that: 1. Drivers opt in for Uber Urgent. Whenever there is a surge in demand driver goes into Urgent Only mode. 2. Let the passengers wait for the usual low fares or select Uber Urgent and get their rides quickly. In fact asking passengers to bid in 3-4 levels would make a lot of sense. Uber Urgent could have been advertised as: 1. Empowers drivers to earn more by helping those in urgent need. 2. Helps people in need get the cars faster 3. Reduces traffic on road during rush hour. 4. Skip the line as if you are VIP. No more waiting.
  - zaidf 10y ago
    You're underestimating the value of being a company that always has a cab for you within minutes. With your approach, the default in the public's mind would be "there is no uber till 3am!" vs. "Uber is the on the way...btw it's 25% extra due to the rush." A name like VIP is bad because it discourages regular use. It sounds like something you use once a year on special occasions.
    - eric_h 10y ago
      Not to mention that Uber already has a VIP concept in their product that's quite interesting. Pairs frequent customers with the highest rated drivers. Amusingly, in less Uber dense neighborhoods in NYC (i.e. anything that's not Manhattan) Uber VIP is a worse option for getting a quick ride. For me, when I'm in the outer boroughs I opt for regular uber x, but when I'm in Manhattan I do Uber VIP.
    - tn13 10y ago
      You are correct. VIP might be not the right word but there could be better wording than the official "surge pricing". If you are charging someone 25% more clearly tell why and what the user is getting more than those who are not willing to pay 25% extra. Or simply don't tell anything about increased prices. Just show the estimated price and let the user decide if he wants it or not. In fact you can on-board the user into app to simply be blind to price increases up-to 75% or something.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    If I had to design a campaign to ensure Uber loses the vote, that is how I would designed the PR. Is it possible that's exactly what Uber's opposition did?
    - pc86 10y ago
      It's possible Uber is run by lizardmen and the Illuminati. But without any evidence actually pointing to that it doesn't really make sense to just throw accusations out into the air.
- ufo 10y ago
  What message were they using before the vote?
  - theli0nheart 10y ago
    Their big message was that fingerprinting does a worse job of filtering out dangerous drivers than Uber or Lyft's internally-used background checks.
    - vkou 10y ago
      What background checks? [1] [2] [1] http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/nenshi-not-very-good-at-apologies-uber-dustup-continues-to-pose-questions http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/nenshi-not-very-goo... [2] http://observer.com/2016/05/uber-driver-charged-with-attempted-murder-had-an-extensive-criminal-record/ http://observer.com/2016/05/uber-driver-charged-with-attempt...
      - icebraining 10y ago
        In your first link the mayor later said “I am not aware of anyone convicted of a sexual offence clearing the background check used by Uber in Calgary. Watching the video, I realize that I did not explain myself clearly at all. I apologize for any confusion that I have caused.”
- jellicle 10y ago
  What jobs? Uber insists they don't employ anyone.
  - Cookingboy 10y ago
    Self-employed jobs are still jobs.
    - hawkice 10y ago
      I know we are pretty far through the looking glass as far as the semantics here, but surely if someone is self-employed, they would be the business entity that created their job? "Job creation" is kinda a nonsense thing to brag about, so I have no idea what the standards are, but just linguistically speaking I'd assume self-employed=self-job-created.
      - Sacho 10y ago
        So they're investing in local businesses!
      - snowwrestler 10y ago
        Any given job has many parents. Yes, it takes someone to sign the contract to do the work (for self-employed), or post the opening and hire someone (for an employee). But it also takes investment. Many self-employed jobs sit on a platform that someone else is investing in. For example many construction workers are self-employed, but there needs to be a construction project for them to work on. Many folks in the film industry are self-employed, but there need to be movies for them to work on. And in the case of Uber and Lyft, even if we call the drivers self-employed, they can't employ themselves in that particular way without the platforms that Uber and Lyft provide. The software is a big part of it, but so is the customer base (an asset in its own right), and the marketing that keeps and grows the customer base. That's the extent to which Uber and Lyft can claim to create jobs. It's more like they create an environment or platform that enables other people to create their own jobs, but that is hard to fit into a soundbite.
deleted 10y ago
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dbg31415 10y ago
Unfortunately not much. The people who used Uber are up-in-arms, but the people who voted against it were people who didn't use the service and don't know / care. Our city council is stocked to the brim with people who hate any form of progress. Those dipshits are the reason we have such horrible traffic here in the first place... for years and years and years their mantra was, "If we don't build it, they won't come." And they purposefully made roads much much smaller than they ought to be -- and continue to make roads much much smaller than they ought to be to accommodate growth. Uber / Lyft played their hand so poorly. Instead of talking about jobs, and the reduction of drunk driving (a huge issue), they let the city and taxi union play them. The campaign, to suburbanites who probably don't use rideshare services anyway, became about safety and how Uber / Lyft drivers would rape you because there was one guy one time who had statutory raped someone before becoming a driver and Uber / Lyft let him drive anyway... The old mayor came on, drummed up fear in the old folks... so then the nursing home vote thought there were these roving rapists being paid billions of dollars by SF tech companies and driving up their taxes. I wish I was making it up. Oh, and the ballot language was confusing. So yeah, nobody really knew what they were voting for. Of course the crazy guy shooting people up north didn't help... but anyway now we're back to being fucked. Ways we are fucked: * Taxis... are 2-3x more expensive than Uber, if they even show up at all. When I need a ride to the airport I'm back to asking neighbors since I can't rely on taxis showing up on time. * Since Taxis don't have to show a GPS of where they are going, they take you round-about ways. It took me a minute but yeah, after getting picked up by the airport, I should have been taken down 71 to Mopac to get to Circle C. The guy literally took me to 35 then across Slaughter... stoplights galore. Intentionally driving slow the whole way... speed limit was 75, he was driving 55. * Taxis aren't clean. They're filthy in fact. No water either. * Taxi drivers aren't from here. So I get this is racist, but at least with Uber / Lyft we knew it was our neighbors. They spoke like we did. There were no communication issues around where you wanted to go. Ways we can get unfucked: * At the moment, unclear. We need a new city government... but because the nursing home / Luddites vote and the tech / younger crowd doesn't... we can't reverse the decision. And Uber and Lyft seem unwilling to pay for the background checks the city now requires. Anything else that pops up... it'll be a temp thing until the city cracks down on it and imposes the same sort of shit they tried to push on Uber / Lyft. (I fucking hate the "old guard" so much, and all the people who got to vote on rideshares who never even used them... it's such bullshit. Hooray.)
deleted 10y ago
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by joeblau 10y ago

jdrock 10y ago

The consensus is that U/L's aggressive political campaigning prior to the vote backfired big time. They really screwed up on messaging by not understanding their audience. Had they made it about losing 10,000 jobs, they might have won. Hell, if they had just not called people multiple times without consent, they might have won. There are multiple efforts going on as a result of the vote. Former U/L drivers are trying to put together a rally. A non-profit group (Ride Austin) has sprung up to replace U/L. Certain council members are trying to fight the rest of the council. The state legislature is consider a bill that would pre-empt city legislation.

joeblau 10y ago
Thanks for the summary of what's going on. I remember when the news broke, but I haven't seen much about what's going on since then.
tn13 10y ago
That is absolutely right. Uber most certainly needs to fire their PR people. If I had to design a campaign to ensure Uber loses the vote, that is how I would designed the PR. It was unbelievably bad. Asking for votes is essentially an emotional argument and you need to play on people's emotions just the way Coke sells their soda or Axe sells deodorants. Uber should have shown "we are creating well paying jobs". "We are helping women", "we are helping environment" type of emotional arguments showing babies, blondes, mothers and cats. Just to give an example how horrible Uber is at PR: Uber's surge pricing is an excellent feature. But why on earth would you name it "surge pricing"? It is like BMW calling its cars "Overpriced Metal". Both "surge" and "pricing" are bad words and combined they are the worst possible naming for a feature. The correct naming for surge pricing should have been "Uber Urgent" or "Uber VIP". The way it should have been designed is that: 1. Drivers opt in for Uber Urgent. Whenever there is a surge in demand driver goes into Urgent Only mode. 2. Let the passengers wait for the usual low fares or select Uber Urgent and get their rides quickly. In fact asking passengers to bid in 3-4 levels would make a lot of sense. Uber Urgent could have been advertised as: 1. Empowers drivers to earn more by helping those in urgent need. 2. Helps people in need get the cars faster 3. Reduces traffic on road during rush hour. 4. Skip the line as if you are VIP. No more waiting.
- zaidf 10y ago
  You're underestimating the value of being a company that always has a cab for you within minutes. With your approach, the default in the public's mind would be "there is no uber till 3am!" vs. "Uber is the on the way...btw it's 25% extra due to the rush." A name like VIP is bad because it discourages regular use. It sounds like something you use once a year on special occasions.
  - eric_h 10y ago
    Not to mention that Uber already has a VIP concept in their product that's quite interesting. Pairs frequent customers with the highest rated drivers. Amusingly, in less Uber dense neighborhoods in NYC (i.e. anything that's not Manhattan) Uber VIP is a worse option for getting a quick ride. For me, when I'm in the outer boroughs I opt for regular uber x, but when I'm in Manhattan I do Uber VIP.
  - tn13 10y ago
    You are correct. VIP might be not the right word but there could be better wording than the official "surge pricing". If you are charging someone 25% more clearly tell why and what the user is getting more than those who are not willing to pay 25% extra. Or simply don't tell anything about increased prices. Just show the estimated price and let the user decide if he wants it or not. In fact you can on-board the user into app to simply be blind to price increases up-to 75% or something.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  If I had to design a campaign to ensure Uber loses the vote, that is how I would designed the PR. Is it possible that's exactly what Uber's opposition did?
  - pc86 10y ago
    It's possible Uber is run by lizardmen and the Illuminati. But without any evidence actually pointing to that it doesn't really make sense to just throw accusations out into the air.
ufo 10y ago
What message were they using before the vote?
- theli0nheart 10y ago
  Their big message was that fingerprinting does a worse job of filtering out dangerous drivers than Uber or Lyft's internally-used background checks.
  - vkou 10y ago
    What background checks? [1] [2] [1] http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/nenshi-not-very-good-at-apologies-uber-dustup-continues-to-pose-questions http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/nenshi-not-very-goo... [2] http://observer.com/2016/05/uber-driver-charged-with-attempted-murder-had-an-extensive-criminal-record/ http://observer.com/2016/05/uber-driver-charged-with-attempt...
    - icebraining 10y ago
      In your first link the mayor later said “I am not aware of anyone convicted of a sexual offence clearing the background check used by Uber in Calgary. Watching the video, I realize that I did not explain myself clearly at all. I apologize for any confusion that I have caused.”
jellicle 10y ago
What jobs? Uber insists they don't employ anyone.
- Cookingboy 10y ago
  Self-employed jobs are still jobs.
  - hawkice 10y ago
    I know we are pretty far through the looking glass as far as the semantics here, but surely if someone is self-employed, they would be the business entity that created their job? "Job creation" is kinda a nonsense thing to brag about, so I have no idea what the standards are, but just linguistically speaking I'd assume self-employed=self-job-created.
    - Sacho 10y ago
      So they're investing in local businesses!
    - snowwrestler 10y ago
      Any given job has many parents. Yes, it takes someone to sign the contract to do the work (for self-employed), or post the opening and hire someone (for an employee). But it also takes investment. Many self-employed jobs sit on a platform that someone else is investing in. For example many construction workers are self-employed, but there needs to be a construction project for them to work on. Many folks in the film industry are self-employed, but there need to be movies for them to work on. And in the case of Uber and Lyft, even if we call the drivers self-employed, they can't employ themselves in that particular way without the platforms that Uber and Lyft provide. The software is a big part of it, but so is the customer base (an asset in its own right), and the marketing that keeps and grows the customer base. That's the extent to which Uber and Lyft can claim to create jobs. It's more like they create an environment or platform that enables other people to create their own jobs, but that is hard to fit into a soundbite.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dbg31415 10y ago

Unfortunately not much. The people who used Uber are up-in-arms, but the people who voted against it were people who didn't use the service and don't know / care. Our city council is stocked to the brim with people who hate any form of progress. Those dipshits are the reason we have such horrible traffic here in the first place... for years and years and years their mantra was, "If we don't build it, they won't come." And they purposefully made roads much much smaller than they ought to be -- and continue to make roads much much smaller than they ought to be to accommodate growth. Uber / Lyft played their hand so poorly. Instead of talking about jobs, and the reduction of drunk driving (a huge issue), they let the city and taxi union play them. The campaign, to suburbanites who probably don't use rideshare services anyway, became about safety and how Uber / Lyft drivers would rape you because there was one guy one time who had statutory raped someone before becoming a driver and Uber / Lyft let him drive anyway... The old mayor came on, drummed up fear in the old folks... so then the nursing home vote thought there were these roving rapists being paid billions of dollars by SF tech companies and driving up their taxes. I wish I was making it up. Oh, and the ballot language was confusing. So yeah, nobody really knew what they were voting for. Of course the crazy guy shooting people up north didn't help... but anyway now we're back to being fucked. Ways we are fucked: * Taxis... are 2-3x more expensive than Uber, if they even show up at all. When I need a ride to the airport I'm back to asking neighbors since I can't rely on taxis showing up on time. * Since Taxis don't have to show a GPS of where they are going, they take you round-about ways. It took me a minute but yeah, after getting picked up by the airport, I should have been taken down 71 to Mopac to get to Circle C. The guy literally took me to 35 then across Slaughter... stoplights galore. Intentionally driving slow the whole way... speed limit was 75, he was driving 55. * Taxis aren't clean. They're filthy in fact. No water either. * Taxi drivers aren't from here. So I get this is racist, but at least with Uber / Lyft we knew it was our neighbors. They spoke like we did. There were no communication issues around where you wanted to go. Ways we can get unfucked: * At the moment, unclear. We need a new city government... but because the nursing home / Luddites vote and the tech / younger crowd doesn't... we can't reverse the decision. And Uber and Lyft seem unwilling to pay for the background checks the city now requires. Anything else that pops up... it'll be a temp thing until the city cracks down on it and imposes the same sort of shit they tried to push on Uber / Lyft. (I fucking hate the "old guard" so much, and all the people who got to vote on rideshares who never even used them... it's such bullshit. Hooray.)

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