I'd argue they did - I was around San Francisco when Uber was getting off the ground, and the initial service is exactly that: convenient, high-quality, provide

I'd argue they did - I was around San Francisco when Uber was getting off the ground, and the initial service is exactly that: convenient, high-quality, provided professional drivers with commercial insurance. It was also expensive, and nowadays known as UberBlack, and is a market many times smaller than Uber's ambitions. UberBlack was a great product with unit economics that would allow for a high-quality product that was a win-win for both drivers and Uber. But it was not a big enough product to justify Uber's stratospheric valuation - hence UberX. I think we're running into the fundamental truth here that providing high-quality taxi rides at such cut-rate prices is not possible, at least not when a human is at the wheel. Cutting corners and playing dirty are IMO a manifestation of this fundamental problem.