9 ms·

Uber CEO: I Think I’ve Got 20,000 Years Of Jail Time In Front Of Me

115 points by bjonathan 15y ago

3pt14159 15y ago
Remember this TechCrunch? http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/ill-never-let-canada-live-this-down/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/ill-never-let-canada-live-t... Yeah, so do I.
Philip_M 15y ago
good, He should go to jail for running an unlicensed cab service
- aberkowitz 15y ago
  Uber runs a livery cab service. At the disadvantage of not being able to pick up street hails, they do not require a medallion, and operate under different terms than a taxi.
  - andrewpi 15y ago
    Actually Uber doesn't operate the cabs, they operate a dispatching service. The livery cabs are independently owned and operated.
davidtgoldblatt 15y ago
I'm a little bit confused - it seems obvious to me that Uber is running an unlicensed dispatch service. What's their argument here? http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100REMOVEHI.html http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100RE...
- bittermang 15y ago
  That they're being disruptive and they're hip so they should be allowed to do it.
  - johnrob 15y ago
    I detect sarcasm, and I agree to the extent that the public debate on this matter is sorely lacking any analysis of why the laws in question exist. Both sides of the argument seem guilty of this.
    - uvdiv 15y ago
      "Public debate"? I pay a cabbie, s/he drives me, it's a private matter between the two of us. It's not the public's business to debate! The horrific notion of criminalizing a consensual economic intercourse between two adults -- with prison penalties, at that -- isn't an issue of democratic politics, but of basic rights.
      - anigbrowl 15y ago
        Oh get real Uvdiv. The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about being assaulted or held up for hundreds of dollars at the end of the journey. Somehow I doubt that if you ended up having to pay $250 for a short ride in someone's car that you'd just treat it as a regular business transaction instead of calling the police. Addressing a problem by going to the opposite extreme is just foolish. There's a reason that most people wouldn't feel safe accepting a ride from a random stranger, and why children are taught not to do it from an early age. Hint: it's not fear of capitalism.
        uvdiv 15y ago
        "The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about..." But that is not the idea of taxi "licensing" as it exists. It doesn't merely regulate taxi driving; it prohibits it altogether, outside of a protected group. It's not licensing, but cartel enforcement. Its aim isn't protecting the safety of the public, but protecting the business monopoly of the taxi industry. Uber isn't prohibited from operating taxis because they're unsafe, uninsured, or unwilling to subject themselves to registration, inspection, insurance, background checks, or whatever "public safety" requires. They're banned simply because they are competition. And this has nothing to do with public safety!
- enki 15y ago
  they aren't dispatching taxis here's the relevant passage: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.... (source: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-1DE383C4F92C/0/BasicInformationforPassengerCarriersandApplicantsRev012811.pdf http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-... ) (limousines which are passenger carriers regulated by CPUC aren't licensed to be hailed from the curb, but can perform prearranged transportation)
  - mikeryan 15y ago
    Yes but local laws can supersede state ones on this. ie it can be legal in Modesto but illegal in SF. SF Definition of a Dispatch Service: Dispatch Service" shall mean any person, business, firm, partnership, association or corporation that receives communications from the public regarding taxi service for the purpose of forwarding such communications to motor vehicle for hire drivers, and shall include any owner, manager, employee, lessee and any agent of said service. "Dispatch Service" shall not include any service through which the public is able to communicate directly with Drivers, and shall not include any effort on the part of a Driver to market his or her services to the public.
    - enki 15y ago
      SF Definition of Taxi: "Taxi" shall mean a vehicle operated pursuant to a Taxi or Ramp Taxi Medallion that is legally authorized to pick up passengers within the City with or without prearrangement, of a distinctive color or colors and which is operated at rates per mile or upon a waiting-time basis, or both, as measured by a Taximeter and which is used for the transportation of passengers for hire over and along the public streets, not over a defined route but, as to the route and destination, in accordance with and under the direction of the passenger or person hiring such vehicle. "as measured by a Taximeter", "for hire over and along the public streets" Because TCP's are legal in SF, and Uber can prearrange trips in a legal fashion using them, and there's no special law that applies to Uber only, in theory Uber should be able to operate legally. Technicalities like whether the trips are fully prearranged (pick-up AND drop-off) might come into play, but these are details they could fix. IANAL, but from what I've seen, If ordering a TCP via the internet is legal, ordering a TCP via the internet using Uber is also legal.
- bh42222 15y ago
  Anyone know why they can't get licensed in every city? Or is something preventing them form doing that, because licensing is inherently a way to protect old cartels from new cheaper/better upstarts?
  - uvdiv 15y ago
    Taxis are state-sanctioned cartels in many cities. The number of "licenses" (medallions) is capped to inflate the revenues of existing businesses. In San Francisco (where Uber's legal problems are), the quota is ~1,400, and there's a waiting list more than 10 years long to get a "license". http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html (n.b. this is cartel-funded propaganda) http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-over-plan-to-sell-medallions/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-ove... It's exactly what it looks like: they've criminalized competition. You get prison for "stealing" business from union thugs.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      This cartel appears to be the product of a joint effort between the taxi corporations and the drivers union. I don't hear the cab firms arguing for greater competition or an increase in the number of taxis either.
  - jdp23 15y ago
    Yes, licensing requirements generally protect incumbents. In SF (and I assume other large cities) it's very political.
- jdp23 15y ago
  seems like a great example of the line between "naughtiness" and "evil" being discussed yesterday in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 ... if a law gets in the way of your innovative business plan, should you just ignore it?
  - jtbigwoo 15y ago
    There are certainly times when unjust laws should be ignored. However, when one ignores the law one should be prepared to suffer the consequences of his actions. Uber's CEO is clearly not prepared to suffer those consequences.
    - alexqgb 15y ago
      The immediate consequence is a trial, not necessarily a conviction, which may or may not follow. The CEO (and just as importantly, his backers) seem entirely prepared to run this risk. One of the abiding virtues of due process is that it's public. In the event that a cartel captures a regulatory agency, and turns it against the people it's supposed to serve, a system of open justice will force them to fight for their odious privilege in full view of the press. The risk - for the cartel - is that the trial will backfire by spotlighting just how corrupt and abusive their underlying legal supports have become. Even if they do win in court, the victory my by Pyrrhic. In the absence of a clear (and superior) alternative, the arguments that supported the initial regulatory capture may still carry some weight with an otherwise ambivalent public. In these cases, private acts of cartel-busting may be truly foolish. But in cases like Uber or Airbnb - where the public can not only see the alternative clearly, it can download it as a wildly useful app - it becomes exponentially harder to strangle genuine progress. Extreme and widespread dissatisfaction with the norm (which is very much the case with SF Taxi service) makes aggressive legal suppression even riskier - especially when cash-strapped states and municipalities can be convinced that the new market is big enough to substantially augment their tax bases. None of this means that the overt cartel-busting approach to business development isn't risky as hell. It is. But timed correctly, and supported by the right technological breakthroughs, it can pay off spectacularly. If anyone deserves the entrepreneur-as-hero laurels, it's these guys.
- jrockway 15y ago
  They're just the messengers. If the newspaper published an article saying "jrockway needs a ride from 123 Green St at 2PM", that's free speech. So why is it a problem if a website does it? Anyway, I see a simple solution to San Francisco's laws: run the site out of Libya or something. Pretty sure there's nothing San Francisco can do about that, except start cracking down on the users (but oops, who aren't doing anything illegal).
antihero 15y ago
I think what could be interesting is to write a site/app that would allow people to order taxis with ease (using GPS, etc), but instead sell it to cab companies as a way of getting business, so essentially anyone can be as accessible as Uber. A bit like what E-Resistible did here in the UK.
- enki 15y ago
  there aren't enough cabs in SF - people aren't using cabs because they can't get any. only way to get cabs more business is more cabs.
  - dotBen 15y ago
    Indeed there's no addressable need here for cab companies to find passengers when there are not enough cabs to begin with.
- shrike 15y ago
  TaxiMagic does exactly that. Apps for Android and iPhone, free to use if you pay cash, a fee to pay with CC thru the app. I use it for short trips in SF and Uber for longer trips. It always takes less time for the Ubermobile to show up than a taxi.
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  As someone who occasionally has to order cabs from unusual and hard-to-describe-over-the-phone places, ordering with GPS would be a bloody godsend. Most of the people on the end of taxi numbers dont even seem to have a map in front of them. If you can't give them a street address, they don't seem to comprehend that you're describing a real place, on the same planet as they are. The drivers naturally know where everything is instantly, the issue is persuading the phone operator to relay your directions to them.
cwilson 15y ago
On one hand I don't feel bad for Uber because they knew exactly what they were getting into but the idealist part of me also wants to cheer them on. I'm absolutely tired of asshole cab drivers, dirty cabs, and no-shows multiple times per week. Thus loving Uber.
nostromo 15y ago
The taxi situation in SF is so miserable. For example, right now and for the past week or so, almost every cab in SF is telling their riders that their credit card machine is broken. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22bctaxi.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22bctaxi.html Basically, they aren't happy that they have to pay credit card fees -- well sorry, nobody does, but that's a cost of doing business. And next time you can't find a cab, keep this in mind -- SF didn't add any (transferable) cab licenses for 33 years, until 2010. http://www.ktvu.com/news/24519083/detail.html http://www.ktvu.com/news/24519083/detail.html It's pretty clear who is writing the rules for taxis in SF, and it's not someone with the consumer in mind.
- briancurtin 15y ago
  > For example, right now and for the past week or so, almost every cab in SF is telling their riders that their credit card machine is broken. "Thanks for the free ride!" - At least in Chicago, it's a part of the passenger "bill of rights" that you are able to pay by credit card. They've pulled the same thing on me a few times and, assuming I'm not in a rush, I've offered to ride with the meter turned off to the closest ATM...then the machine suddenly works.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Same experience. They always back down. I would never in a million years offer to ride to a nearby ATM. They can do card-not-present auth with their dispatchers even if "their machine is broken".
    - patio11 15y ago
      Same experience. They always back down. Not to continue an old argument, but to continue an old argument, these are the good medallioned guys who are regulated by the state so that they can't scam you. This is supposed to provide an advantage over e.g. Ubercab, where the perils of unregulated capitalism would allow a driver to cheat you. But they still try to scam you and their medallion is not going to get yanked for it. Meanwhile, Uber solves this technologically: they can't run payment scams because the system doesn't trust drivers with any part of the payment flow aside from hitting "The Ride Is Over."
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dreamdu5t 15y ago
Disruptive? Please. Uber is a driver service where you simply book it over the web. It's hardly disruptive, or much different than services already out there.
- dreamdu5t 15y ago
  Downvotes but no reply? Could someone point out exactly what is disruptive about ubercab? Disruptive to me is Netflix. The cab industry could easily add a web-interface for booking cabs... and it's not going to be destroyed by uber. Which industry are they disrupting?
  - dotBen 15y ago
    I've not up or down voted you but it's pretty obvious to me why you are being down-voted: As you can see from the debate at the top of this page, it's disrupting the regulation of the cab industry which is about creating artificial scarcity of the cabs in order to keep the prices of rides inflated. (EDIT: actually the price of rides is regulated and would be the same regardless of how many cabs there were. It is actually to ensure daily revenues for the cabs remains high by ensuring optimum utilization) From that perspective it is even more disruptive than Netflix because Netflix operates in a free-market environment. You could choose to rent your DVD's from Amazon or Blockbuster. With cabs in cities like SF you have no real direct alternative. The cab industry could easily add a web-interface for booking cabs. They could but they won't because they already have more potential customers standing on street corners wanting cabs then they can service (because, as already explained, the number of cabs is artificially restricted). There is no benefit to the cab industry to innovate in any way (such as build an app) unless regulator steps in. Which is why a private player able to do this is so disruptive. Sounds to me like you don't really understand the way the cab market works which is why you're not getting the disruptive element.
inmygarage 15y ago
I think Travis enjoys living on the edge. One of his previous companies, Scour, was sued for $250 billion. (Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/travis-kalanick http://www.crunchbase.com/person/travis-kalanick). I guess he fits pg's definition of "naughtiness"?
neworbit 15y ago
Travis kind of thrives on stepping over the line - his first big deal was P2P service Scour and he likes to tell everyone about how there was a half-trillion dollar judgement against them. I don't think he's likely to face anything like that with Uber!
kucin 15y ago
I agree with the permit restrictions in San Francisco. Without it, you would have monopolies dominated by big business and the rich, which hurts minorities from having their own taxi services. Uber is a clear example of the rich trying to take over business from minorities and people who need money most.
- scrod 15y ago
  This is one of the very, very few enlightened comments that I've seen on the issue.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Really. Please tell us which taxi firms are minority owned and operated then, since you seem to have joined HN specifically to educate us about this issue. I'm curious about this, because there seem to be far fewer Asian or Latino cab drivers than one would expect from looking at the city's demographics. Perhaps you can also explain how it benefits minority folk who have arrived in SF in the last ~30 years that virtually no new medallions were issued from 1978-2010 despite a ~15% increase in the city's population during that time.
JonnieCache 15y ago
Hah, he best hope that this on-the-record comment isn't taken in court as a tacit acceptance of guilt/culpability/whatever. IANAL, but isn't this the kind of offhand comment that frequently comes back to haunt people? I guess its very dependent on which country you're in.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  'On the record' in legal terms means being under oath, eg during a deposition or when testifying in court. A comment like this could be offered as evidence, but the outlandish idea of spending 20,000 years in jail means it could just as easily be taken as a complaint about the unfairness of the charge.

115 points by bjonathan 15y ago

Remember this TechCrunch? http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/ill-never-let-canada-live-this-down/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/11/12/ill-never-let-canada-live-t... Yeah, so do I.

Philip_M 15y ago

good, He should go to jail for running an unlicensed cab service

aberkowitz 15y ago
Uber runs a livery cab service. At the disadvantage of not being able to pick up street hails, they do not require a medallion, and operate under different terms than a taxi.
- andrewpi 15y ago
  Actually Uber doesn't operate the cabs, they operate a dispatching service. The livery cabs are independently owned and operated.

davidtgoldblatt 15y ago

I'm a little bit confused - it seems obvious to me that Uber is running an unlicensed dispatch service. What's their argument here? http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100REMOVEHI.html http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100RE...

bittermang 15y ago
That they're being disruptive and they're hip so they should be allowed to do it.
- johnrob 15y ago
  I detect sarcasm, and I agree to the extent that the public debate on this matter is sorely lacking any analysis of why the laws in question exist. Both sides of the argument seem guilty of this.
  - uvdiv 15y ago
    "Public debate"? I pay a cabbie, s/he drives me, it's a private matter between the two of us. It's not the public's business to debate! The horrific notion of criminalizing a consensual economic intercourse between two adults -- with prison penalties, at that -- isn't an issue of democratic politics, but of basic rights.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      Oh get real Uvdiv. The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about being assaulted or held up for hundreds of dollars at the end of the journey. Somehow I doubt that if you ended up having to pay $250 for a short ride in someone's car that you'd just treat it as a regular business transaction instead of calling the police. Addressing a problem by going to the opposite extreme is just foolish. There's a reason that most people wouldn't feel safe accepting a ride from a random stranger, and why children are taught not to do it from an early age. Hint: it's not fear of capitalism.
      - uvdiv 15y ago
        "The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about..." But that is not the idea of taxi "licensing" as it exists. It doesn't merely regulate taxi driving; it prohibits it altogether, outside of a protected group. It's not licensing, but cartel enforcement. Its aim isn't protecting the safety of the public, but protecting the business monopoly of the taxi industry. Uber isn't prohibited from operating taxis because they're unsafe, uninsured, or unwilling to subject themselves to registration, inspection, insurance, background checks, or whatever "public safety" requires. They're banned simply because they are competition. And this has nothing to do with public safety!
enki 15y ago
they aren't dispatching taxis here's the relevant passage: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.... (source: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-1DE383C4F92C/0/BasicInformationforPassengerCarriersandApplicantsRev012811.pdf http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-... ) (limousines which are passenger carriers regulated by CPUC aren't licensed to be hailed from the curb, but can perform prearranged transportation)
- mikeryan 15y ago
  Yes but local laws can supersede state ones on this. ie it can be legal in Modesto but illegal in SF. SF Definition of a Dispatch Service: Dispatch Service" shall mean any person, business, firm, partnership, association or corporation that receives communications from the public regarding taxi service for the purpose of forwarding such communications to motor vehicle for hire drivers, and shall include any owner, manager, employee, lessee and any agent of said service. "Dispatch Service" shall not include any service through which the public is able to communicate directly with Drivers, and shall not include any effort on the part of a Driver to market his or her services to the public.
  - enki 15y ago
    SF Definition of Taxi: "Taxi" shall mean a vehicle operated pursuant to a Taxi or Ramp Taxi Medallion that is legally authorized to pick up passengers within the City with or without prearrangement, of a distinctive color or colors and which is operated at rates per mile or upon a waiting-time basis, or both, as measured by a Taximeter and which is used for the transportation of passengers for hire over and along the public streets, not over a defined route but, as to the route and destination, in accordance with and under the direction of the passenger or person hiring such vehicle. "as measured by a Taximeter", "for hire over and along the public streets" Because TCP's are legal in SF, and Uber can prearrange trips in a legal fashion using them, and there's no special law that applies to Uber only, in theory Uber should be able to operate legally. Technicalities like whether the trips are fully prearranged (pick-up AND drop-off) might come into play, but these are details they could fix. IANAL, but from what I've seen, If ordering a TCP via the internet is legal, ordering a TCP via the internet using Uber is also legal.
bh42222 15y ago
Anyone know why they can't get licensed in every city? Or is something preventing them form doing that, because licensing is inherently a way to protect old cartels from new cheaper/better upstarts?
- uvdiv 15y ago
  Taxis are state-sanctioned cartels in many cities. The number of "licenses" (medallions) is capped to inflate the revenues of existing businesses. In San Francisco (where Uber's legal problems are), the quota is ~1,400, and there's a waiting list more than 10 years long to get a "license". http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html (n.b. this is cartel-funded propaganda) http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-over-plan-to-sell-medallions/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-ove... It's exactly what it looks like: they've criminalized competition. You get prison for "stealing" business from union thugs.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    This cartel appears to be the product of a joint effort between the taxi corporations and the drivers union. I don't hear the cab firms arguing for greater competition or an increase in the number of taxis either.
- jdp23 15y ago
  Yes, licensing requirements generally protect incumbents. In SF (and I assume other large cities) it's very political.
jdp23 15y ago
seems like a great example of the line between "naughtiness" and "evil" being discussed yesterday in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 ... if a law gets in the way of your innovative business plan, should you just ignore it?
- jtbigwoo 15y ago
  There are certainly times when unjust laws should be ignored. However, when one ignores the law one should be prepared to suffer the consequences of his actions. Uber's CEO is clearly not prepared to suffer those consequences.
  - alexqgb 15y ago
    The immediate consequence is a trial, not necessarily a conviction, which may or may not follow. The CEO (and just as importantly, his backers) seem entirely prepared to run this risk. One of the abiding virtues of due process is that it's public. In the event that a cartel captures a regulatory agency, and turns it against the people it's supposed to serve, a system of open justice will force them to fight for their odious privilege in full view of the press. The risk - for the cartel - is that the trial will backfire by spotlighting just how corrupt and abusive their underlying legal supports have become. Even if they do win in court, the victory my by Pyrrhic. In the absence of a clear (and superior) alternative, the arguments that supported the initial regulatory capture may still carry some weight with an otherwise ambivalent public. In these cases, private acts of cartel-busting may be truly foolish. But in cases like Uber or Airbnb - where the public can not only see the alternative clearly, it can download it as a wildly useful app - it becomes exponentially harder to strangle genuine progress. Extreme and widespread dissatisfaction with the norm (which is very much the case with SF Taxi service) makes aggressive legal suppression even riskier - especially when cash-strapped states and municipalities can be convinced that the new market is big enough to substantially augment their tax bases. None of this means that the overt cartel-busting approach to business development isn't risky as hell. It is. But timed correctly, and supported by the right technological breakthroughs, it can pay off spectacularly. If anyone deserves the entrepreneur-as-hero laurels, it's these guys.
jrockway 15y ago
They're just the messengers. If the newspaper published an article saying "jrockway needs a ride from 123 Green St at 2PM", that's free speech. So why is it a problem if a website does it? Anyway, I see a simple solution to San Francisco's laws: run the site out of Libya or something. Pretty sure there's nothing San Francisco can do about that, except start cracking down on the users (but oops, who aren't doing anything illegal).

antihero 15y ago

I think what could be interesting is to write a site/app that would allow people to order taxis with ease (using GPS, etc), but instead sell it to cab companies as a way of getting business, so essentially anyone can be as accessible as Uber. A bit like what E-Resistible did here in the UK.

enki 15y ago
there aren't enough cabs in SF - people aren't using cabs because they can't get any. only way to get cabs more business is more cabs.
- dotBen 15y ago
  Indeed there's no addressable need here for cab companies to find passengers when there are not enough cabs to begin with.
shrike 15y ago
TaxiMagic does exactly that. Apps for Android and iPhone, free to use if you pay cash, a fee to pay with CC thru the app. I use it for short trips in SF and Uber for longer trips. It always takes less time for the Ubermobile to show up than a taxi.
JonnieCache 15y ago
As someone who occasionally has to order cabs from unusual and hard-to-describe-over-the-phone places, ordering with GPS would be a bloody godsend. Most of the people on the end of taxi numbers dont even seem to have a map in front of them. If you can't give them a street address, they don't seem to comprehend that you're describing a real place, on the same planet as they are. The drivers naturally know where everything is instantly, the issue is persuading the phone operator to relay your directions to them.

cwilson 15y ago

On one hand I don't feel bad for Uber because they knew exactly what they were getting into but the idealist part of me also wants to cheer them on. I'm absolutely tired of asshole cab drivers, dirty cabs, and no-shows multiple times per week. Thus loving Uber.

nostromo 15y ago

The taxi situation in SF is so miserable. For example, right now and for the past week or so, almost every cab in SF is telling their riders that their credit card machine is broken. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22bctaxi.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22bctaxi.html Basically, they aren't happy that they have to pay credit card fees -- well sorry, nobody does, but that's a cost of doing business. And next time you can't find a cab, keep this in mind -- SF didn't add any (transferable) cab licenses for 33 years, until 2010. http://www.ktvu.com/news/24519083/detail.html http://www.ktvu.com/news/24519083/detail.html It's pretty clear who is writing the rules for taxis in SF, and it's not someone with the consumer in mind.

briancurtin 15y ago
> For example, right now and for the past week or so, almost every cab in SF is telling their riders that their credit card machine is broken. "Thanks for the free ride!" - At least in Chicago, it's a part of the passenger "bill of rights" that you are able to pay by credit card. They've pulled the same thing on me a few times and, assuming I'm not in a rush, I've offered to ride with the meter turned off to the closest ATM...then the machine suddenly works.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Same experience. They always back down. I would never in a million years offer to ride to a nearby ATM. They can do card-not-present auth with their dispatchers even if "their machine is broken".
  - patio11 15y ago
    Same experience. They always back down. Not to continue an old argument, but to continue an old argument, these are the good medallioned guys who are regulated by the state so that they can't scam you. This is supposed to provide an advantage over e.g. Ubercab, where the perils of unregulated capitalism would allow a driver to cheat you. But they still try to scam you and their medallion is not going to get yanked for it. Meanwhile, Uber solves this technologically: they can't run payment scams because the system doesn't trust drivers with any part of the payment flow aside from hitting "The Ride Is Over."

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dreamdu5t 15y ago

Disruptive? Please. Uber is a driver service where you simply book it over the web. It's hardly disruptive, or much different than services already out there.

dreamdu5t 15y ago
Downvotes but no reply? Could someone point out exactly what is disruptive about ubercab? Disruptive to me is Netflix. The cab industry could easily add a web-interface for booking cabs... and it's not going to be destroyed by uber. Which industry are they disrupting?
- dotBen 15y ago
  I've not up or down voted you but it's pretty obvious to me why you are being down-voted: As you can see from the debate at the top of this page, it's disrupting the regulation of the cab industry which is about creating artificial scarcity of the cabs in order to keep the prices of rides inflated. (EDIT: actually the price of rides is regulated and would be the same regardless of how many cabs there were. It is actually to ensure daily revenues for the cabs remains high by ensuring optimum utilization) From that perspective it is even more disruptive than Netflix because Netflix operates in a free-market environment. You could choose to rent your DVD's from Amazon or Blockbuster. With cabs in cities like SF you have no real direct alternative. The cab industry could easily add a web-interface for booking cabs. They could but they won't because they already have more potential customers standing on street corners wanting cabs then they can service (because, as already explained, the number of cabs is artificially restricted). There is no benefit to the cab industry to innovate in any way (such as build an app) unless regulator steps in. Which is why a private player able to do this is so disruptive. Sounds to me like you don't really understand the way the cab market works which is why you're not getting the disruptive element.

inmygarage 15y ago

I think Travis enjoys living on the edge. One of his previous companies, Scour, was sued for $250 billion. (Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/travis-kalanick http://www.crunchbase.com/person/travis-kalanick). I guess he fits pg's definition of "naughtiness"?

neworbit 15y ago

Travis kind of thrives on stepping over the line - his first big deal was P2P service Scour and he likes to tell everyone about how there was a half-trillion dollar judgement against them. I don't think he's likely to face anything like that with Uber!

kucin 15y ago

I agree with the permit restrictions in San Francisco. Without it, you would have monopolies dominated by big business and the rich, which hurts minorities from having their own taxi services. Uber is a clear example of the rich trying to take over business from minorities and people who need money most.

scrod 15y ago
This is one of the very, very few enlightened comments that I've seen on the issue.
anigbrowl 15y ago
Really. Please tell us which taxi firms are minority owned and operated then, since you seem to have joined HN specifically to educate us about this issue. I'm curious about this, because there seem to be far fewer Asian or Latino cab drivers than one would expect from looking at the city's demographics. Perhaps you can also explain how it benefits minority folk who have arrived in SF in the last ~30 years that virtually no new medallions were issued from 1978-2010 despite a ~15% increase in the city's population during that time.

JonnieCache 15y ago

Hah, he best hope that this on-the-record comment isn't taken in court as a tacit acceptance of guilt/culpability/whatever. IANAL, but isn't this the kind of offhand comment that frequently comes back to haunt people? I guess its very dependent on which country you're in.

anigbrowl 15y ago
'On the record' in legal terms means being under oath, eg during a deposition or when testifying in court. A comment like this could be offered as evidence, but the outlandish idea of spending 20,000 years in jail means it could just as easily be taken as a complaint about the unfairness of the charge.