5 ms·

> crap service is made up for with liberal refunding Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to bec

by lhorie 5y ago

> crap service is made up for with liberal refunding Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation. IMHO, if you're only looking at rides, you've got your consumer hat on and I think you're missing the big picture. Uber is still not done trying to eat the world so to speak. The food delivery vertical is one of its most well known growth markets, but it also has eyes on the actual hailable taxi market[0], buses/high capacity vehicles[1], deliveries/logistics market (uber direct[2], uber freight[3]), it's building up loyalty program strategies a la costco/amazon prime/visa (uber pass[4]), etc. Basically, anything that remotely involves wheels is game for Uber. This thirst is what I think characterizes unicorns: Google started as a one trick pony with search, and now has maps, docs, android, GCP, Waymo and a million other things. Amazon was a just a book store and now it's basically synonymous with online shopping and cloud infrastructure services. [0] https://www.themuse.com/jobs/uber/hailables-lead https://www.themuse.com/jobs/uber/hailables-lead [1] https://www.uber.com/en-EG/blog/introducing-uber-bus-a-new-way-to-commute/ https://www.uber.com/en-EG/blog/introducing-uber-bus-a-new-w... [2] https://www.uber.com/newsroom/moving-more-of-what-matters-with-delivery/ https://www.uber.com/newsroom/moving-more-of-what-matters-wi... [3] https://www.uber.com/us/en/freight/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/freight/ [4] https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/uber-pass/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/how-it-works/uber-pass/

gonehome 5y ago
Agreed - Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs. I can call a car from almost anywhere in the world and have a ride in a few minutes for a reasonable price - that’s a huge shift.
- kbsspl 5y ago
  >Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs. Remember, effectively you have said law breaking is acceptable. In this case, it may be partly even true, but once this catches on, anarchy, literally one step away.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    How is anarchy one step away? Vs hundreds of steps away? Nearly every one breaks the law in small or bigger ways some of the time. There’s some studies that have shown more well off people cheat/break the law and justify it more often.
altacc 5y ago
Uber's advantage was the ease of using the app to find a ride, but in many places local cab companies got their own app to match the competition. In many cities there are lots of times where Uber's availability and pricing algorithms mean it is quicker & cheaper to use a local cab company instead. I moved out of London a few years ago but had already stopped using Uber as other companies were much better. Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man. So in many cities food delivery companies are creating their own food preparation businesses to try to make profit that way. Most of these markets are low margin and providing wheels alone isn't enough to pay for an expensive multi-national.
- soylentcola 5y ago
  At least in my city, the taxi service had an "app" which theoretically allowed you to book a cab, but in reality, it was a crapshoot whether they would show up. It just put in a request to the dispatch but if nobody ever came to pick me up, calling the number just got me the same unhelpful dispatch. This doesn't even get into the constant scams I would run across. Usually it was just drivers not running a meter and then charging some ridiculous price at the end of the ride. I don't care if you want the fare "off the book" so you can pocket the whole thing. Hustle your employer all you want, but don't hustle me. I got into the habit of asking them to run the meter every time they started to drive off without starting it. If they still insisted that it was broken, I'd ask how much they wanted to charge me. If it was reasonable, I would accept. If it was stupid, I'd get out. For all the complaints about Uber/Lyft, as a passenger, they are much more reliable and I know roughly what to expect every time.
  - jfrunyon 5y ago
    So... are you trying to claim that Uber isn't a crapshoot whether the driver will actually show up?
- cactus2093 5y ago
  > Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man Somebody should probably tell that to the millions of public market investors who have bought into these public companies worth tens of billions of dollars. https://www.google.com/search?q=doordash+stock&oq=doordash+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=doordash+stock&oq=doordash+s... https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=grub+stock&oq=grub+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=grub+stock&oq=grub+stock In fact if you're sure there's no money to be made, you could short them all and make a killing. Have you done that?
beepbooptheory 5y ago
>Basically, anything that remotely involves wheels and cultivating a precarious, contracted workforce is game for Uber.*
- lhorie 5y ago
  Anecdotes are not data etc, but my daughter attended a friend's birthday party recently and the friend's dad told me he had been out of work due to covid so started doing Uber and was bringing in $3k/week and had managed to pay off a ton of debt thanks to that (this convo happened in SF last week). Needless to say, I was extremely surprised, as the media generally gives the impression that driver earnings are crap.
  - brewdad 5y ago
    I'll buy that your friend may have made $3k a week doing Uber but he's either working an unsustainable number of hours behind the wheel or taking advantage of surge pricing that will work itself out in time. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not quite as insured as he thinks he is and certainly isn't taking into account his costs to provide the service. He may very well be grossing $3k a week but he's not actually earning that much.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      While I didn't want to pry into the exact unit economics, being in a children's party and all, he did say he worked ~10 hours a day. But also he was very proud to share that he had paid off over 16k of debt despite the high CoL for a family of 4 in SF, which leads me to be believe that the actual take home amount wasn't exactly chump change.
fennecfoxen 5y ago
> Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation. How quickly we forget. When I did traveling-consulting for a year and a half — a mistake — I heard horror stories from the quite recent past: for instance, the New York taxi driver who clearly wasn't supposed to be the one driving the cab and thus refused to take a credit card payment (as mandated by law) with the (working) credit card machine. Instead he demanded cash, and drove my colleague to an ATM against his will holding his luggage hostage. And the one time I took an actual taxicab home from LaGuardia — hoping to save the hassle of a pickup in the cold — my driver got pulled over for running a red light. Yeah, Uber and Lyft are both sketch as heck, but they've got nothing on the world's taxis.
- gremIin 5y ago
  Why didn't your colleague call the police when the taxi driver kidnapped him? Are you sure he was taken against his will?
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    Because he deemed it less risk and hassle.
- xtracto 5y ago
  And that's compared to Taxis in the USA... anyone who has used a Taxi here in Mexico know how shady, unclean and terribly maintained they are. There are cars whose back seat is teared down and the foam is going out. Cars literally without seatbelts. Taxi drivers often REFUSE to use the Taxi meter and charge you whatever the heck they want (I had a taxi driver turn off the meter just when we were about to arrive to a destination). Freaking Taxis are mafias, and the people that drive them are part of it. I consider them part of the problem, specially now that there is an alternative. Uber, Didi and others may be a lot of things (over here I feel they became more expensive), but bad service they definitely don't have.
  - 5y ago

by lhorie 5y ago

gonehome 5y ago

Agreed - Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs. I can call a car from almost anywhere in the world and have a ride in a few minutes for a reasonable price - that’s a huge shift.

kbsspl 5y ago
>Uber is amazing and I’m glad they pushed through all of the regulatory bullshit to defeat cabs. Remember, effectively you have said law breaking is acceptable. In this case, it may be partly even true, but once this catches on, anarchy, literally one step away.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  How is anarchy one step away? Vs hundreds of steps away? Nearly every one breaks the law in small or bigger ways some of the time. There’s some studies that have shown more well off people cheat/break the law and justify it more often.

altacc 5y ago

Uber's advantage was the ease of using the app to find a ride, but in many places local cab companies got their own app to match the competition. In many cities there are lots of times where Uber's availability and pricing algorithms mean it is quicker & cheaper to use a local cab company instead. I moved out of London a few years ago but had already stopped using Uber as other companies were much better. Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man. So in many cities food delivery companies are creating their own food preparation businesses to try to make profit that way. Most of these markets are low margin and providing wheels alone isn't enough to pay for an expensive multi-national.

soylentcola 5y ago
At least in my city, the taxi service had an "app" which theoretically allowed you to book a cab, but in reality, it was a crapshoot whether they would show up. It just put in a request to the dispatch but if nobody ever came to pick me up, calling the number just got me the same unhelpful dispatch. This doesn't even get into the constant scams I would run across. Usually it was just drivers not running a meter and then charging some ridiculous price at the end of the ride. I don't care if you want the fare "off the book" so you can pocket the whole thing. Hustle your employer all you want, but don't hustle me. I got into the habit of asking them to run the meter every time they started to drive off without starting it. If they still insisted that it was broken, I'd ask how much they wanted to charge me. If it was reasonable, I would accept. If it was stupid, I'd get out. For all the complaints about Uber/Lyft, as a passenger, they are much more reliable and I know roughly what to expect every time.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  So... are you trying to claim that Uber isn't a crapshoot whether the driver will actually show up?
cactus2093 5y ago
> Food delivery is very low margin and companies have realised there is pretty much no money to be made here as an expensive middle man Somebody should probably tell that to the millions of public market investors who have bought into these public companies worth tens of billions of dollars. https://www.google.com/search?q=doordash+stock&oq=doordash+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=doordash+stock&oq=doordash+s... https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=grub+stock&oq=grub+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=grub+stock&oq=grub+stock In fact if you're sure there's no money to be made, you could short them all and make a killing. Have you done that?

beepbooptheory 5y ago

>Basically, anything that remotely involves wheels and cultivating a precarious, contracted workforce is game for Uber.*

lhorie 5y ago
Anecdotes are not data etc, but my daughter attended a friend's birthday party recently and the friend's dad told me he had been out of work due to covid so started doing Uber and was bringing in $3k/week and had managed to pay off a ton of debt thanks to that (this convo happened in SF last week). Needless to say, I was extremely surprised, as the media generally gives the impression that driver earnings are crap.
- brewdad 5y ago
  I'll buy that your friend may have made $3k a week doing Uber but he's either working an unsustainable number of hours behind the wheel or taking advantage of surge pricing that will work itself out in time. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if he's not quite as insured as he thinks he is and certainly isn't taking into account his costs to provide the service. He may very well be grossing $3k a week but he's not actually earning that much.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    While I didn't want to pry into the exact unit economics, being in a children's party and all, he did say he worked ~10 hours a day. But also he was very proud to share that he had paid off over 16k of debt despite the high CoL for a family of 4 in SF, which leads me to be believe that the actual take home amount wasn't exactly chump change.

fennecfoxen 5y ago

> Uber has crap service? I was under the impression the whole point of Uber becoming so ubiquitous as to become a verb was that you could actually get service at all in a timely fashion whereas cabs had a terrible reputation. How quickly we forget. When I did traveling-consulting for a year and a half — a mistake — I heard horror stories from the quite recent past: for instance, the New York taxi driver who clearly wasn't supposed to be the one driving the cab and thus refused to take a credit card payment (as mandated by law) with the (working) credit card machine. Instead he demanded cash, and drove my colleague to an ATM against his will holding his luggage hostage. And the one time I took an actual taxicab home from LaGuardia — hoping to save the hassle of a pickup in the cold — my driver got pulled over for running a red light. Yeah, Uber and Lyft are both sketch as heck, but they've got nothing on the world's taxis.

gremIin 5y ago
Why didn't your colleague call the police when the taxi driver kidnapped him? Are you sure he was taken against his will?
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  Because he deemed it less risk and hassle.
xtracto 5y ago
And that's compared to Taxis in the USA... anyone who has used a Taxi here in Mexico know how shady, unclean and terribly maintained they are. There are cars whose back seat is teared down and the foam is going out. Cars literally without seatbelts. Taxi drivers often REFUSE to use the Taxi meter and charge you whatever the heck they want (I had a taxi driver turn off the meter just when we were about to arrive to a destination). Freaking Taxis are mafias, and the people that drive them are part of it. I consider them part of the problem, specially now that there is an alternative. Uber, Didi and others may be a lot of things (over here I feel they became more expensive), but bad service they definitely don't have.
- 5y ago