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Fully agree with this. It seems like so many of the apps that come to dominate just make up for shortcomings unique to the US that then, with money, take over

Fully agree with this. It seems like so many of the apps that come to dominate just make up for shortcomings unique to the US that then, with money, take over the rest of the west for no good reason other than scale to get 25 people at the top of those companies rich. I’ve never seen the need for Uber. Taxis have never been an issue in the UK and the most successful firms in the city I lived when Uber was starting out already had apps. Literally the only thing Uber had going for it was masses of money to undercut the market and advertise to younger millennials - basically their excess money allowed them to get better distribution and cheat the market. I’ve used Uber three or four times in my life and each time was a worse experience than a taxi.

ur-whale 5y ago
How do you pay your regular taxis in the UK?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Cash, card or tap and pay. I was paying taxis with card before Uber was a thing. US payment systems lag the rest of the world massively - particularly the UK
  - ur-whale 5y ago
    > Cash, card or tap and pay. Still way more friction than Uber where you setup a payment method in the app once and no actual payment is ever required to the driver, pretty much anywhere in the world. Also: 1) how do you tell the driver where you want to go? I've found this to be a major PITA with many cab fares, especially if you drive to unusual destinations. I've met many a cab driver that simply are incapable of using google maps. Case in point: a month ago in a small European town where Uber is banned by the local thugs who run the town, I give my destination to the driver at the cab station, lo and behold, he proceeds to spending 10mn first asking and then arguing with his colleagues in the local patois how to get there. I tried to step in to show them on my phone, they basically ignore me, because they obviously know better. The fact that I;m in a hurry is the least of their concerns. Ugh. 2) How easily and quickly can you get cabs to pick you up exactly where and when you want, especially if we're talking less than 10mn delay? In a big city like LON that might not be a problem, but from experience, and I'm talking about European capitals, and smaller cities in the US or Asia, this is *way* worse than the Uber experience. As a matter of fact, an Uber ride requires zero interaction with the driver other than agreeing that you're the customer and he's the provider. Quasi-frictionless and immediate, which - in my book - makes it a winner in spite of them having a despicable corporate culture. The price considerations are a different conversation, but AFAIC, I'm certainly ready to pay more for an Uber to get to that frictionless transaction. The day a cab ride is as easy to setup as an Uber ride, I'll very gladly stop using Uber. But in most places, that simply isn't the case.
Jabbles 5y ago
Absolutely disagree - taxis in the UK used to be awful, none of them had apps before Uber. Black cabs in London were generally good due to the high entry requirements but you could only get them by flagging them down somewhere fairly central. Uber introduced competition which has massively improved all other taxi services. These days there's nothing special about Uber except its ubiquity so I don't care if it fails now. Ofc this doesn't excuse their illegal practices.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Maybe you were unlucky but I never had an issue at all in Essex growing up or Newcastle where I spent 15 years. Also Blueline taxis had an app before Uber gained market relevance in the UK and it was great.
  - pokepim 5y ago
    If 87 in your nickname suggest your age then I guess you are not the target for Uber. I’m 10 years younger and almost all of my peers never used Taxi and take Uber/Lyft quite often.
    - simonbarker87 5y ago
      Yeah maybe, I’m getting old now I guess :-)
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      That’s a bit of an absurd take. Uber entered the UK market in 2012 when he was 25 and you 15, surely he’d have been in the target demographic before you? I’m in a similar age bracket and everyone I know uses Uber rather than black cabs.
  - bartread 5y ago
    Ditto: Panther in Cambridge have always been reliable for the 20 years I've lived in the area. Same with the Ely firms. Last time I tried to get an Uber in central London in the early hours of the morning two or three drivers cancelled before one eventually showed up after I'd phoned Uber support to complain. I'm not sure the phone call is what did the trick - in fact I'm pretty sure it wasn't - but what triggered that call is I'd been trying to get a ride for 20 - 30 minutes by that point. It sounds like this kind of poor QoS might be a new problem though: I certainly wasn't aware of it before the pandemic.
colinb 5y ago
“Taxis have never been an issue in the UK” is a statement that does not match my experience. Living briefly in London taught me that you cannot reasonably expect a hailed taxi to take you from A to B no matter how hard it is raining or how obviously pregnant the person you’re with is, if the taxi driver doesn’t fancy going to B, even if B is still within 20m of A. Living for far longer in Edinburgh taught me that the credit card machine is manufactured by the same company that sells McFlurry boxes to MickeyD’s. This was still true when I visited Edinburgh again 3 months ago. Uber seems to me to be abusive to their drivers. And occasionally to their passengers. But there’s a good reason they were so successful early on. They made my life, as a customer, better, easier, simpler, less encumbered with bullshit.
marksbrown 5y ago
In some places with expensive unreliable public transport, the quickest & cheapest way (a group) into town was by taxi. Minicab to precise. The five minutes away for 45 minutes variety. The cancel without any notice. The sorry I don't take card mate. How about the ones who got hopelessly lost to charge you more? The old way was awful and Uber got a hell of a first mover advantage.
mftb 5y ago
You're sample is simply not representative. If we could go back in time to 5 years before Uber's founding, I could show you the taxi system on the entire west coast of the US was non-functional, from San Diego to Seattle, service, pricing, availability were all abysmal. FWIW, I actually agree that the "Gig Economy" is riddled with problems, but at least in the case of Taxi's where Uber started, the existing system was rotten and in need of replacement.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Sure, but like I said - solving a problem in the US and then rolling it out across the globe just “because” doesn’t mean the rest of the world needed it, just mean you had enough money to outcompete even if your service is worse.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    Most other countries have different companies like Ola DiDi etc which have localized models more suitable to the country theyre in. Uber actually failed to replicate its model in these countries
  - mftb 5y ago
    It would seem that many other folks in this thread disagree that Uber's service in the area you referenced is worse. I've never been to the UK, so I can't offer an opinion.
    - simonbarker87 5y ago
      Yeh either I got lucky here in the UK or they have been unlucky.
  - unmole 5y ago
    Why did people take to Uber outside the US if there wasn't a need?
    - amelius 5y ago
omegalulw 5y ago
Your argument is essentially that just because you don't need/like Uber doesn't mean it's useful? The problem Uber is addressing is not just a US problem - with Uber you essentially don't have to deal with all the shit taxi drivers pull, like refusing rides if they have to go to a slightly less profitable area, overcharging for rides for people new to the area/tourists, etc. Not to mention that with Uber you know exactly when the driver is coming, how much you will be charged up front, etc. You may not like how Uber is addressing these problems - and indeed there are fair criticisms, but ride sharing apps are most certainly solving a real problem.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Friends complain all the time that Ubers don’t show up, take forever to arrive and don’t allow you to plan ahead. I’ve literally never bad that problem with taxis. I can book ahead, they arrive on time, they take me where I need to go, charge a predictable price and if I’m in a town or city I can just walked to the nearest taxi tank and find dozens of taxis waiting to take me somewhere. Yes this is anecdotal but I just don’t see the problem Uber is solving in the UK
- iso1631 5y ago
  > with Uber you essentially don't have to deal with all the shit taxi drivers pull, like refusing rides if they have to go to a slightly less profitable area That's exactly what happens now https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-upfront-destinations https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-upfront-destinations > Not to mention that with Uber you know exactly when the driver is coming Not any more, they cancel
mike-cardwell 5y ago
I was born and live in the UK and will only take a non-Uber taxi as a last resort. Been ripped off one too many times by taxi drivers in my life. With Uber there is no opportunity to be ripped off. The fact that I can often use Uber abroad is a massive bonus. It's almost a guarantee that you're going to be ripped off when using taxis in a foreign country.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  I would only take an Uber as a last resort - even the few occasions I’ve used one it was flaky. I’ve tried another few times but there was never a driver near but and the one who accepted just didn’t show up, carrier on driving around doing their own thing. If something was critical I would never use an Uber - I’d rather walk, or cycle if a traditional taxi wasn’t possible for some reason.
  - mike-cardwell 5y ago
    If that was a common experience, Uber wouldn't have grown to the size it has and we wouldn't be having this conversation. I don't doubt that you have had bad experiences with Uber, and also that other people have. But you would find it very hard to convince me that people have better experiences with non Uber taxis on average.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      I used to have a great experience with Uber. Looking at the app store reviews in the UK of Uber, sorted by most recent 1* - Lost my trust 1* - Has gone downhill 1* - Uber Scammed me 1* - Can't get an Uber anymore 1* - The worst experience I have ever had 2* - Uber is deteriorating 2* - waiting times have increased 3* - Cancelled rides 1* Deteriorated over lockdown etc. All referring to the same problems I see, rides accepted by drivers, then cancelled a minute or so later. Going further back, full of 1/2 reviews: A sad Decline, Slow at finding drivers, Getting worse by the day, Scheduled trips are canceleld, Getting worse & worse, Most unreliable, etc Maybe the occasional 3* but going back 6 months, "Uber is dead, No Longer the no 1 ride in London, Drivers keep cancelling, Cannot get a booking, Never any drivers, Never turned up, 1 star is too much, used to be great", etc. etc, those were back to October. I'm not sure how long it's been going on (the same complaints go back at least a year on the reviews), but Uber don't seem to exist any more, otherwise they'd be concerned and change something to fix it.
bfung 5y ago
While I don't disagree with the article, I don't fully agree with it either. The article cites a study on (USA) GDP as a metric measuring of productivity, however, GDP is a poor proxy measure of "things being produced". USA GDP includes financial services and consumer spending, so using debt to pay for things vs. producing more, can still boost GDP. In the United States, pre-Uber around 2010, it was very hard to find cabs in certain cities and even neighborhoods in those cities. New York City had no problems, but as I had lived in Chicago and San Francisco with lower population densities compared to top tier cities in the world -- the only way to get cabs even a few miles outside the main downtown area, was to call taxi dispatch, if you knew their number -- it was even hard to look it up online -- and schedule a pick up, which usually took 30min+. The US taxi system was stalled at the time, and Uber forced it to start adapting to the smart phone era. The tragedy is that the people investing in and also running uber had their own pyramid scheme instead of pricing out the business correctly. They also didn't consider the social/gov implications -- places with good taxi systems didn't need them, as you alluded to with the UK, but they shoved into it anyways. So Uber was an innovation, one that is trying to find its financial balance still. I'd never care to schedule another taxi pick-up for next morning, 16hrs in advance when I want to go to the airport. But the article saying that uber innovation and having others try it on other industries is stymying productivity isn't completely correct either.
- antb123 5y ago
  ++ taxi companies were corrupt due to the taxi medallion system.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    As decided by the people. They could have politically campaigned to change that, buy out all the medallions at fair market price and the redistribute them for free in sufficient quantity.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      Fuck that. Medallions are licenses and the government can grant more licenses as they see fit. They don’t need to compensate people who already hold them for granting more.
adreamingsoul 5y ago
When we had Uber in Oslo, they were safer than taking a taxi.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Safer in what way? A real way or a manufactured way created by Uber to scare you away from traditional taxis?
DantesKite 5y ago
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Excellent addition to the discussion there. My point of view still stands. I just don’t see how it’s better than the existing taxi systems I used in my country pre Uber. One even had an app showing where their taxis were and you could hail one with a tap of a button.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
easytiger 5y ago
T
whitepaint 5y ago
You click a button, someone comes to pick you up in a few minutes. You know exactly how much you are gonna pay. Even if you are just a tourist. Uber (and other applications like it) is so much more superior to taxis that you cannot even compare them (unless you want to frivolously whine). They brought insane amount of innovation and I am so thankful for that.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  I already had access to this exact experience with a taxi firm in Newcastle where I used to live pre Uber - so yeh, I don’t see what benefit Uber brought. Also, the firm that had that app had clean cars, with driver in clean clothes and they knew the roads well.
  - bombela 5y ago
    You were lucky. Before Uber it was almost impossible to get a taxi in San Francisco and Paris for me. Now it just works the same on both cities.
  - whitepaint 5y ago
    Oh, you had exact experience with one taxi firm in Newcastle. Superb. I had this exact same experience with Uber in different countries and different cities. "I’ve never seen the need for Uber.". Well, you are one of very few, pal. I can tell you that for sure.
    - simonbarker87 5y ago
      Alright chill your beans “pal”. It wasn’t just one company in Newcastle, growing up I never had an issues with taxis And as far as I know you still can’t book an Uber for the next day or whatever.
      - amaccuish 5y ago
        We had Blueline in Harrogate too. And there was Apple Taxis in Exeter with an app. Ideally Uber should just be an interface that ties these different companies together. At least here in Berlin, when I book via Uber, I'm told more often than not that it won't be an Uber picking me up but a normal taxi.
codegeek 5y ago
"I’ve never seen the need for Uber." A very bold claim. I am not sure about the finances of Uber and how it impacts shareholders vs employees and how many people are getting rich off it, but let me tell you that services like Uber have been a God send as a consumer. The haggling with old school taxi drivers is one of the worst experiences one can have, not to mention that you have no idea what the prices should be if you are not local. Uber and similar apps remove all that nonsense. You can disagree with their business practices or even how much they charge, but I hope apps and services like Uber do not die, EVER. I don't want to go back to being harassed by taxi drivers.
- tartoran 5y ago
  Yes, in certain areas that huggling was very common and Uber did help customers avoid it completely. Quite often the hugglers were attacking Uber drivers for disrupting their business practices.
disgruntledphd2 5y ago
You are completely correct. Take, for example, Hailo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailo. They were available in London before Uber, and they had an entirely different model where they just franchised the technology for people in each city to use. They were profitable, and were driven out of existence by Ubers blitz scaling, which still hasn't produced a profit :(
rosndo 5y ago
> I’ve used Uber three or four times in my life and each time was a worse experience than a taxi. Every time I call an Uber in London, an extremely professional and courteous driver shows up within a couple of minutes in a Mercedes S-class or equivalent, at a price only slightly above that of a black cab. I doubt that you can find a better taxi service anywhere.
lordnacho 5y ago
I would say a taxi app is a good though obvious idea, worth pursuing. What was a bit surprising was the sheer scale of it. That crowding out point in the essay is very relevant, we are basically allowing the bully with the big stack to raise everybody out of the poker game, no matter how good his cards actually are. If we want a functioning market, let a bunch of little guys show what they can do, don't let one huge guy scare everyone else away.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Dumping of service should outside very limited promotional offers lead to massive penalties. That is multiple times the generated revenue. Possibly distributed to proven operators on the market.
barry-cotter 5y ago
Taxis in Shanghai were terrible. They weren’t much better in Ireland. They didn’t stop for foreigners (in Shanghai). They refused to take you if they didn’t feel like going where you wanted to go after you flagged them down. Uber and its copycats made the world better by making the “regulators” irrelevant. Taking a good taxi experience from a thing in some cities in some countries to everywhere they operated was and is massive.
iso1631 5y ago
A big benefit of Uber is the fact it works in multiple cities. I was in a new UK city the other day, no idea where I'd get a cab from. Just opened Uber and booked one, and it worked. Tried it again that evening and it failed -- multiple times the ride would be accepted, then cancelled. Ended up walking. Looking at recent reviews for the Uber app it seems this is common, Uber has gone from being somewhere reliable I can get a cab, from Sydney to San Francisco to Singapore, to being something that can't be relied upon
grecy 5y ago
> I’ve never seen the need for Uber It's incredible spending time in the undeveloped/developing world - all the problems and solutions that "gig" apps supposedly are good for live on to this day all over the world. Need a place to stay? Ask around the village and someone will be more than happy for you to sleep in the spare room for $1/night. Need a ride? Wait where the locals are, you'll get in a communal "taxi" with locals for 10 or 20 cents to the next town. In the Western World there are apps for this kind of thing that funnel profits to mega corporations. In the rest of the world there are average people on the street doing it every day as part of normal life.
- dzikimarian 5y ago
  > Need a place to stay? Ask around the village and someone will be more than happy for you to sleep in the spare room for $1/night. Out of curiosity - where did you have such experience?
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    Also who are you and who were you traveling with? Because gotta say, as a female, I'm not staying in rando's spare rooms...
  - grecy 5y ago
    I've done it at least 50 times through Central and South America and all the way around the coastline of Africa. Real people out there are much friendlier and welcoming than seems possible.
saos 5y ago
Taxis in the UK were awful before Uber
dzikimarian 5y ago
It's all sunshine and rainbows, while you are in your hometown and know which one is good, won't scam you etc. I landed in India or Brazil a few times, with language familiarity limited to "bon día". Without local sim card. This trip would be orders of magnitude harder without Uber and similar.

ur-whale 5y ago

How do you pay your regular taxis in the UK?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simonbarker87 5y ago
Cash, card or tap and pay. I was paying taxis with card before Uber was a thing. US payment systems lag the rest of the world massively - particularly the UK
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > Cash, card or tap and pay. Still way more friction than Uber where you setup a payment method in the app once and no actual payment is ever required to the driver, pretty much anywhere in the world. Also: 1) how do you tell the driver where you want to go? I've found this to be a major PITA with many cab fares, especially if you drive to unusual destinations. I've met many a cab driver that simply are incapable of using google maps. Case in point: a month ago in a small European town where Uber is banned by the local thugs who run the town, I give my destination to the driver at the cab station, lo and behold, he proceeds to spending 10mn first asking and then arguing with his colleagues in the local patois how to get there. I tried to step in to show them on my phone, they basically ignore me, because they obviously know better. The fact that I;m in a hurry is the least of their concerns. Ugh. 2) How easily and quickly can you get cabs to pick you up exactly where and when you want, especially if we're talking less than 10mn delay? In a big city like LON that might not be a problem, but from experience, and I'm talking about European capitals, and smaller cities in the US or Asia, this is *way* worse than the Uber experience. As a matter of fact, an Uber ride requires zero interaction with the driver other than agreeing that you're the customer and he's the provider. Quasi-frictionless and immediate, which - in my book - makes it a winner in spite of them having a despicable corporate culture. The price considerations are a different conversation, but AFAIC, I'm certainly ready to pay more for an Uber to get to that frictionless transaction. The day a cab ride is as easy to setup as an Uber ride, I'll very gladly stop using Uber. But in most places, that simply isn't the case.

Jabbles 5y ago

Absolutely disagree - taxis in the UK used to be awful, none of them had apps before Uber. Black cabs in London were generally good due to the high entry requirements but you could only get them by flagging them down somewhere fairly central. Uber introduced competition which has massively improved all other taxi services. These days there's nothing special about Uber except its ubiquity so I don't care if it fails now. Ofc this doesn't excuse their illegal practices.

simonbarker87 5y ago
Maybe you were unlucky but I never had an issue at all in Essex growing up or Newcastle where I spent 15 years. Also Blueline taxis had an app before Uber gained market relevance in the UK and it was great.
- pokepim 5y ago
  If 87 in your nickname suggest your age then I guess you are not the target for Uber. I’m 10 years younger and almost all of my peers never used Taxi and take Uber/Lyft quite often.
  - simonbarker87 5y ago
    Yeah maybe, I’m getting old now I guess :-)
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    That’s a bit of an absurd take. Uber entered the UK market in 2012 when he was 25 and you 15, surely he’d have been in the target demographic before you? I’m in a similar age bracket and everyone I know uses Uber rather than black cabs.
- bartread 5y ago
  Ditto: Panther in Cambridge have always been reliable for the 20 years I've lived in the area. Same with the Ely firms. Last time I tried to get an Uber in central London in the early hours of the morning two or three drivers cancelled before one eventually showed up after I'd phoned Uber support to complain. I'm not sure the phone call is what did the trick - in fact I'm pretty sure it wasn't - but what triggered that call is I'd been trying to get a ride for 20 - 30 minutes by that point. It sounds like this kind of poor QoS might be a new problem though: I certainly wasn't aware of it before the pandemic.

colinb 5y ago

“Taxis have never been an issue in the UK” is a statement that does not match my experience. Living briefly in London taught me that you cannot reasonably expect a hailed taxi to take you from A to B no matter how hard it is raining or how obviously pregnant the person you’re with is, if the taxi driver doesn’t fancy going to B, even if B is still within 20m of A. Living for far longer in Edinburgh taught me that the credit card machine is manufactured by the same company that sells McFlurry boxes to MickeyD’s. This was still true when I visited Edinburgh again 3 months ago. Uber seems to me to be abusive to their drivers. And occasionally to their passengers. But there’s a good reason they were so successful early on. They made my life, as a customer, better, easier, simpler, less encumbered with bullshit.

marksbrown 5y ago

In some places with expensive unreliable public transport, the quickest & cheapest way (a group) into town was by taxi. Minicab to precise. The five minutes away for 45 minutes variety. The cancel without any notice. The sorry I don't take card mate. How about the ones who got hopelessly lost to charge you more? The old way was awful and Uber got a hell of a first mover advantage.

mftb 5y ago

You're sample is simply not representative. If we could go back in time to 5 years before Uber's founding, I could show you the taxi system on the entire west coast of the US was non-functional, from San Diego to Seattle, service, pricing, availability were all abysmal. FWIW, I actually agree that the "Gig Economy" is riddled with problems, but at least in the case of Taxi's where Uber started, the existing system was rotten and in need of replacement.

simonbarker87 5y ago
Sure, but like I said - solving a problem in the US and then rolling it out across the globe just “because” doesn’t mean the rest of the world needed it, just mean you had enough money to outcompete even if your service is worse.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Most other countries have different companies like Ola DiDi etc which have localized models more suitable to the country theyre in. Uber actually failed to replicate its model in these countries
- mftb 5y ago
  It would seem that many other folks in this thread disagree that Uber's service in the area you referenced is worse. I've never been to the UK, so I can't offer an opinion.
  - simonbarker87 5y ago
    Yeh either I got lucky here in the UK or they have been unlucky.
- unmole 5y ago
  Why did people take to Uber outside the US if there wasn't a need?
  - amelius 5y ago

omegalulw 5y ago

Your argument is essentially that just because you don't need/like Uber doesn't mean it's useful? The problem Uber is addressing is not just a US problem - with Uber you essentially don't have to deal with all the shit taxi drivers pull, like refusing rides if they have to go to a slightly less profitable area, overcharging for rides for people new to the area/tourists, etc. Not to mention that with Uber you know exactly when the driver is coming, how much you will be charged up front, etc. You may not like how Uber is addressing these problems - and indeed there are fair criticisms, but ride sharing apps are most certainly solving a real problem.

simonbarker87 5y ago
Friends complain all the time that Ubers don’t show up, take forever to arrive and don’t allow you to plan ahead. I’ve literally never bad that problem with taxis. I can book ahead, they arrive on time, they take me where I need to go, charge a predictable price and if I’m in a town or city I can just walked to the nearest taxi tank and find dozens of taxis waiting to take me somewhere. Yes this is anecdotal but I just don’t see the problem Uber is solving in the UK
iso1631 5y ago
> with Uber you essentially don't have to deal with all the shit taxi drivers pull, like refusing rides if they have to go to a slightly less profitable area That's exactly what happens now https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-upfront-destinations https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-upfront-destinations > Not to mention that with Uber you know exactly when the driver is coming Not any more, they cancel

mike-cardwell 5y ago

I was born and live in the UK and will only take a non-Uber taxi as a last resort. Been ripped off one too many times by taxi drivers in my life. With Uber there is no opportunity to be ripped off. The fact that I can often use Uber abroad is a massive bonus. It's almost a guarantee that you're going to be ripped off when using taxis in a foreign country.

simonbarker87 5y ago
I would only take an Uber as a last resort - even the few occasions I’ve used one it was flaky. I’ve tried another few times but there was never a driver near but and the one who accepted just didn’t show up, carrier on driving around doing their own thing. If something was critical I would never use an Uber - I’d rather walk, or cycle if a traditional taxi wasn’t possible for some reason.
- mike-cardwell 5y ago
  If that was a common experience, Uber wouldn't have grown to the size it has and we wouldn't be having this conversation. I don't doubt that you have had bad experiences with Uber, and also that other people have. But you would find it very hard to convince me that people have better experiences with non Uber taxis on average.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    I used to have a great experience with Uber. Looking at the app store reviews in the UK of Uber, sorted by most recent 1* - Lost my trust 1* - Has gone downhill 1* - Uber Scammed me 1* - Can't get an Uber anymore 1* - The worst experience I have ever had 2* - Uber is deteriorating 2* - waiting times have increased 3* - Cancelled rides 1* Deteriorated over lockdown etc. All referring to the same problems I see, rides accepted by drivers, then cancelled a minute or so later. Going further back, full of 1/2 reviews: A sad Decline, Slow at finding drivers, Getting worse by the day, Scheduled trips are canceleld, Getting worse & worse, Most unreliable, etc Maybe the occasional 3* but going back 6 months, "Uber is dead, No Longer the no 1 ride in London, Drivers keep cancelling, Cannot get a booking, Never any drivers, Never turned up, 1 star is too much, used to be great", etc. etc, those were back to October. I'm not sure how long it's been going on (the same complaints go back at least a year on the reviews), but Uber don't seem to exist any more, otherwise they'd be concerned and change something to fix it.

bfung 5y ago

While I don't disagree with the article, I don't fully agree with it either. The article cites a study on (USA) GDP as a metric measuring of productivity, however, GDP is a poor proxy measure of "things being produced". USA GDP includes financial services and consumer spending, so using debt to pay for things vs. producing more, can still boost GDP. In the United States, pre-Uber around 2010, it was very hard to find cabs in certain cities and even neighborhoods in those cities. New York City had no problems, but as I had lived in Chicago and San Francisco with lower population densities compared to top tier cities in the world -- the only way to get cabs even a few miles outside the main downtown area, was to call taxi dispatch, if you knew their number -- it was even hard to look it up online -- and schedule a pick up, which usually took 30min+. The US taxi system was stalled at the time, and Uber forced it to start adapting to the smart phone era. The tragedy is that the people investing in and also running uber had their own pyramid scheme instead of pricing out the business correctly. They also didn't consider the social/gov implications -- places with good taxi systems didn't need them, as you alluded to with the UK, but they shoved into it anyways. So Uber was an innovation, one that is trying to find its financial balance still. I'd never care to schedule another taxi pick-up for next morning, 16hrs in advance when I want to go to the airport. But the article saying that uber innovation and having others try it on other industries is stymying productivity isn't completely correct either.

antb123 5y ago
++ taxi companies were corrupt due to the taxi medallion system.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  As decided by the people. They could have politically campaigned to change that, buy out all the medallions at fair market price and the redistribute them for free in sufficient quantity.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    Fuck that. Medallions are licenses and the government can grant more licenses as they see fit. They don’t need to compensate people who already hold them for granting more.

adreamingsoul 5y ago

When we had Uber in Oslo, they were safer than taking a taxi.

simonbarker87 5y ago
Safer in what way? A real way or a manufactured way created by Uber to scare you away from traditional taxis?

DantesKite 5y ago

simonbarker87 5y ago
Excellent addition to the discussion there. My point of view still stands. I just don’t see how it’s better than the existing taxi systems I used in my country pre Uber. One even had an app showing where their taxis were and you could hail one with a tap of a button.
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easytiger 5y ago

whitepaint 5y ago

You click a button, someone comes to pick you up in a few minutes. You know exactly how much you are gonna pay. Even if you are just a tourist. Uber (and other applications like it) is so much more superior to taxis that you cannot even compare them (unless you want to frivolously whine). They brought insane amount of innovation and I am so thankful for that.

simonbarker87 5y ago
I already had access to this exact experience with a taxi firm in Newcastle where I used to live pre Uber - so yeh, I don’t see what benefit Uber brought. Also, the firm that had that app had clean cars, with driver in clean clothes and they knew the roads well.
- bombela 5y ago
  You were lucky. Before Uber it was almost impossible to get a taxi in San Francisco and Paris for me. Now it just works the same on both cities.
- whitepaint 5y ago
  Oh, you had exact experience with one taxi firm in Newcastle. Superb. I had this exact same experience with Uber in different countries and different cities. "I’ve never seen the need for Uber.". Well, you are one of very few, pal. I can tell you that for sure.
  - simonbarker87 5y ago
    Alright chill your beans “pal”. It wasn’t just one company in Newcastle, growing up I never had an issues with taxis And as far as I know you still can’t book an Uber for the next day or whatever.
    - amaccuish 5y ago
      We had Blueline in Harrogate too. And there was Apple Taxis in Exeter with an app. Ideally Uber should just be an interface that ties these different companies together. At least here in Berlin, when I book via Uber, I'm told more often than not that it won't be an Uber picking me up but a normal taxi.

codegeek 5y ago

"I’ve never seen the need for Uber." A very bold claim. I am not sure about the finances of Uber and how it impacts shareholders vs employees and how many people are getting rich off it, but let me tell you that services like Uber have been a God send as a consumer. The haggling with old school taxi drivers is one of the worst experiences one can have, not to mention that you have no idea what the prices should be if you are not local. Uber and similar apps remove all that nonsense. You can disagree with their business practices or even how much they charge, but I hope apps and services like Uber do not die, EVER. I don't want to go back to being harassed by taxi drivers.

tartoran 5y ago
Yes, in certain areas that huggling was very common and Uber did help customers avoid it completely. Quite often the hugglers were attacking Uber drivers for disrupting their business practices.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago

You are completely correct. Take, for example, Hailo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailo. They were available in London before Uber, and they had an entirely different model where they just franchised the technology for people in each city to use. They were profitable, and were driven out of existence by Ubers blitz scaling, which still hasn't produced a profit :(

rosndo 5y ago

> I’ve used Uber three or four times in my life and each time was a worse experience than a taxi. Every time I call an Uber in London, an extremely professional and courteous driver shows up within a couple of minutes in a Mercedes S-class or equivalent, at a price only slightly above that of a black cab. I doubt that you can find a better taxi service anywhere.

lordnacho 5y ago

I would say a taxi app is a good though obvious idea, worth pursuing. What was a bit surprising was the sheer scale of it. That crowding out point in the essay is very relevant, we are basically allowing the bully with the big stack to raise everybody out of the poker game, no matter how good his cards actually are. If we want a functioning market, let a bunch of little guys show what they can do, don't let one huge guy scare everyone else away.

Ekaros 5y ago
Dumping of service should outside very limited promotional offers lead to massive penalties. That is multiple times the generated revenue. Possibly distributed to proven operators on the market.

barry-cotter 5y ago

Taxis in Shanghai were terrible. They weren’t much better in Ireland. They didn’t stop for foreigners (in Shanghai). They refused to take you if they didn’t feel like going where you wanted to go after you flagged them down. Uber and its copycats made the world better by making the “regulators” irrelevant. Taking a good taxi experience from a thing in some cities in some countries to everywhere they operated was and is massive.

iso1631 5y ago

A big benefit of Uber is the fact it works in multiple cities. I was in a new UK city the other day, no idea where I'd get a cab from. Just opened Uber and booked one, and it worked. Tried it again that evening and it failed -- multiple times the ride would be accepted, then cancelled. Ended up walking. Looking at recent reviews for the Uber app it seems this is common, Uber has gone from being somewhere reliable I can get a cab, from Sydney to San Francisco to Singapore, to being something that can't be relied upon

grecy 5y ago

> I’ve never seen the need for Uber It's incredible spending time in the undeveloped/developing world - all the problems and solutions that "gig" apps supposedly are good for live on to this day all over the world. Need a place to stay? Ask around the village and someone will be more than happy for you to sleep in the spare room for $1/night. Need a ride? Wait where the locals are, you'll get in a communal "taxi" with locals for 10 or 20 cents to the next town. In the Western World there are apps for this kind of thing that funnel profits to mega corporations. In the rest of the world there are average people on the street doing it every day as part of normal life.

dzikimarian 5y ago
> Need a place to stay? Ask around the village and someone will be more than happy for you to sleep in the spare room for $1/night. Out of curiosity - where did you have such experience?
- Mezzie 5y ago
  Also who are you and who were you traveling with? Because gotta say, as a female, I'm not staying in rando's spare rooms...
- grecy 5y ago
  I've done it at least 50 times through Central and South America and all the way around the coastline of Africa. Real people out there are much friendlier and welcoming than seems possible.

saos 5y ago

Taxis in the UK were awful before Uber

dzikimarian 5y ago

It's all sunshine and rainbows, while you are in your hometown and know which one is good, won't scam you etc. I landed in India or Brazil a few times, with language familiarity limited to "bon día". Without local sim card. This trip would be orders of magnitude harder without Uber and similar.