I don't know when your anecdote is from, nor what Uber's timeline/strategy is/was in Romania, but... They are (in)famous for using lots and lots of venture cap

I don't know when your anecdote is from, nor what Uber's timeline/strategy is/was in Romania, but... They are (in)famous for using lots and lots of venture capital money to subsidize their fares for customers when entering new markets, using those low prices as loss-making user acquisition, and then eventually (and likely gradually) raising their prices once they have enough regular users - often having killed off some of the local competition who couldn't compete with the VC-subsidized prices Uber arrived with. > How do you compete with that? Taxi business need to reflect. And every country is the same strangely, it's as universal than taxes: you can't escape! Reflecting doesn't do much when your competitor can afford to sell every journey at a loss until you go out of business before then putting their prices up to what you're currently charging. Yes, in some places Uber's arrival did either bring a better service or scare local taxis into doing better (e.g. lots of local firms now offer app-based booking and are just as reliable as Uber), and in some places taxis were so overpriced that Uber could genuinely offer a better service for a lower price and be profitable. But the vast majority of the times they offer cheaper prices, especially when it's such a big difference as in your story, it's a temporary (perhaps for months or years) strategy not something to expect to stay cheap. Enjoy using their services half paid for by investors while you can! Edit: There don't seem to be many recent news articles that go into details, as it was known about so many years ago that most articles talking about these leaks just acknowledge this to be fact (e.g. in this very article we're in comments thread of, "At the same moment as Uber’s service deteriorates and the subsidy that helped it decimate taxis evaporates [... continues on about other stuff]") But here's an interesting snippet from a court case that alleged this against them in the US where the judge basically agreed but said it wasn't to be point of being illegal. From https://casetext.com/case/sc-innovations-inc-v-uber-techs-2 https://casetext.com/case/sc-innovations-inc-v-uber-techs-2 > The Court held that Sidecar's allegation of a relevant market—app-based ride-hailing services, excluding taxis—was sufficiently plausible to survive a motion to dismiss. Id. at 10-11. The Court also rejected suggestions by Uber that Sidecar had not alleged below-cost pricing, id. at 12, as well as arguments that Uber's delayed entry to the non-limousine ride-hailing market and asserted pro-competitive purposes were sufficient for dismissal at the pleading stage, id. at 16-18. The Court nevertheless dismissed Sidecar's Sherman Act claims for failure to provide sufficient allegations of market power, particularly its failure to allege "that Uber has the power to raise market prices above competitive levels simply by reducing its own output, or that Lyft"—allegedly Uber's only remaining competitor—"could not respond to such a reduction by increasing its own output." Id. at 12-14. Absent such allegations, the Court held that Sidecar alleged no more than a "disciplined oligopoly," which the Ninth Circuit has held insufficient to state a claim for either monopolization or attempted monopolization, due to "a gap in the Sherman Act that allows oligopolies to slip past its prohibitions,"