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Have you tried Uber lately? It used to be way cheaper than taxi's, and you'd reliably get one much faster than calling a cab or trying to hail one. Now they'v
by plantain 4y ago
Have you tried Uber lately?
It used to be way cheaper than taxi's, and you'd reliably get one much faster than calling a cab or trying to hail one.
Now they've approached monopoly and need to actually start becoming profitable, it's become as expensive if not more expensive than taxi's.
Plus for anything other than very long rides at surge prices you will get repeatedly cancelled, over and over.
I have just gone back to calling or hailing cabs.
- tedivm 4y agoIn Chicago Uber and Lyft are regularly twice as expensive as a taxi, with less money going to the drivers.
- hef19898 4y agoIt's almost as if taxi rates are prized the way they are for a reason. If you actually want to turn a profit that is.
- treis 4y agoTaxi rates are almost exclusively set by local regulation
- ghaff 4y agoYes, but by and large that local regulation isn't divorced from actual costs--except perhaps to some degree in the case of fleecing visitors going from the airport to downtown.
- treis 4y agoThat's not really true. Uber/Lyft have almost always been marginally profitable. Meaning they charge more for a ride than they pay the driver to perform it. Their massive losses mostly come from ridiculous overhead plus marketing to grow the business. On the other hand, the taxi market never really worked because there's no price fluctuation to mediate supply and demand. On one side you have places like Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, and others where taxis basically didn't exist for locals. On the other you had places like NYC where demand often outstripped supply. You wouldn't be able to find a cab or they wouldn't take you where you wanted to go. You can also see it in medallion prices. They were so profitable in places like NYC people were paying a million plus simply for the opportunity to operate a cab. An obviously broken market.
- hef19898 4y agoPart of Uber's (not sure about Lyft) marketing budget goes into subsidizing rides.
- treis 4y agoFor new customers/drivers yes. Not really for existing ones.
- lozenge 4y agoThat "marketing" budget is not going to billboards, radio spots and banner ads, it's going to voucher codes and driver "performance bonuses". It's just subsidies by another name.
- treis 4y agoAgain, just not true at all. Here is Lyft's financial statement: https://investor.lyft.com/news-and-events/news/news-details/2022/Lyft-Announces-First-Quarter-Results/default.aspx https://investor.lyft.com/news-and-events/news/news-details/... They have 875.5 million revenue against 440.3 million COGS and 126.3 million in Sales and Marketing. Even if every dollar of sales and marketing was a direct subsidy they're still taking in 308.9 million as gross profit. Or, in other words, they're taking 35% or so of fares.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoRight, in a free market rides are incredibly cheap and have a 50% chance of getting more expensive at the end when the driver who hasn't had a background check robs you.
- ghaff 4y agoHonestly, it was pretty obvious that something along these lines was going to eventually happen. Taxis were generally not a high margin business. Why should Uber have ended up with lower pricing especially with all their overhead? And the urbanites who baked subsidized Uber into their lifestyles will just have to adjust.
- 8ytecoder 4y agoBecause they were supposed to "optimise" the routes and enable true ride & cost sharing? It did look like that for a while with their lowest tier.