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at least here in India, Uber's service has become downright hostile. Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. At airports, they refuse to e

by spaceman_2020 3y ago

at least here in India, Uber's service has become downright hostile. Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. At airports, they refuse to even arrive if you don't pay them extra in cash. The only people who still use Uber are the ones who have no options or don't know about the options available. The worst part is that they've driven out all the existing private cab operators from many airports through their earlier aggressive pricing. So now you literally have no option but to take an Uber from some airports, except that the Uber driver will be hostile and charge extra in cash. I really want this company to crash and burn. From drivers to customers, no one has a good thing to say about them here.

statictype 3y ago
This has definitely been my experience in India as well. Upwards of 70% of rides get cancelled. Usually after waiting for 10-15 min. There is absolutely no certainty around when you will reach your destination if you decide to go by Uber. Its a complete shitshow. Ola is slightly better I guess but not by much.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  If you're in Delhi, use BluSmart. Way, way better
gumballindie 3y ago
> The worst part is that they've driven out all the existing private cab operators from many airports through their earlier aggressive pricing. Basically, Uber’s strategy has worked and their goal has been achieved. They infused massive amounts of cash so they would kill the smaller players and now that they dominate they are just taking the piss. Amazon and Google did the same. Their products have become what we would have run away from a decade ago.
- aikinai 3y ago
  Amazon and Google are still amazing. What better alternatives did they drive out?
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    How are they “amazing”? Amazon is full of counterfeit or cheap products. Granted amazon’s delivery is amazing their marketplace is a cesspit. Google’s search is horrible. Cant find anything in my inbox or google drive even if i double quote the search terms. Not to mention search result spamming with sites that have been seo’d to death. The alternatives have always been there and still are but struggling to compete due to amazon and google sheer budgets where they simply sell services and products at a dumping price.
    - joe5150 3y ago
      Google search on mobile is so bad now I am increasingly reluctant to bother searching for things rather than just going straight to Wikipedia or somewhere else to find information. 80% of the page is "knowledge graph" junk, trending junk, boxes with "short videos" and "visual stories", and now if you scroll to the bottom and miss the button for "more search results", they just start showing you results for completely different searches! Also very pissed off about their decision to replace the search categories (images, videos, news, etc) with yet more "smart" suggestions. It makes it completely unpredictable where I need to click to get to images, which is what I'm looking for 99% of the time. E.g. searching "radiohead" now shows buttons for "songs", "members", "albums", "videos", "merchandise", and finally--after scrolling the list to the side--"images". Terrible!
      - gumballindie 3y ago
        Just the other day I did a search for “filename” (filename was not the actual input string) in my google drive and it found no results. I did a search for “tar.gz” the extension the file i searched, and guess what? It was found. I dont know what they are doing but this doesnt sound like a tech issue - it worked fine in the past. Now everything seems to have gotten broken. Google is sleepwalking into an altavista scenario. We need an alternative asap.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Google didn’t lose billions of dollars before becoming profitable. They were definitely profitable at IPO
Apofis 3y ago
I had 5 Uber drivers cancel on me in a row last month when I arrived to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport and wouldn’t take anything less than a tip that was 100% of the fare. Very frustrating, considering they put Taxis out of business. Sat there on the side of the airport “ride hailing” pickup for a hour wondering if I was even going to get home.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  That was always the Uber VC fueled Unicorn end goal. Destroy the regulated taxi business to the point where you form a monopoly. As a bonus, they’re extracting X% of dollars of every fare for providing little to no additional service relative to the past (local govts could very well have created apps to allow for hailing cabs like some already have). Money which would earlier have gone to the local economy or remained in your pocket is now going to Uber’s investors. I don’t understand why economists don’t talk about how this is contributing to inflation and/or destruction of businesses. If in the past I ordered delivery from my local Chinese restaurant, I gave them $100 and the entire $100 went to them. They would use that to employ 1-2 delivery guys who would probably at the end of the year cost them about 5-10% of their delivery food revenue. But today, I pay the Chinese restaurant $100, Uber Eats/Doorsash/Grubhub an additional $5-$10 and the restaurant will pay them about 30-40% additionally for receiving the order and delivering it. The 5-10% delivery cost has ballooned to over 30-40% (some cities had capped the fee but even that was about 15-20% and I don’t know if those caps have persisted past the pandemic). Until recently restaurants are the cost, but now they can’t anymore and we’re seeing significant inflation. That’s a 30-40% jump in costs to the restaurant + customer almost immediately.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    > If in the past I ordered delivery from my local Chinese restaurant, I gave them $100 and the entire $100 went to them Well, back then there were very few restaurants that offered delivery at all and their employees would have to use their own car, worry about maintenance and made very little for deliveries and were dependent on tips. Also almost none of the drivers got a commercial rider on their insurance for doing delivery.
mdasen 3y ago
In the US, drivers are telling customers to cancel rides (so that Uber doesn't take action against the driver for canceling) when they don't like the destination or don't think the trip is worth it. If you don't cancel, drivers will simply park and wait for you to cancel and Uber's help doesn't seem to want to help. I think a big thing is simply that Uber is trying to turn a profit in an industry where the margins just aren't that good. In order to make that profit, they've had to pivot to being this "hostile" company. They're putting pressure on drivers to find ways to lower their costs there. They're no longer helping customers in ways that would lose them money. In the early days, Uber was cheap and support would do anything to make you happy. Now Uber is expensive and support is working to make investors happy.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  If it’s so bad why are people using it so much that they are profitable?
  - echelon 3y ago
    It's still better than a taxi. Any trip to the airport, while traveling, when planning to drink, etc. is an Uber.
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    Because they have driven some competition out of the market so alternatives can be hard to find, compared to pre-Uber days. So a person might say “See? If it’s easier to use Uber then they are providing more value.” Except the alternatives may have been better pre-Uber, therefore Uber only provides relative value now because they have downgraded the overall quality. This will vary quite a bit by location though. In areas where it had been difficult or highly inconvenient to get a cab pre-Uber then Uber may still provide actual value over prior status quo. I’ve experienced both situations.
    - olalonde 3y ago
      I'm calling BS. If there was really a demand for it, the taxis would be back in no time. Operating a taxi is not rocket science nor does it require a huge capital investment.
Ekaros 3y ago
Sounds like free market is working. The drivers get to pick the gigs they want. Now solution for Uber would be to allow drivers to negotiate higher price. Be it double or 10x. Allowing riders to get service and drivers to act as free agents.
- massysett 3y ago
  Don’t know why this is getting downvoted. Clearly the problem is that some people want rides for which the fare is too low. With a higher fare, some of these people could get rides rather than getting rejected time and again.
- burnished 3y ago
  That isnt how the 'free market' works. For an efficient market buyers and sellers need to be on roughly even footing.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Why shouldn't it work like it does in any other industry. Riders request quotas for work and drivers offer them one. At prevailing market rate they seem sensible. Just like it works for plumbers, electricians, software consultants and so on. Why should taxi be any different from those?
    - burnished 3y ago
      Unskilled labor is at a deep disadvantage to skilled labor, why do you think those industries are generally better paid? The more unbalanced the power dynamic the more one side is able to control pricing. One interesting asymmetry is time - sellers on the labor market typically need to make a deal within weeks or months. Buyers tend to be able to wait months or years. Its hard to say that the market is doing the truest 'price discovery' in that situation.
- rfrey 3y ago
  Sure, as long as the price gets negotiated in advance. The problem is the sudden change in terms. This is the free market in the same way that a NY real estate developer telling a sub "I'll pay you 40% of what we agreed, if you don't like it contact my legal department" is the free market. The taxi driver has your luggage; they've eroded the time you thought you had and made you desperate; they now change the terms.
ryandrake 3y ago
> Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. Lyft does this, too. A few months ago, I was in the Bay Area without a car and had to go approx. 50 miles from Mountain View to Livermore. Kind of a long-ish ride, but not absurdly huge. I stood there for 30-40 minutes watching driver after driver accept, and then cancel my ride. Totally useless. Finally a driver actually picked me up. Thankfully I didn't have to be there at any particular time.
bowsamic 3y ago
> Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. This is very common in the UK too. I was in a small town and wanted to get a taxi home at midnight and there was many, many taxis about but since we wanted to go from one house to another rather than into the town centre they kept declining us. Must have gone through about 10 different drivers, even after the price was significantly raised. Had to try multiple different apps before I found one who accepted
mrguyorama 3y ago
But but but I was told drivers did this only in shitty taxi companies! And Uber is a tech company, they couldn't possibly create a system that drives their employees (IDGAF about what they claim they are) to do desperate and hostile things to keep earning enough to put food on the table. Maybe the problem wasn't the taxi companies

statictype 3y ago

This has definitely been my experience in India as well. Upwards of 70% of rides get cancelled. Usually after waiting for 10-15 min. There is absolutely no certainty around when you will reach your destination if you decide to go by Uber. Its a complete shitshow. Ola is slightly better I guess but not by much.

spaceman_2020 3y ago
If you're in Delhi, use BluSmart. Way, way better

gumballindie 3y ago

> The worst part is that they've driven out all the existing private cab operators from many airports through their earlier aggressive pricing. Basically, Uber’s strategy has worked and their goal has been achieved. They infused massive amounts of cash so they would kill the smaller players and now that they dominate they are just taking the piss. Amazon and Google did the same. Their products have become what we would have run away from a decade ago.

aikinai 3y ago
Amazon and Google are still amazing. What better alternatives did they drive out?
- gumballindie 3y ago
  How are they “amazing”? Amazon is full of counterfeit or cheap products. Granted amazon’s delivery is amazing their marketplace is a cesspit. Google’s search is horrible. Cant find anything in my inbox or google drive even if i double quote the search terms. Not to mention search result spamming with sites that have been seo’d to death. The alternatives have always been there and still are but struggling to compete due to amazon and google sheer budgets where they simply sell services and products at a dumping price.
  - joe5150 3y ago
    Google search on mobile is so bad now I am increasingly reluctant to bother searching for things rather than just going straight to Wikipedia or somewhere else to find information. 80% of the page is "knowledge graph" junk, trending junk, boxes with "short videos" and "visual stories", and now if you scroll to the bottom and miss the button for "more search results", they just start showing you results for completely different searches! Also very pissed off about their decision to replace the search categories (images, videos, news, etc) with yet more "smart" suggestions. It makes it completely unpredictable where I need to click to get to images, which is what I'm looking for 99% of the time. E.g. searching "radiohead" now shows buttons for "songs", "members", "albums", "videos", "merchandise", and finally--after scrolling the list to the side--"images". Terrible!
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      Just the other day I did a search for “filename” (filename was not the actual input string) in my google drive and it found no results. I did a search for “tar.gz” the extension the file i searched, and guess what? It was found. I dont know what they are doing but this doesnt sound like a tech issue - it worked fine in the past. Now everything seems to have gotten broken. Google is sleepwalking into an altavista scenario. We need an alternative asap.
scarface_74 3y ago
Google didn’t lose billions of dollars before becoming profitable. They were definitely profitable at IPO

Apofis 3y ago

I had 5 Uber drivers cancel on me in a row last month when I arrived to Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport and wouldn’t take anything less than a tip that was 100% of the fare. Very frustrating, considering they put Taxis out of business. Sat there on the side of the airport “ride hailing” pickup for a hour wondering if I was even going to get home.

rhaway84773 3y ago
That was always the Uber VC fueled Unicorn end goal. Destroy the regulated taxi business to the point where you form a monopoly. As a bonus, they’re extracting X% of dollars of every fare for providing little to no additional service relative to the past (local govts could very well have created apps to allow for hailing cabs like some already have). Money which would earlier have gone to the local economy or remained in your pocket is now going to Uber’s investors. I don’t understand why economists don’t talk about how this is contributing to inflation and/or destruction of businesses. If in the past I ordered delivery from my local Chinese restaurant, I gave them $100 and the entire $100 went to them. They would use that to employ 1-2 delivery guys who would probably at the end of the year cost them about 5-10% of their delivery food revenue. But today, I pay the Chinese restaurant $100, Uber Eats/Doorsash/Grubhub an additional $5-$10 and the restaurant will pay them about 30-40% additionally for receiving the order and delivering it. The 5-10% delivery cost has ballooned to over 30-40% (some cities had capped the fee but even that was about 15-20% and I don’t know if those caps have persisted past the pandemic). Until recently restaurants are the cost, but now they can’t anymore and we’re seeing significant inflation. That’s a 30-40% jump in costs to the restaurant + customer almost immediately.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  > If in the past I ordered delivery from my local Chinese restaurant, I gave them $100 and the entire $100 went to them Well, back then there were very few restaurants that offered delivery at all and their employees would have to use their own car, worry about maintenance and made very little for deliveries and were dependent on tips. Also almost none of the drivers got a commercial rider on their insurance for doing delivery.

mdasen 3y ago

In the US, drivers are telling customers to cancel rides (so that Uber doesn't take action against the driver for canceling) when they don't like the destination or don't think the trip is worth it. If you don't cancel, drivers will simply park and wait for you to cancel and Uber's help doesn't seem to want to help. I think a big thing is simply that Uber is trying to turn a profit in an industry where the margins just aren't that good. In order to make that profit, they've had to pivot to being this "hostile" company. They're putting pressure on drivers to find ways to lower their costs there. They're no longer helping customers in ways that would lose them money. In the early days, Uber was cheap and support would do anything to make you happy. Now Uber is expensive and support is working to make investors happy.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
If it’s so bad why are people using it so much that they are profitable?
- echelon 3y ago
  It's still better than a taxi. Any trip to the airport, while traveling, when planning to drink, etc. is an Uber.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  Because they have driven some competition out of the market so alternatives can be hard to find, compared to pre-Uber days. So a person might say “See? If it’s easier to use Uber then they are providing more value.” Except the alternatives may have been better pre-Uber, therefore Uber only provides relative value now because they have downgraded the overall quality. This will vary quite a bit by location though. In areas where it had been difficult or highly inconvenient to get a cab pre-Uber then Uber may still provide actual value over prior status quo. I’ve experienced both situations.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    I'm calling BS. If there was really a demand for it, the taxis would be back in no time. Operating a taxi is not rocket science nor does it require a huge capital investment.

Ekaros 3y ago

Sounds like free market is working. The drivers get to pick the gigs they want. Now solution for Uber would be to allow drivers to negotiate higher price. Be it double or 10x. Allowing riders to get service and drivers to act as free agents.

massysett 3y ago
Don’t know why this is getting downvoted. Clearly the problem is that some people want rides for which the fare is too low. With a higher fare, some of these people could get rides rather than getting rejected time and again.
burnished 3y ago
That isnt how the 'free market' works. For an efficient market buyers and sellers need to be on roughly even footing.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Why shouldn't it work like it does in any other industry. Riders request quotas for work and drivers offer them one. At prevailing market rate they seem sensible. Just like it works for plumbers, electricians, software consultants and so on. Why should taxi be any different from those?
  - burnished 3y ago
    Unskilled labor is at a deep disadvantage to skilled labor, why do you think those industries are generally better paid? The more unbalanced the power dynamic the more one side is able to control pricing. One interesting asymmetry is time - sellers on the labor market typically need to make a deal within weeks or months. Buyers tend to be able to wait months or years. Its hard to say that the market is doing the truest 'price discovery' in that situation.
rfrey 3y ago
Sure, as long as the price gets negotiated in advance. The problem is the sudden change in terms. This is the free market in the same way that a NY real estate developer telling a sub "I'll pay you 40% of what we agreed, if you don't like it contact my legal department" is the free market. The taxi driver has your luggage; they've eroded the time you thought you had and made you desperate; they now change the terms.

ryandrake 3y ago

> Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. Lyft does this, too. A few months ago, I was in the Bay Area without a car and had to go approx. 50 miles from Mountain View to Livermore. Kind of a long-ish ride, but not absurdly huge. I stood there for 30-40 minutes watching driver after driver accept, and then cancel my ride. Totally useless. Finally a driver actually picked me up. Thankfully I didn't have to be there at any particular time.

bowsamic 3y ago

> Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. This is very common in the UK too. I was in a small town and wanted to get a taxi home at midnight and there was many, many taxis about but since we wanted to go from one house to another rather than into the town centre they kept declining us. Must have gone through about 10 different drivers, even after the price was significantly raised. Had to try multiple different apps before I found one who accepted

mrguyorama 3y ago

But but but I was told drivers did this only in shitty taxi companies! And Uber is a tech company, they couldn't possibly create a system that drives their employees (IDGAF about what they claim they are) to do desperate and hostile things to keep earning enough to put food on the table. Maybe the problem wasn't the taxi companies