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Things get bad slowly and it can be hard to notice at first. When companies slightly shrink their products or change to cheaper ingredients, most people don't i

by mdasen 3y ago

Things get bad slowly and it can be hard to notice at first. When companies slightly shrink their products or change to cheaper ingredients, most people don't immediately notice. To an extent, it's like the boiling frog analogy. You slowly raise the prices and lower the service expectations and people don't notice as easily. People also become dependent on things. Even when there are alternatives, people have habits and those habits are powerful. Uber doesn't have a monopoly, but they are usually a duopoly (with Lyft). It isn't easy to compare prices and services between. I hate saying that because if you are trolling, you're going to say "it's easy, you just open both apps", but it's not easy since the pricing is always shifting and with drivers canceling or pushing you to cancel it becomes problematic. Uber's brand and one's history with the service can leave one hesitant to believe it is now bad. Maybe a few times you think "oh, it's just a couple bad experiences." Historically, you have more positive experiences to balance it out. Many people will want to write off these bad experiences because they've talked up Uber a lot in the past. They don't want the cognitive dissonance of thinking "wow, I was an idiot to buy into their bait-and-switch and get all my friends to buy into it!" They'd rather believe that the service hasn't gotten that much worse and that they still like it. ----- We see this kind of thing in a lot of areas. If Google Search is so bad, why are so many people using it so much that it's so profitable? Again, many of the same things: it becomes bad slowly over time and people don't notice it so much; people become dependent on things and use Google as a habit without even thinking about available alternatives - it's the default search in their browser just as Uber is the app they have installed; while Google doesn't have a monopoly, there aren't many alternatives and yea you could just run your search twice in two search engines, but people aren't going to do even seemingly "easy" things to compare or get better results; and Google has a brand associated with search quality that people have pushed forward over a couple decades and people don't like changing their beliefs around that. We can't make truly free decisions. We don't have a situation where one could say, "If Uber isn't serving you well, you could just make your own transportation network that treated you better and use that." That's not so possible. We're often left without truly free choices because we live in a society where certain things exist and other things don't and we can't rebuild things overnight when something isn't great. Lots of companies make lots of money while providing bad service because they're using their market position to gain leverage. If your logic is "so many people are using it, therefore it must be good," that really ignores how companies use their market position to leverage more profits because people don't really have choice.

spencerchubb 3y ago
> Things get bad slowly Yes this is very true, and I am speaking from experience. Here's something I've seen financial people say: "We are currently spending x and we want to spend y. How much do we need to adjust each year to get there without losing customers?"
DharmaPolice 3y ago
I'm not sure Google is a great example - although they've got worse there's no obvious competitor which is better at search itself. There's various other reasons why you might not wish to use Google but in terms of quality of core text searches I've seldom found anyone consistently better. With Uber I think they've declined (in some places) to the point where they're below the quality of their competitors (even ignoring the ethical/whatever arguments against using Uber).
- mdasen 3y ago
  I think for most people, they won't have even thought about trying a competitor - whether that's Google or Uber. They won't even know whether Uber has declined relative to their competition. Personally, I don't even know how to get a taxi in most places anymore. At the airport, sure. I live in one of the densest places in the US that isn't NYC, but there aren't taxis going around through most areas. I'd basically be walking to the kind of place that already has public transit to find a taxi (and even then they aren't that common). There's Lyft, but is that actually any better? I typically find their prices to be higher, but maybe that's changed. A lack of information on actual quality can be a big thing. I'm not arguing Uber hasn't declined to the point where they're below the quality of competitors. I guess I'm more questioning: how would you communicate to me a competitor that is better? I think that's what is missing in a lot of ways: how do you prove to yourself and others that a competitor is better? Maybe you'll say "Lyft is often $1-3 more expensive, but the drivers don't cancel quite as much and support is better." That's hard to really get a feel for - just as it's hard to really quantify the quality of search results. Maybe you live in NYC and taxis are plentiful and there are even NYC-specific app-based services. Maybe you live in a part of Europe where there are apps that work with the taxi system. Maybe you're in another part of the world where there's lots of ride-app competition that doesn't exist in the US. But I'd love to be sold on a competitor. If we were friends having lunch, what would you say? "Oh, you've got to try XYZ because... They're better than Uber because..." But I think most people aren't having that conversation. We had those conversations talking about how Uber was better than taxis. You can see when they're coming, it just charges your credit card, support is great about bad rides, you don't have to call a service, it's all GPS based, you know when you'll get to your destination... That's how we sold our friends on Uber. How do we now argue that something else is better quality? Maybe the issue is that Uber is hitting 90% of the quality of competitors which makes it hard to discern if they're actually worse.

by mdasen 3y ago

spencerchubb 3y ago

> Things get bad slowly Yes this is very true, and I am speaking from experience. Here's something I've seen financial people say: "We are currently spending x and we want to spend y. How much do we need to adjust each year to get there without losing customers?"

DharmaPolice 3y ago

I'm not sure Google is a great example - although they've got worse there's no obvious competitor which is better at search itself. There's various other reasons why you might not wish to use Google but in terms of quality of core text searches I've seldom found anyone consistently better. With Uber I think they've declined (in some places) to the point where they're below the quality of their competitors (even ignoring the ethical/whatever arguments against using Uber).

mdasen 3y ago
I think for most people, they won't have even thought about trying a competitor - whether that's Google or Uber. They won't even know whether Uber has declined relative to their competition. Personally, I don't even know how to get a taxi in most places anymore. At the airport, sure. I live in one of the densest places in the US that isn't NYC, but there aren't taxis going around through most areas. I'd basically be walking to the kind of place that already has public transit to find a taxi (and even then they aren't that common). There's Lyft, but is that actually any better? I typically find their prices to be higher, but maybe that's changed. A lack of information on actual quality can be a big thing. I'm not arguing Uber hasn't declined to the point where they're below the quality of competitors. I guess I'm more questioning: how would you communicate to me a competitor that is better? I think that's what is missing in a lot of ways: how do you prove to yourself and others that a competitor is better? Maybe you'll say "Lyft is often $1-3 more expensive, but the drivers don't cancel quite as much and support is better." That's hard to really get a feel for - just as it's hard to really quantify the quality of search results. Maybe you live in NYC and taxis are plentiful and there are even NYC-specific app-based services. Maybe you live in a part of Europe where there are apps that work with the taxi system. Maybe you're in another part of the world where there's lots of ride-app competition that doesn't exist in the US. But I'd love to be sold on a competitor. If we were friends having lunch, what would you say? "Oh, you've got to try XYZ because... They're better than Uber because..." But I think most people aren't having that conversation. We had those conversations talking about how Uber was better than taxis. You can see when they're coming, it just charges your credit card, support is great about bad rides, you don't have to call a service, it's all GPS based, you know when you'll get to your destination... That's how we sold our friends on Uber. How do we now argue that something else is better quality? Maybe the issue is that Uber is hitting 90% of the quality of competitors which makes it hard to discern if they're actually worse.