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Uber's playbook for sabotaging Lyft

• boldpanda 12y ago
  So Google, Facebook, and Apple are bad because they come to secret agreements to not poach each other's employees and now Uber and Lyft are bad because they'll do everything in their power to poach each other's employees? Make up your minds. This sort of poaching is good for the drivers, and this sort of ruthless competition is a good indication of a market that is good for riders.
  • bps4484 12y ago
    Imagine if google and facebook were calling up random numbers at each others' headquarters in order to recruit. If the recruiter ended up guessing a number of an engineer that they've already reached, they would hang up. If they hadn't spoken to them they would give them a pitch on switching companies. This would be an accurate analogy, and I think if either google or facebook were doing this we (the tech community) would complain about it.
    • gtremper 12y ago
      Except there are other, easier ways to contact google or facebook employees. Why would anyone do what you suggest instead of using linkedin or github? There's no such alternative for contacting lyft drivers in this case, so you're analogy is not very accurate. Also, lyft drivers aren't employees of lyft, which strains to your analogy more.
      • bps4484 12y ago
        It's by no means a perfect analogy, but it's the closest thing I could come up with to compare to the anti-competitive practices of google/facebook/microsoft, which is what the OP was trying to do.
  • wastedhours 12y ago
    Yes, because there's only those two options. Only. Those. Two.
• itazula 12y ago
  Traditional taxi drivers need to be less grubby -- Uber was able to take advantage of that. How important a factor that is would depend on the country or city. But in some countries, it may be a way of filtering for drivers that speak English. For example, for Tokyo, Uber lists a flat rate of 40,000 yen, roughly 400 USD (!), for a ride from Narita Airport to any of the 23 wards of Tokyo. Pretty steep, given that a very nice bus, hotel shuttle, or express train is less than a tenth of that cost. Of course, the "last mile" is a consideration. For taxis, though, there are already established taxi services; http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/access/bus/#taxi http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/access/bus/#taxi shows that fixed fares range from 16,000 - 26,500 yen.
  • DINKDINK 12y ago
    I never understood the disdain for Uber's pricing. Who cares if they charge considerably higher than other services? No one is forcing you to take their service. Do you get upset when people buy an M-Class Mercedes? Would I ever buy one? No. Do I think it's extravagant? Yes. Do I care how other people spend their money? No
    • itazula 12y ago
      I actually wouldn't mind if certain conspicuous, extravagant (and conspicuously wealthy) celebrities opted for an Uber taxi. Nope, wouldn't mind it one bit.
  • astrange 12y ago
    Does Uber guarantee English-speaking drivers in Japan? I mean, that hardly seems important when the usual taxi companies carry around lists of common phrases you can point at, and you only have to say a destination landmark. Riding Narita into Tokyo in a taxi just seems so inefficient anyway (for <4 people). One Google Maps printout saves you tens of thousands of yens.
• geuis 12y ago
  And this is why I exclusively use Lyft these days. Uber can bite my shiny metal ass.
• kin 12y ago
  So now it's just like Venmo, except Venmo uses your checking account vs. your debit card which is really just a difference of security IMO. Also, losing as much as a quarter per transaction doesn't scale. At this point, Square seems like they really need an exit and it needs to be big.
• untog 12y ago
  I know this may sound hyperbolic, but I hope that others join me in finally getting around to installing the Lyft app today. Before now I'd considered them too small to be worth bothering with, but hey, if Uber is worried then maybe I should give it a try. After this, and Uber's attempts at doing the same with GoTaxi a few months ago, I'll be very happy to take my business elsewhere. I'd also be interested to know if the VCs that invested in Uber were aware of these tactics. It's especially sad to think of good startup investment money being used to defraud a competing company rather than invest in good customer service.
  • HelloMcFly 12y ago
    I keep hoping they release a Windows Phone App, or a mobile website with service functionality.
    • untog 12y ago
      My sympathies - it was exactly issues like that which drove me away from Windows Phone (7) back to Android. I hear it's a lot better these days, but all it takes is one missing app...
      • bkjelden 12y ago
        I switched back from WP8 to android a couple of months ago, and I must say the better app selection has been huge. Where I felt the app shortage hurt the most wasn't at the top - there are a few glaring omissions, and some of the apps took a long time to show up, but WP8 for the most part has apps for top services (facebook, twitter, instagram, spotify, uber, etc). But then there's this second tier of apps where WP8's coverage is absolutely terrible. I was talking with a coworker today about how his bank (small, local bank) just released an app allowing mobile check deposit - on android and iOS. Your favorite pizza chain or sub shop has an app for ordering delivery or takeout? Android and iOS only. Target has an app that allows you to search an item, and then see what aisle it's in in the store - android and iOS only. There's this huge class of convenient but not necessary apps that you don't get on windows phone right now, and having spent a couple of months with them, I don't think I could go back. It's too bad really, I feel like Microsoft got a lot of things right with WP8. I definitely preferred the UI compared to android.
• brianbreslin 12y ago
  I would hope that uber has bigger fish to fry by subverting the taxi industry, but strategically I can see why they are as scared of Lyft as they seem to be. Still seems distasteful to sabotage a fellow startup.
  • minimaxir 12y ago
    > Still seems distasteful to sabotage a fellow startup. I don't see why Lyft being "a fellow startup" should affect any of Uber's business tactics. Startups don't have any intrinsic motivation to play nice with each other.
    • untog 12y ago
      I think it's just the idea of "punching up" vs. "punching down". When a scrappy startup takes on a larger competitor they need to pull out all the stops to combat the advantages of their competitor being an established company. At this point Uber essentially is the #1 established company of car services, so them resorting to dirty tactics to fight Lyft leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.
      • maxbrown 12y ago
        Any established player that doesn't defend its position will be quickly unseated. I'm not saying this is an appropriate way to defend itself, but it's certainly one way.
        • untog 12y ago
          Sure. But left unchecked it results in Microsoft's "extend, embrace, extinguish" 1990s.
          • chc 12y ago
            Maybe, but I kind of feel like the difference between making your competitor's employees a better offer and deliberately exploiting a monopoly to destroy any technology you don't control is more than just a matter of scale.
• johnrob 12y ago
  I think we need regulation in order to eliminate cutthroat behavior in the transportation industry. Oh wait...
  • Yver 12y ago
    I think the unregulated market is ripe for some disruption in the form of regulations.
  • dnautics 12y ago
    it's not really that necessary... Lyft could figure out a way to immunize itself against these sorts of real-world attacks, and by and large they have using a comibination of analytics and creating a more reasonable cancellation policy.
• sremani 12y ago
  Its unfortunate but I am surprised here, aren't there any laws to punish this kind of systematic sabotage. Would the VCs like Google Ventures and other VCs self-police and influence Uber from this tactics. Uber already has first entrant advantage, this is not childish, this is sinister. Some driver somewhere burned lot of gas and rubber only to be disappointed that there is no fare there. I will not use Uber until they make mends, I know I am a small hummingbird but anything with in my means to discourage this practice.
  • acangiano 12y ago
    > this is not childish, this is sinister. Some driver somewhere burned lot of gas and rubber only to be disappointed that there is no fare there. It could be even worse. Imagine a Lyft driver going to a Uber initiated non-existent fare. Now imagine him or her getting into an accident and dying on the way there.
    • untog 12y ago
      That seems like a needless exaggeration. Traveling to a non-existent fare does not result in the driver doing anything they wouldn't have been doing otherwise. Uber's behaviour is already bad, we don't need to add hyperbole.
      • acangiano 12y ago
        Actually, if it weren't for Uber's call they would not have been at the incident's location at the wrong time. Of course, it's a worse case scenario / exaggeration, but when they make thousands of calls, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
        • untog 12y ago
          Yes, but they would have been driving around the same city. That they went down street X as opposed to street Y is a really, really tenuous attempt to pin responsibility on Uber. In fact, you could argue that Uber doesn't give them directions and that they drove down the wrong street of their own volition. More to the point: this thinking is just a distraction.
• bproper 12y ago
  This seems like cutthroat tactics, but not illegal as far as I can tell. Anyone know if this is by the book?
  • greglindahl 12y ago
    Which book, the lawbook or the ethics book?
    • res0nat0r 12y ago
      I thought on HN we call working around outdated or laws we don't agree with "disruption"?
      • vdaniuk 12y ago
        Unnecessary generalization. Disruption may or may not have negative externalities. In fact, many externalities of disruptions are positive.
      • sgustard 12y ago
        In fact, disrupt and sabotage are synonyms.
        • NoPiece 12y ago
          No major thesaurus lists sabotage as a synonym for disrupt. A couple have disrupt for sabotage.
    • NoPiece 12y ago
      The article documents recruiting Lyft drivers by riding with them, which is neither unethical nor illegal. It doesn't document cancelling rides, which would definitely be unethical, and should be illegal.
    • chc 12y ago
      Whose ethics book says hiring employees from competitors is wrong? Pixar's?
• ericdykstra 12y ago
  Price comparison SF: Uber X: $3 base fare, $0.30 per minute, $1.50 per mile Lyft: $2.25 base fare, $0.27 per minute, $1.35 per mile Both have a $1 trust and safety fee, and Lyft has a lower minimum. I’ve personally had better experiences with Lyft overall, and I’ve taken at least 100 rides with each service.
  • narsil 12y ago
    Anecdotally, I've had better experiences with Lyft as well. Uber's customer support has been terrible in comparison.
    • ToastyMallows 12y ago
      Agreed. I can't even sign up for their app on Android using Google account and Google Wallet. I emailed their support email a week ago and haven't heard anything back. The Wallet dialog pops up but I can't click anything. Looks like I won't be signing up with Uber anytime soon.
  • colmvp 12y ago
    I just got back from the U.S. Where I was, Uber was constantly jacking up the price with surge pricing, between 1.25x to 1.75x the normal price. Meanwhile, Lyft not only wasn't jacking up the price during those same hours but was running a 25% special. On top of that, the Lyft drivers were typically friendlier. No brainer which one I recommend to others.
  • grubles 12y ago
    Am I the /only/ person commenting that has had a better experience with Uber? I am having a hard time thinking about using Lyft over Uber in the future (West LA area).
    • petercoolz 12y ago
      Same here... west LA too. UberX usually has more cars available and the Lyft ones are usually older models.
• itazula 12y ago
  I can see Uber, Lyft, and traditional taxi drivers reading Sun Tze's The Art of War. Well, maybe Uber and Lyft.
• napoleoncomplex 12y ago
  Uber has a culture of breaking the rules. As beneficial as that was and is in their growth, it's not surprising it mutates in less pleasant ways as they grow. The same actions that seemed benevolent before, will seem more and more malevolent as they look less and less like an underdog. A cheesy line from Batman comes to mind, they will live long enough to see themselves become the villain. The customers will end up asking for more regulation in a few years. Maybe Uber will start issuing a limited amount of medallions in every city. But a lot of money to be made along the way.
  • nyrulez 12y ago
    "will seem more and more malevolent". Are you saying its not actually malevolent but is just being perceived as so because it is aggressive ?
    • napoleoncomplex 12y ago
      I only meant that how we look at them changes with their size, and if they want to remain the "good guys" their tactics should change too. If Lyft had 5 times the funding, Uber recruiting their drivers would look like a bold move. It would mean Uber believes drivers will stick with them long-term because life for drivers with them is clearly better, and the initial investment pays off in the long run, despite them having a smaller war chest to begin with. Now that Uber has 5 times the funding, the same move looks like Uber is afraid of Lyft beating them in the market, and is trying to kill them early by buying off their drivers and crippling them. They can afford this even if driving for Uber is a shittier experience long-term than driving for Lyft, since they have so much more money it doesn't really matter. Lyft will be dead or badly injured before drivers figure it out, so Uber doesn't need to worry about being the best in the market. What their actual motives are is anyone's guess, but it doesn't look good for them to do this.
    • georgemcbay 12y ago
      The way people perceive actions tends to change based on the status of the person(s) performing the action at the time the action was performed. Everyone knows reddit admins used to game the system by faking submissions to solve the chicken and egg problem and nobody really cares, but there would be an uproar if they were found to be manipulating story placements behind the scenes today because the scale of the site is so different. People are pretty willing to overlook borderline underhanded things if you are really an underdog trying to get a leg up, but far less so when you're the industry leader trying to crush upstarts.
• sah88 12y ago
  IMO Uber's greatest threat is someone coming along and making a similar service and licensing it to cities so that the cities could control who becomes a driver, total number of drivers, as well as integrate with traditional taxi services and take a cut of the revenue. Then all the sudden Uber et al. are competing with a entity that has the ability to legislate them out of business. Underhanded tactics like this is just more ammunition for anyone who wants to make the argument that the industry needs to be regulated. Uber might be shooting Lyft in the foot but they're also putting holes in the floor they're standing on themselves.
  • jssjr 12y ago
    http://gocurb.com/ http://gocurb.com/ has been doing exactly that for many years.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • foobarqux 12y ago
      And Hailo (?) But why aren't they succeeding?
      • kansface 12y ago
        Uber controls its fate, though its success may be stymied by municipalities. Taking the business directly to cities puts the onus on them- a much harder proposition than providing a good service. I know which business I'd rather run.
      • derrekl 12y ago
        They are succeeding, but not to the extent of Uber/Lyft. Regulated taxi industry pricing is much higher than lyft or UberX pricing. If taxis get de-regulated and/or UberX/Lyft get regulated then Curb/Hailo/etc will be well positioned.
        • dandelany 12y ago
• far33d 12y ago
  So which is it - is poaching another company's drivers bad, or is making secret anti-poaching agreements bad?
  • narsil 12y ago
    Recruiting drivers from competitors isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's the tactics used here to attempt to kill Lyft by making it bleed cash that are unethical.
    • far33d 12y ago
      This article only describes a concerted effort to recruit drivers by hailing rides. Lyft still gets paid. I believe that the hail / cancel tactic is unethical, but this article only describes direct recruitment.
      • buckbova 12y ago
        The article references the hail/cancel. "Earlier this month, CNN reported that Uber employees around the country ordered and then canceled 5,560 Lyft rides, according to an analysis by Lyft. (Lyft arrived at this figure by cross-referencing the phone numbers of users who tried to recruit Lyft drivers to Uber with users who had previously canceled rides.) "
    • snowwrestler 12y ago
      The amount of money involved in the cancelled rides is inconsequential to Lyft's success. 5,000 cancelled rides is what, about $100,000? Techcrunch reported a $100 million annual gross revenue rate at Lyft last December, with 6% weekly growth.
• mythz 12y ago
  Can't stomach unethical, morally bankrupt anti-competitive tactics. Sabotaging a competitor's services distorts the free-market, ultimately harming consumers. If Uber aren't suitably punished by the courts, I hope at least their reputation is tarnished in the court of public opinion. Although that's not clear since "there's no such thing as bad publicity" and Uber's been getting a lot of that recently. Either way, I'm at least glad I've never used Uber yet, and now never will.
  • BrainInAJar 12y ago
    Sabotaging a competitor is precisely how the free-market operates that's why we have regulations, because a free market isn't actually free or desirable.
    • watwut 12y ago
      That depends on whether you define free market as anarchy or free of regulation or whether you define it in the original economical theory sense: a lot of competitors with essentially same product and everyone instantly know all available into (so everyone buys cheapest of the same). Monopoly is not free market in the original sense, even if it came out from unregulated competition.
      • DannyBee 12y ago
        " a lot of competitors with essentially same product and everyone instantly know all available into (so everyone buys cheapest of the same)." But we already know these free markets are either not efficient or likely not efficient. Strong form efficiency is provably false. Weak form efficiency is only possibly true if P = NP (http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284 http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284).
    • bunderbunder 12y ago
      Depends on what you mean by "free market". There's the free market that Adam Smith talked about, and there's the free market that Ayn Rand talked about.
    • 12y ago
• anthemcg 12y ago
  I am not surprised by this. I am sure Lyft is just among a list of threats to Uber and we are only seeing a small part of that strategy. Its ethically not good but I think it would be wrong to say that we penalized many other companies that make similar plays or resort to tactics that are just as ruthless. It doesn't seem illegal just mean and aggressive. Honestly, it kinda seems like something they would do.
• nezaj 12y ago
  This is bad taste. Makes me think twice about using Uber
• sprkyco 12y ago
  Just dropped Uber. Guess now I have to sign up for Lyft. These tactics seem very similar to the Hoffa era, really had high hopes for a sharing economy but things are escalating quickly to become similar to Hoffa era tactics. Minus the whole fighting for the middle class spirit.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• niix 12y ago
  This is ridiculous. The competition is great for us as consumers. To be honest, when I first moved to the city I used Uber exclusively. The sort of "executive" brand really appealed to me. As of late, with the news of Uber's shady tactics, I've been using Lyft more and more. Lyft Line, which was released prior to Uber's attempt at the same feature, has been a lot of fun and a really great way to meet random people in SF.
• ninv 12y ago
  Evil company. Once they destroy the competition, they will use these tactics to squeeze out customers. As an end-user, we must avoid Uber. We can't let them win.
  • chanon 12y ago
    Exactly my thoughts. Once they squeeze out all the competition, then its time for the drivers and riders to get squeezed.
• cylinder 12y ago
  Heard plenty of stories about Travis Kalanick well before Uber took off the way it has. To that end I'm not surprised by any of these shady (and most likely illegal) tactics. Not sure if Google Ventures really knew what they were getting themselves into.
  • foobarqux 12y ago
    Can you share?
  • hsod 12y ago
    This is some nasty innuendo and I find it distasteful. If you want to throw a punch at someone, square up.
    • corford 12y ago
      Oh come on.... the on-line rags are awash with stories of Travis Kalanick's abrasive character and less than honourable approach to doing business. It's hardly a secret.
• quackerhacker 12y ago
  It's amazingly sad that instead of competing through innovation, marketing, or price adjustments...that capital would get devoted to competitor sabotage of QOS (almost like a real life DDOS attack). What a terrible usage of capital and resources!
• api 12y ago
  I wonder sometimes if certain markets -- like taxi services, used car dealerships, domain registrars, etc. -- have inherent and non-obvious structural characteristics that bias the market toward "slimy" behavior. To some extent Uber and Lyft are being driven by customer dissatisfaction with the expensive price-fixed "cab mafia," but in reading about these companies it seems like the sliminess has just shifted to other domains.
• jellicle 12y ago
  If you use Uber, you're an asshole. By this point, it's an excellent job interview question. "What do you think of Uber?" Anyone says they love Uber is a no-hire.
• sourshot 12y ago
  Quoth Uber: "Operation SLOG (Supplying Long-term Operations Growth)" Backronym if ever there was one..
• Kronopath 12y ago
  To those who have used Lyft: do you get any choice in which drivers come to pick you up? If not, I can see how the combination of Uber's policies can lead to a lot of cancelled rides even without Uber explicitly telling their recruiters to do so. To wit: - You're an Uber recruiter, and you call up a Lyft driver to pick you up from somewhere. - At some point, I assume you get to see the driver's profile through Lyft, at which point you flip through your messaging app and realize that he's already been pitched. - Since Uber discourages you from pitching to the same driver more than once, you cancel the ride. This leads to a lot of cancelled rides coming from Uber's recruiters, while letting them keep their company line of, "We don't ask our employees to deliberately cancel rides". Because, technically, they haven't.
• joshmlewis 12y ago
  I find this somewhat funny in a way because I've ran into several drivers that were "double agents" driving both for Uber and Lyft. It makes a lot of sense actually driving for both to make up for dead times.
  • phantom784 12y ago
    What would they do about the Lyft mustache? Would they just not use it, or would they have to take it on and off based on which service was used?
    • joshmlewis 12y ago
      They had both the mustache and the uber logo. He said he never had anyone complain or refuse to ride because of that. I had never thought of that before then.
      • phantom784 12y ago
        I wouldn't expect a passenger to care, but it seems like something the ride sharing services themselves could use to prevent "double agents." I wonder if Lyft/Uber could take legal action against drivers who are displaying their trademark while driving for a competitor's service?
• calbear81 12y ago
  It's a dog-eat-dog out there and if they weren't the market leader we would somehow all come around to agreeing this is the ultimate "growth hack" or appreciating Uber's "hustle". But by being top dog and having sterling investors like Google Ventures backing them, we hold them to a higher standard (much like their "polished clientele"). Since most of the risk to these services comes from the regulation side, I wouldn't be surprised that someone's greasing the wheels in Sacramento or Washington. There's enough money at stake here for those involved to do whatever is necessary. When I heard a few days ago that a lawmaker who voted in favor of rideshare restrictions was caught drunk driving the night after the vote, my first thought was that maybe it was a set up. Hire some people to buy this guy a few drinks, encourage him to get on the road, call the police to report a driver driving dangerously. Would you be surprised? I wouldn't. Anyways, regarding the product - I use Lyft a lot more than Uber since I know a few folks there but most of my friends use both and Sidecar interchangeably. Every time I catch a Lyft, I tend to talk to the driver to figure out how much they're making, what are the pain points, and what can these services do better and there seems to be an opportunity to differentiate. Here were some ideas I had: - Drivers tell me they can't find a place to relieve themselves since parking is hard to come by around SF. I think they would appreciate some designated "refuel" stations where they can pull up, park, pee, get coffee/red bull, and maybe vacuum or clean their cars up. - I would love to be able to pick a fuel efficient car and see Lyft do a green mustache to indicate I'm making a choice for a hybrid. Maybe hybrids can get bonus payments since they can stay on the road longer per tank. - Several friends have complained recently about how random the route-finding applications were that these drivers used. Some used Apple Maps, the built-in nav on the apps, or Google Maps but it wasn't always consistent and some of the routes were TERRIBLE. Seems like an opportunity for either Lyft or Uber to build better path-finding in their largest markets via maybe highly localized traffic information or by paying off the city for access to bus/taxi lanes.
  • michaelchisari 12y ago
    > if they weren't the market leader we would somehow all come around to agreeing this is the ultimate "growth hack" or appreciating Uber's "hustle" I'm not so sure about that. This is playing dirty no matter who is doing it.
• billyhoffman 12y ago
  Is it just me or does "growth hacking" and having good "hustle" actually means doing sleazy things and being a dick. I don't understand why Silicon Valley and Startups think acting like this is not only acceptable, but should be applauded.
  • cheepin 12y ago
    I also don't understand why VCs pick companies that are clearly courting a huge lawsuit by providing a platform for people to ignore local laws.
    • DanFeldman 12y ago
      Probably because they see how well AirBnB is doing in the same vein of "ignoring local laws".
    • vincentleeuwen 12y ago
      Greed.
  • TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I think that they found a sweet spot where they can make a lot of money and still get away with it, because companies will get acquihired and VCs recoup their investment before people get fed up and start complaining. And "growth hacking" and "hustle" and the like are just ways of making those practices not trigger pangs of conscience, the way saying "you're being an antisocial, malicious jerk" might.
  • danielweber 12y ago
    Every Dark Pattern is the brutal end of blindly following A/B testing.
    • jacquesm 12y ago
      It is the brutal end of blindly following A/B testing with the bottom line as the controlling variable. If you were to A/B test for user satisfaction instead (much harder to measure) you'd get a totally different result. A/B testing is a tool, you can use it for good or bad.
• mikeyouse 12y ago
  I've been mystified how Uber's kept up their "Underdog" mantle for as long as they have. They've raised over $1.5B in investment from some of the biggest companies, private equity firms, and VCs on earth. I think you stop being an underdog as soon as Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, TPG, KPCB, Google, and Jeff Bezos are invested in your success. They likely have more cash-on-hand than the cumulative Taxi base they are 'disrupting', they've been caught multiple times sabotaging competitors, they've been outed for dishonest advertising, and have been repeatedly accused of hostile actions toward their drivers. They ignore sensible regulations like maximum hourly workweeks and insurance minimums (do you want your driver working 90hrs/week without liability insurance?) under the guise of fighting the taxi cartel. It often takes a 'push' to get bad laws changed, and Uber's provided much of that push, but not all laws that restrain business are bad and not all companies that break bad laws are good.
  • freehunter 12y ago
    What it boils down to, though, is it doesn't matter how much investment money you have if you're declared to be operating an illegal business and ordered to shut down. At this point, Uber and other ride-share companies are still in that danger zone. They're operating against the law in many cities (mine included, not that I'm complaining), and could be fined or forced to close at any moment. Think it won't happen? It happened to Aereo. Sure, they didn't have as much money and weren't in as many locations, but its a similar vibe: if they closed their doors tomorrow, nothing would change. They might be in the process of disrupting the market, but they haven't won yet. They could lose everything overnight.
    • camillomiller 12y ago
      That's probably why they're employing such shady tactics. They need the fastest growth they can achieve, in order to become huge enough and making it difficult for the regulator to shut them down by means of law.
      • CamperBob2 12y ago
        That's probably why they're employing such shady tactics. They need the fastest growth they can achieve, because those new 911 turbos aren't going to buy themselves. There ya go, fixed it.
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• michaelbuckbee 12y ago
  If you set aside the hyperbolic title, this actually is an exoneration of the worst things that Uber has been accused of: namely they were NOT pranking or trying to deliberately mess up Lyft. The hangup calls were the side-effect of their extremely aggressive recruitment efforts for Lyft drivers - where it seems they'd hang up and call back later to try and get a different driver that they hadn't already pitched. While not great, it also doesn't strike me as particularly underhanded or evil (this is a scenario where the "best" outcome for Uber is paying Lyft for a ride where they try and give the Lyft driver a phone and presumably a better paying job).
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    • cwyers 12y ago
      They don't know which driver they'll get assigned to them until they get the driver assigned to them - there's no way for them to check drivers against the spreadsheet until the ride has been requested.
    • DmitriRavinoff 12y ago
      It sounds like you don't understand how Lyft and Uber work. You have no control over which driver you get; the driver app lets all the drivers in your area (and an increasing area over time) know that you want a ride. Whoever clicks "accept" first gets it. The fact that there are so many cancellations is a direct result of the Uber recruiters using a CRM to avoid pitching to the same driver more than once.
      • deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  • crazypyro 12y ago
    Lyft has stated they've had over 5,000 CANCELLED rides, meaning Uber is deliberately trying to mess up Lyft. If you don't think the cancelled rides count, how can you say that aggressively recruiting its drivers, and as a by product, reducing the earnings of the drivers/Lyft, is Uber not trying to mess up Lyft? I'm not saying its illegal, but its clearly Uber trying to win the market by shutting out Lyft.
• vampirechicken 12y ago
  What's to stop all the taxi companies in all of Uber's markets from engaging in the same behavior? Seems like this could get fun, fast.
• cmsmith 12y ago
  Please be sure to read this article before commenting. It is NOT about Uber ordering fake Lyft rides to keep Lyft drivers off the street, as was alleged by Lyft last month. It is about: 1. Uber using the Lyft service to get in touch with Lyft drivers, then trying to recruit them to be Uber drivers by presumably paying them more 2. Lyft trying to block Uber contractors from using Lyft, so that they cannot do (1) 3. Uber using burner phones and fake Lyft accounts to enable them to keep doing (1) Also keep in mind the uproar here over the past year caused by Apple/Google/etc trying to increase profits by subverting the free market for tech worker salaries. Is the only difference that then it was collusion as opposed to an adversarial arms race? Or does the collective opinion depend on whether HN readers stand to benefit financially?
  • kevinschumacher 12y ago
    And 4. Uber contractors cancelling rides for drivers that have already been recruited
    • devindotcom 12y ago
      5. Uber drivers organizing in chat groups to keep track of Lyft drivers in the area that have already been tapped, to prevent canceled rides. Just making sure it's all in there. I'm not a big fan of Uber either but the large-scale stuff (top post here) seems way more important than Uber trying to reach out to each Lyft driver one time and see if they're interested.
      • deong 12y ago
        From the article, the organization was to ensure that they didn't hit up the same driver multiple times, giving away the scale of the game they were playing. Clearly they don't care about canceling rides, since they were literally just in the news for intentionally canceling rides for no reason other than to make Lyft and their drivers lose money.
        • jmckib 12y ago
• abritishguy 12y ago
  I love Uber but someone high up needs to instigate a culture shift - this is just not ok.
  • fnimick 12y ago
    Except their CEO is a sleazeball - all this behavior comes straight from the top.
• bicknergseng 12y ago
  I'll just leave this here: http://mashable.com/2014/08/12/uber-lyft-dirty-tactics/ http://mashable.com/2014/08/12/uber-lyft-dirty-tactics/ Uber might be slimy, but Lyft is no better.
  • dminor 12y ago
    According to Uber, that is.
• kevind23 12y ago
  From the comments here, it seems a lot of you missed the bit at the end about Lyft aggressively recruiting Uber drivers. My impression is that Uber is less subtle about it, and perhaps less ethical / more aggressive, but still, competition is competition. If Lyft were such an underdog, then Uber wouldn't be so afraid of them. From a consumer perspective, I hope that competition cools off a bit -- the price drops are great, but if they keep escalating, neither company will be particularly friendly. It would also be terrible if one company were edged out completely, ending the price wars. That said, I always take Lyft -- simply because Uber doesn't work for my phone.
• Aaronontheweb 12y ago
  This is in poor taste, but it's not illegal or unethical. If Uber was trying to hire Lyft drivers via LinkedIn, it'd be totally cool right?
  • Karunamon 12y ago
    Agreed that the end goal isn't unethical or illegal, but the way they're doing it has some unethical effects, i.e. every time they find out that they've been assigned a guy they already sent a recruitment pitch to, they cancel a ride, meaning somebody wasted gas and time to go to a non-existent fare. I don't see anything wrong with trying to lure your competitor's employees away, but fucking up their business as a knock-on effect isn't okay.
    • Aaronontheweb 12y ago
      Yeah, I see your point - that's definitely not cool.
  • chvid 12y ago
    I don't know the details of American law but in Denmark if uber is doing what is described here it would be illegal (breaks several parts of "markedsføringsloven" - law of marketing).
• KVFinn 12y ago
  Wow, burner phones and CC numbers? Start off as a darling outdoing the establishment and taking all their business. After you've made it, the very next day, start acting just like the establishment you disrupted.
• robg 12y ago
  I've been exclusively an Uber customer. Reading this, I'm installing Lyft and giving them a shot.
• ape4 12y ago
  Sadly my city has Uber but not Lyft, or I'd switch.
• mikeleung 12y ago
  Interview with Travis kalanick last week, check out 4:40 where he is asked about the Lyft accusations: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/uber-s-kalanick-hires-former-obama-adviser-plouffe-4mUpf2MuTZuwXnMWtu2NBA.html http://www.bloomberg.com/video/uber-s-kalanick-hires-former-...
• notastartup 12y ago
  What a great PR move for Uber!
• dpeck 12y ago
  DHH had a really great comment on this worth sharing with HN: "Take the higher ground, man. Let the runner-ups do the runner-up shit. You're sitting on a throne but acting the peasant." https://twitter.com/dhh/status/504374011711594496 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/504374011711594496
• jmaha 12y ago
  I decided to try Lyft Line yesterday and it matched me with somebody else in the neighborhood. Just as the driver pulled up to the second (shared) fare, the ride was cancelled and my driver was stuck driving me alone and accepting the half fare. While I can't confirm whether the cancelled fare was Uber initiated, it did occur to me that both Lyft and the driver were getting screwed by the cancellation. If it happens enough times, I can definitely understand why my driver would jump ship and drive for Uber instead.
  • blockjon 12y ago
    Lyft pays the driver the full amount that the driver would have received in a normal ride even when there is only one person who uses a Lyft Line.
• bhaumik 12y ago
  CEO Travis Kalanick is attempting to defending Uber's practices in a Twitter conversation with DHH. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/504374243790831616 https://twitter.com/dhh/status/504374243790831616
  • calbear81 12y ago
    They have so many brand ambassadors there's no way they can control what they do when you wave a stack of hundreds in front of them an incentivize them to try and steal Lyft drivers. Perhaps they didn't tell the recruiters to cancel those Lyft rides but they should have laid out some ground rules if they wanted to keep their hands clean.
    • danielweber 12y ago
      "When you outsource your marketing, you outsource your ethics and your reputation."
    • ianstallings 12y ago
      And walmart has a lot of cashiers they can't control either. Turns out they're both liable for the actions of these agents acting on their behalf. Why make excuses?
• alain94040 12y ago
  An article well worth reading: it contains an actual smoking gun, not just speculation and he says/she says. Hint to all entrepreneurs and managers out there: if your job includes building an online form so that your team can generate any number of fake credit cards numbers as well as throw-away cell phone numbers, maybe you should take that ethics 101 class again.
• geebee 12y ago
  As an aside, I'm starting to think that some types of non-disclosure agreements should be as unenforceable as non-competes in California. "After Uber became aware that The Verge was asking questions, Target CW sent out multiple emails warning contractors that talking to the press violated a non-disclosure agreement they signed when they joined." My problem isn't using these agreements to protect trade secrets, or when they are simply a contract between a company and an employee or contractor (you agree to treat certain types of things as "our property" rather than going off and selling them to a competitor). My problem with non-disclosure is when they are used to hush up embarrassing details or otherwise keep the public in the dark about shady business practices.
• iillmaticc 12y ago
  As someone above spoke to it seems like these claims are now facing public outcry because Uber is beginning to lose it's underdog moniker...I imagine myself saying "now would I be concerned this was an ethically egregious action if that had been trying to 'sabotage' cab companies?" The answer to which being...eh I'd probably say "GO new/little guy!...f* those guys."
• robot 12y ago
  for me this is a reason not to ride on Uber
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• raverbashing 12y ago
  Thanks Uber for proving you're as sleazy as the taxi drivers you're trying to replace.
• ctl 12y ago
  Uh... which of Uber's actions here are unethical? Aggressively poaching drivers from Lyft seems all right to me. That's just healthy competition. And this stuff about wasting Lyft's money by booking and canceling rides -- it's a bunch of nonsense. By Lyft's own estimate, Uber employees booked and canceled 5000 rides since last October. That's like $100k/yr in lost revenue. It's nothing. Certainly not a systematic attempt to undermine Lyft. Am I missing something here? Disclaimer: of the two services I only use Lyft. I've had bad experiences with Uber's customer service.
  • kookiekrak 12y ago
    When they hit the same driver twice, they're supposed to cancel the trip aren't they? But when a trip is canceled it hurts the driver who uses gas to drive in their direction and causes them to miss out on other available rides, reduces the amount of available cars on the street for legitimate users, and more negative effects im sure you can imagine. This still sounds ethical to you?
    • ctl 12y ago
      No, booking a ride with the intention to cancel is definitely wrong. My point is that Uber employees aren't doing that frequently enough to affect Lyft at all, so this can't be a plan on Uber's part. It sounds like some Uber employees are just being assholes for no reason. That's unfortunate, but it's no reason to malign Uber itself. Every company has some assholes.
  • dnautics 12y ago
    I also agree that unethical is strong. It's really a grey area; it's borderline fraudulent ("not really intending to get a ride") but by that standard so is "butt-requesting". It is a very jerk thing to do, and I think consumers should express their displeasure with those tactics through the power of the market.
• jallmann 12y ago
  The indignation over this makes no sense. Sure it's aggressive, but Uber has to be in order to maintain their market position and keep growing. As developers, we get recruited all the time, even while employed. The horror! This is a good problem for drivers to have. No one is forcing them to switch (or even stopping them from driving for multiple services concurrently). They will drive for a company as long as the offer is good. These are competitors offering an essentially identical service, and apparently fighting over an important resource -- drivers -- so the moral outrage is absurd. This is the free market in action. I'll say it: from everything I've seen over the years of Uber, I like their playbook. Call it whatever you want -- underhanded, blatant, political, amoral, spotlight-stealing, $linkbait_adjective. Most importantly, it is damn effective.
  • thenmar 12y ago
    Did you miss the part where they cancel the rides?
    • jallmann 12y ago
      And? Any service is susceptible to being gamed/abused. As developers we should understand this intuitively. Lyft is clearly working on technical ways to mitigate this if they don't want Uber hailing their drivers. As to the ethical quandary of wasting the driver's time and gas, the solution is simple: charge a cancellation fee.
      • malka 12y ago
        all right, let's legalize DDoS !
  • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    It rises to the level of fraud. Its immoral. Maybe they will get away with it; but there are level-playing-field laws in business. Calling it 'recruiting' is disingenuous.
  • rdlecler1 12y ago
    Will you like their playbook when they turn it back on you once they have a monopoly?
• misiogames 12y ago
  Those tactics sounds like something cab companies will do to competitors in the 20's. Call me old fashion but this piece of the "sharing economy" sounds like a little for many, a lot for a few.
• rdlecler1 12y ago
  Now imagine if Uber had a monopoly? I'll be taking Lyft from now on. Thanks!
• encoderer 12y ago
  BS Clickbait headline. Here's the gist: Uber and Lyft each try to recruit from each other. Canceling rides does not seem to be about disrupting their service. Disruption may happen as a side effect to their recruiting efforts, but that's not the point. And if you ask Uber, they tell you Lyft is doing this all right back to them. Sure, it's an unsavory practice. But sabotage? C'mon....
• jcampbell1 12y ago
  I am fine with this, the only thing I don't understand is why they cancel the rides. They should just give them a full fare to a destination where the driver is likely to get a new passenger. From the driver's perspective, it seems like this is a fare, and a job offer. What is so wrong about this?
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• retrogradeMT 12y ago
  Even if you ignore the ethical side of this issue, the risk that these practices create for Uber should have prevented them from developing SLOG. They had to know that this story would come out. SLOG is now Uber's reputation. And Lyft becomes an even more lovable underdog.
• swang 12y ago
  The problem I see with the, "we're just recruiting drivers! fair game!" is that it's not. When an Uber Rep goes into Lyft Driver's car, the Rep is technically a "customer" and the Driver can't exactly hang up on the Rep, ignore the Rep, nor drive away from the Rep. They are essentially forced to listen to a spiel about Uber that they may or may not want to hear. Yes the Driver is getting "paid" for the time spent but the Driver no longer has control over being recruited. Recruiters sending me emails? Kinda annoying and takes a bit to click "delete" if I don't care for it. But at least I can choose not to read the email. When one of these Uber Reps gets into the car, the Lyft Driver has no choice.
• rwhitman 12y ago
  Uber must feel really vulnerable if they think there's a need to be this aggressive about undermining the competition.
• onewaystreet 12y ago
  Two different tactics are being conflated here: Canceling rides on purpose and scheduling rides in order to recruit drivers. The former shouldn't be done, but the latter sounds fine since everyone is getting paid.
• danielweber 12y ago
  Assuming true, this is exactly what made everyone hate Microsoft back in the day. Google "knifing the baby" or "cut off the air supply," the top hits of both are ways Microsoft tried to deal with Netscape.
• rsobers 12y ago
  Is it fair for George Clooney to hit on your girlfriend? Yeah, let the best man win! But it's still kind of a dick move. Regardless of whether you agree w/ tactics, the attitude and behavior leaves a bad taste.
• wahsd 12y ago
  I'm always amazed at how low our businesses will stoop in a specious claim of free market and competition. Our business are monopolistic, corrupt and corrupting, and like Über is revealing itself....grotesquely, rapaciously, and insatiably greedy. Our companies cannot simply compete, they have to corrupt and sabotage and cheat and steal. It's pathetic, but unfortunately our society rewards it because at some point Über will morph from it's current state of cheating and stealing to corrupt our government and legislature and implement regulatory capture that locks into place their ill gotten, undeserved gains and advantages. It's disgusting.
• itazula 12y ago
  I thought I was going to coin a new word -- uberize. But then I thought to look it up. Lo and behold, there is an entry from 2007: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=uberize http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=uberize. The meaning of the word? To destroy or defeat in a quick and effortless manner.
• Apollo1101 12y ago
  Interesting thread. One thing I think is missing from this discussion is how significantly even the nature of transportation has changed in the era of mobile phone tech. Some context: I live in Seattle, grew up in Minneapolis, went to school in New York, and my aunt and uncle lived/live in Manhattan and have for the last 25 years. I recently got them to experiment with Uber in New York. They rarely take taxis, so it was just sort of a novelty. They hated the experience but only because they believe there has been a significant loss of "institutional knowledge" about cities (for lack of a better term, I guess). What I mean by that is this driver had no clue where to go. I think this is sort of a danger with rideshare (not that I'm arguing against it...I'm not) wherein the drivers rely overtly on the technology to guide them. Someone visiting the city can't get in a cab (uber) and say "Hey, I'm looking for x, y, and z tonight...where can I find that?" My Uncle was telling me that, as bad and dangerous as it was years ago, cab drivers were basically the resident experts of a city. They were so plugged-in to everything that they had almost a 6th sense about them. That's been my experience with Uber in Seattle. I cannot rely on the driver to get around the city at all. My experience with Lyft has been so much better that in some cases I'd rather walk the mile back to my place than catch an uber. All of this might just be the learning curve uber has built for themselves as a direct result of the rate at which they've been expanding. But it's something both companies should address. If uber/lyft really are going to dominate urban transportation (and even inter-urban transpo....uber vegas anyone?) then they need to do more than just take me from point A to point B. They actually have to know where they're going.
• _pmf_ 12y ago
  No honor among thieves.
• skrebbel 12y ago
  Why is there a 300 comment discussion on a taxi company on Hacker News? How is this different from a fast-growing yoghurt company or an IT consultancy? Why do we care so much? Because they have an app? Seriously?
  • knz42 12y ago
    It's because they are ostentatiously making a lot of money while blatantly flaunting the law. This attracts attention, as much as Al Capone once did.
  • wellboy 12y ago
    It's because Uber is the fastest growing tech-startup on earth right now.
• atmosx 12y ago
  Uber, as any market-driven that respects itself, tries to create a monopoly. Given the companies that backed the 1.5B investment, I see where the pressure to quickly eliminate competitors from the market comes from.
• blunte 12y ago
  This is a denial of service attack. It is "cheating" and playing dirty. As a matter of principle, I will never use Uber.
• malditojavi 12y ago
  Uber paying a 3-figure for getting new drivers? Not a sabotage for me, but a big bet on user acquisition with a referral system.
• ShinyCyril 12y ago
  I'm need to make a trip from San Diego Airport late at night in about a month and was hoping to use Lyft. Sadly their app is unsupported as I have an iPhone 3GS running iOS 6.
• jacquesm 12y ago
  It's very sad that Uber engages in these completely sleazy practices. I've never used either Lyft or Uber but Uber strikes me as a company that would be best to avoid. Any company that engages in underhanded attacks at their competition rather than in the marketplace by offering a better service and possibly lower prices is not going to be nice to their customers in the longer run either.
• goblin89 12y ago
  > Uber and Lyft are competing to become the first app you think of when you need a taxi, and the service with the most drivers likely stands the best chance of winning. Aren't there other differentiating factors? Quality of service, etc.?
• apa-sl 12y ago
  Uber just started here in Poland (currently only in Warsaw, our capital city). I was quite surprised that event Polish startup oriented blogs and news outlets were rather sceptical about Uber and were preffering already available local services (iTaxi, Taxi5, German MyTaxi). Usually it is quite opposite when some global startup is staring on Polish market.
• ianstallings 12y ago
  Is anyone really surprised that people in the taxi industry are acting in a shady fashion? I kind of wonder how many deals Uber and Lyft have made with local crime syndicates just to operate in certain cities. It would be par for the course.
• iblaine 12y ago
  I know people at both Uber and Lyft and will say that Lyft has just as many assholes as Uber. Given both companies have great people, this article is about Uber being the unlikable of both of them and there are reasons to not like either company...if you take some things personally. That aside, cab fares that used to cost $120 now cost $35, so the customer is winning here. If anyone has a right to complain then it's the drivers that are getting the cancelled rides.
• chris123 12y ago
  Naw, Silicon Valley doesn't have a sexism problem, a greed problem, a fake do-gooder problem, a black-hat, dirty marketing problem (Uber is just the latest in the ongoing, playbook pattern), a drug problem, or a hooker problem. Not at all, Bra.