9 ms·

I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

146 points by tawman 12y ago

denzil_correa 12y ago
Let me add an slightly alternate (may be off topic) perspective! In India, the maps are (surprisingly) accurate on the Uber app. The ETA is close to expected and everything's fine. BUT, the driver has no idea on how to use them! It results in the driver calling multiple times to locate where you are. I think Uber must provide a little bit of training to the drivers on the use of navigation system on their app.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pyrophane 12y ago
Does Uber use Apple Maps for its drivers? I would assume so, if they are on iOS. That could certainly explain why several comments in this thread mention Uber's direction finding services getting worse. My rather subjective experience with Apple Maps is that they haven't caught up with Google yet.
- no_future 12y ago
  I remember reading somewhere that they use the Foursquare API for something.
  - jarek 12y ago
    They might use Foursquare API for geolocating points of interest? Citymapper uses that and I assume it's for a reason (cheaper than Google?)
hagope 12y ago
I've had only awesome experiences as an Uber rider (in the Boston area and Bay Area) and all the drivers I talked to seem pretty happy (especially ex-taxi drivers). I agree the software is a bit shotty, but I'd bet they are aware of and working out all the kinks.
- butwhy 12y ago
  I've had the opposite experience. Over the Uber rides I have taken, I've always brought up what the driver thinks of the company and most drivers have spoken poorly about it. They usually give the same spiel about how they hate that the rates have come down and that they are not making enough money.
- jacalata 12y ago
  My understanding is that Uber drivers are always happy about being uber drivers when talking to customers because there is a "secret shopper" program that considers complaining about the company to be a bad thing.
  - Fede_V 12y ago
    I understand why the company does it, but that's horrific. There was a sandwhich chain (mostly based in the UK) that even had a collective punishment thing - if someone at a shop was found to be insufficiently cheerful, everyone lost on the weekly bonus. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-when-corporations-enforce-happiness http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-when-c...
  - easytiger 12y ago
    Yea in my experience they are rarely interested in talking about Uber itself. I always ask how they are finding it and they just say "yea good" or similar and move on.
LeoPanthera 12y ago
> Having accepted a rider, the driver has no idea of the destination. Only if you don't enter your destination in the app, which you can totally do.
- SyneRyder 12y ago
  Yep, every time I get in an Uber the driver already knows where I'm going - although they apparently don't know until after they've accepted the ride.
- martinko 12y ago
  This is not true, at least according to my limited experience in Prague. The driver will see the destination I put in only after he STARTS the ride, ie after I get in the car (as opposed to seeing it before or after he accepts the ride).
  - pbreit 12y ago
    In the US, at least, entering the destination is optional.
    - martinko 12y ago
      Here too, but the driver doesnt see it either way.
LeoPanthera 12y ago
I'm surprised she complains about the directions. I was under the impression that it used Google Maps. I'm not an Uber driver but I have used the Google Maps app for driving directions and always found it to be pretty good.
- rifung 12y ago
  This probably depends on where you live? I use Google Maps and when I was living in California it was completely awesome. However, having moved to Seattle recently, it definitely is not as reliable as it used to be. This might have to do with the roads here being much more complicated though.
  - jschwartzi 12y ago
    I've noticed that in downtown Seattle, the GPS has some difficulties maintaining a tight fix on your location. Couple that with how close together some of the roads are and you may find yourself teleporting from one avenue to the other as you move toward your destination. It works great in suburbia, as expected.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      It's been explained to me that tall buildings play merry havoc with the GPS, but I haven't been able to test that out at all.
- zzleeper 12y ago
  It's really bad. I'm in the triangle (NC) and I've had drivers tell me they use Google Maps from their own android as its much better (I think they use Apple Maps)
SyneRyder 12y ago
I'm not so sure about the "lousy GPS". In an UberX ride I had the other week, the driver & I were joking about how dodgy GPS can be, and we both agreed to ignore its suggestions... Uber was suggesting we take a tunnel that would take us away from our destination, and it's a tunnel no regular taxi driver has ever used with me when driving to that destination before. Well, after dealing with evening crowds & inner city construction work that night, we had to take a number of detours to get to the destination. And near the end of our lengthy detour, there was that tunnel that we'd opted not to take. We probably would have saved 10 minutes. The driver immediately apologized: "Maybe the Uber GPS was right after all."
- easytiger 12y ago
  You mean its Navigation Software? I'd hate for GPS to become a synonym for route planning.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    Former land surveyor and GPS/GIS technician here (now a developer). I have a lot of sympathy for your perspective. I remember when consumer GPS became a thing and getting a little Sheldon Cooper on folks who used "GPS" as a synonym for consumer-grade hardware: "don't you mean GPS navigation?" But that train left the station a long time ago, and I've stopped arguing with people about it because it's a losing battle. Every normal I know, from my parents to my network of friends, refers to Garmin and TomTom auto units as "GPS." They have unfortunately become identified in the common mind with the technology.
  - mbrameld 12y ago
    It's been a synonym now for a long time.
    - danieldk 12y ago
      That does not mean one can't protest it ;). You need a way to refer to an actual lousy GPS as well (long fix time, inaccurate). Lumping everything together makes it hard to be precise (like using 'begging the question' wrongly somewhere else in these comments ;)).
moonka 12y ago
I've used Uber since they showed up in Seattle, and was a big proponent of it. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of issues with the estimated eta being off by 20 minutes or so, which has led me to start using other services (Lyft, sidecar, & crown car), all of which seem to do a better job of giving me an ETA which is within a couple of minutes of them showing up.
- jess23 12y ago
  I have also seen the GPS estimates degrade over time -- which begs the question: shouldn't those estimate be improving over time, unless something shady is going on?
  - aetherson 12y ago
    I would guess that GPS experiences like the article mentions are either driver app errors or scaling problems. That is, it sounds like the server is calculating the ETA of the driver based on a stale location. The location would be stale either because the driver app is not updating it correctly or because even when it is updating location correctly, the server is (sometimes) using an older location, probably due to an eventually consistent data store. When I worked for Flywheel (Uber competitor, same general needs of "figure out the closest driver and provide an ETA"), we'd occasionally see drivers whose phones seemed to get "stuck" in a location, essentially because the location service crashed in the O/S and would stop updating the app (though this was on Android phones and not iOS, and I'd be slightly surprised to see it happen in iOS). But I think that the scaling issue is the most likely. Location updates come fast and furious, and must be queried quickly. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Uber is using some kind of big scalable highly available database that could in the event of fairly routine network partitions report stale driver locations some of the time, and/or a cache in front of their underlying store that sometimes fails to get invalidated. That seems like it's consistent with the experience of the driver that the problem tends to happen on particular nights (when they're having some kind of underlying problem with, say, communication between components of their data store cluster), and why you might see it getting worse over time (as they scale).
    - 12y ago
dnautics 12y ago
I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas (~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the per hour and per mile in SF is higher than than in San Diego.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  This is easily one of the best contributions I've read in HN in the last month regarding Uber. Nothing beats someone who has actual experience (for better or worse).
- dougabug 12y ago
  There are other costs besides gas, there's wear and tear on your car, maintenance, interest (if you financed your vehicle, say through one of Uber's subprime lenders), insurance (does your insurance company know that you are using your car for commercial transport?). Do you spend time washing/cleaning the outside and interior of the car? I would at least double the gas cost, so say $300/wk. Do you pay self employment tax? It seems like you are at closer to maybe ~$13/hr or so, with no benefits. A regular (non-exempt) employee would also get overtime if they worked 50hrs. San Francisco also might have more competition from other drivers.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    Should insurance be higher or lower for commercial transport, and if so, why?
    - uptown 12y ago
      Arguably yes. The vehicle is in-use for a greater percentage of the average day increasing the likelihood of being involved in an accident. Also, the vehicle is expected to be carrying more than the owner leading to additional injury claims in court.
ghshephard 12y ago
Regarding ETA times - They were really, really good on the Peninsula in the bay area - over 50 or so rides, and ETA of 5-15 minutes would usually be within 2 minutes of the correct time. Here in Dubai - they are ludicrously incorrect. I'll see a "8 minute ETA" that turns out to be 35 minutes, more often than not. This seems to be a very solvable problem. During certain hours, traffic is very slow. I've only been here a month, but I can tell you at 3:30 - 4:30, you need to add about 15-20 minutes if you are going near the interchange at Wafi Mall - That's without even taking into account the various traffic flow indicators that I'm sure Uber has access to.
- ekanes 12y ago
  Consider that Dubai might have different cultural norms as well, which could affect drivers' hurry/accuracy factor.
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    That's not it - I've taken UberX here about 15 or so times - and the drivers have all been courteous, professional and timely. A lot of them are black car drivers as well, so it's hit and miss when you summon an UberX vehicle, you might just end up with a Lexus a professional driver. When I see where the cars are, and where I am, I can usually make a guess as to how long they will be based on a months worth of local knowledge - another example is traffic flows to/from Sharjah, the emirate next to Dubai. In the morning all the traffic comes from Sharjah, and in the evening it all goes the return direction. The Exact same trip from Business Bay in Dubai to Al Qusais might take 15 minutes or 60 minutes - but the time is entirely predicable - Uber just doesn't seem to do it here.
- colinbartlett 12y ago
  I gave up on Uber in Dubai. It seems like the maps aren't accurate enough there - or the roads are under too much constant construction. Because it would take drivers 20 minutes to find me. After presenting my complaints, Uber gave me a nice credit for my troubles and confirmed it was a difficult operating environment due to local conditions.
roarktoohey 12y ago
"Also, considering the company’s huge profits, Uber owes it to the little guys doing their driving to provide much better software..." Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? None of the decks I've seen show profits, I've always assumed that my rides are subsidized by VC money.
- ytNumbers 12y ago
  With their current gross revenue growth rates, some are speculating that in a couple of years their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars. http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11
  - frostmatthew 12y ago
    > their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars. Where do you see that from the article you linked? It says So $10 billion of gross revenue would equate to $2 billion of net revenue. To have profits of over $1B on $2B of revenue would mean a profit margin of over 50%!
    - berkay 12y ago
      Why do you think Uber is about to raise funding with ~$40 billion valuation? They don't have profits now because they are investing in growth.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? The author isn't a reporter (or, at the very least, she's new to it). Claire Callahan Goodman is a Bay Area native from a large family, whose careers have included Classical Musician, Software Engineer and Mom.[1] [1] http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/ http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/
  - good_claire 12y ago
cddotdotslash 12y ago
I've had incredibly mixed experiences using Uber in NYC and DC. It used to be great. Now, it seems that every other driver has no idea how to get both to me and then my destination. In DC, the drivers routinely go ten to twenty minutes out of the way. Almost every trip I have to submit a refund request which is always granted, but it's still a pain. In NYC, drivers have yet to figure out one way streets and watching them go up the wrong avenue and circle around my apartment three times has become a past time of mine. After reading this article, it seems like the GPS might be to blame.
zb 12y ago
The one time I ordered an Uber, we spent 25 minutes waiting while the driver drove around a similarly (but still quite distinctly) named street on the other side of town. After several phone calls, she ended up using her own GPS navigator to find us. So I can corroborate what this article is saying: Uber has absolutely no clue where you are even given both an address and map co-ordinates. Presumably they rely on a terrible reverse geocoding implementation and discard the other information. That's surprising, because years ago I used to work on firmware for navigation devices and I don't recall reverse geocoding ever causing major issues (there were always minor inaccuracies when you round-tripped the data, but you never ended up on the wrong side of town) - I thought it was a solved problem. For the record, neither Google Maps nor Apple Maps have ever had trouble distinguishing between those two locations (though humans sometimes do), so they broke it all by themselves.
- good_claire 12y ago
  Author here - very interesting to find that someone else had the same strange experience. Street names have no place in GPS navigation! The instance I spoke about was a time when there had been a concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, and I am sure that all available UBER drivers were busy driving people home - hence, even though I was 20 minutes away, I might still have been the closest driver. But the estimation of "3 minutes" combined the GPS path showing me leaving from Piedmont Ave. in Berkeley - when I was on the same-named street in Oakland - makes you doubt their app works at all!
cpks 12y ago
The Uber drvers I speak to have generally have had a much more positive experience. One difference may be point-of-reference. A software engineer has much higher expectations for income, treatment, etc. than blue collar or unskilled workers do. The Radio Shack article a few weeks back is much closer to what happens to most people in the US. When you talk to taxi drivers, the experience is much, much worse. They have to lease a medallion. The rates vary by market, but typical price might be $150 per day. Because they lease the medallion, they're generally forced to work insane hours. An 8 hour shift is a guaranteed money-losing proposition. Still, if they make less than $150 -- which happens on a bad day, they come out behind. If they have a good day, they'll make a bit over minimum wage. The income is incredibly variable -- a fixed $150/day cost, combined with variable revenue, guarantees that. That makes financial management tough. It's a really tough, really bad business. Compared to that, Uber and similar services are a breath of fresh air.
bko 12y ago
> After waiting 20 minutes, I called the driver, who did not speak any version of English I am familiar with. He claimed to be relatively near my house but was unable to tell me how he was going to get there. I canceled and tried again. This time I got a young woman who also apparently didn’t speak English well. As someone whose parents speak English with accents, it really makes me cringe when some Americans complain about non-native English speakers in service level jobs. I would hate to have one of my parents deemed less worthy of a job due to their accents. I understand that some jobs benefit greatly from employees that speak English fluently, but I don't think a driver is one of those positions and I doubt many would pay a premium to have a native speaker as a driver. Maybe I'm overreacting but statements like the one quoted above always come off as slightly xenophobic. It almost makes me throw out the rest of the authors arguments as a rant.
- javery 12y ago
  It is one big rant - as someone who has ridden with Uber dozens of times in 4 cities I have never had someone who I couldn't understand.
- x0x0 12y ago
  It's not xenophobic to want not to have so much difficulty that it interferes with the service. When you have a hard time communicating directions, it's a problem. Which is what this person experienced. Xenophobia is disliking of people, not disliking the inability to share directions.
- baddox 12y ago
  Ideally there would be no need to talk to your driver on the phone in order to find the car. I have only needed to in a tiny portion of my ridesharing trips. But if you do need to, I think it's very reasonable, and not xenophobic, to expect the driver to be able to communicate effectively with an average American (or resident of whatever region you're in).
mathattack 12y ago
I can see the issue here. Someone says, "Why is this so hard on me when the company shuffling paper is making all the money?" I could see Lyft or Uber having a competitive advantage if they gave equity or something like equity to drivers. Pre-IPO equity may be difficult for regulatory reasons around # of shareholders, but perhaps bonuses based on valuation?
- dougabug 12y ago
  I think these companies want to avoid making the drivers look any more like employees than they already do. Frankly, it seems to me that they are in fact employees, over which Uber exerts enormous control, to the point of spying on them, monitoring what they post on social media, what they say to customers about the company, supplying talking points, directing them to disregard certain local transportation regulations.
  - mathattack 12y ago
    True - it benefits Uber immensely from a tax perspective (and benefits?) for them to be independent consultants. It's also harder for independent consultants to unionize.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Its going to be brutal on Uber (and Lyft) when the IRS recategroizes all of those drivers as employees, and both companies need to cough up the employment taxes they should've been paying. It happened to Fedex (their Ground division) [1]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-misclassified-drivers-as-independent-contractors-rules-ninth-circuit/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-misc...
      - mathattack 12y ago
        I'm not a lawyer - is this a done deal? With FedEx they were working full time, right? If someone is driving for both Uber and Lyft, isn't it hard to say they should be an employee of one or the other?
beedogs 12y ago
Just uninstalled the Uber app this morning. Never used it, and, given the way they treat their employees and their customers, I see there's absolutely no reason to start.

146 points by tawman 12y ago

Let me add an slightly alternate (may be off topic) perspective! In India, the maps are (surprisingly) accurate on the Uber app. The ETA is close to expected and everything's fine. BUT, the driver has no idea on how to use them! It results in the driver calling multiple times to locate where you are. I think Uber must provide a little bit of training to the drivers on the use of navigation system on their app.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pyrophane 12y ago

Does Uber use Apple Maps for its drivers? I would assume so, if they are on iOS. That could certainly explain why several comments in this thread mention Uber's direction finding services getting worse. My rather subjective experience with Apple Maps is that they haven't caught up with Google yet.

no_future 12y ago
I remember reading somewhere that they use the Foursquare API for something.
- jarek 12y ago
  They might use Foursquare API for geolocating points of interest? Citymapper uses that and I assume it's for a reason (cheaper than Google?)

hagope 12y ago

I've had only awesome experiences as an Uber rider (in the Boston area and Bay Area) and all the drivers I talked to seem pretty happy (especially ex-taxi drivers). I agree the software is a bit shotty, but I'd bet they are aware of and working out all the kinks.

butwhy 12y ago
I've had the opposite experience. Over the Uber rides I have taken, I've always brought up what the driver thinks of the company and most drivers have spoken poorly about it. They usually give the same spiel about how they hate that the rates have come down and that they are not making enough money.
jacalata 12y ago
My understanding is that Uber drivers are always happy about being uber drivers when talking to customers because there is a "secret shopper" program that considers complaining about the company to be a bad thing.
- Fede_V 12y ago
  I understand why the company does it, but that's horrific. There was a sandwhich chain (mostly based in the UK) that even had a collective punishment thing - if someone at a shop was found to be insufficiently cheerful, everyone lost on the weekly bonus. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-when-corporations-enforce-happiness http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-when-c...
- easytiger 12y ago
  Yea in my experience they are rarely interested in talking about Uber itself. I always ask how they are finding it and they just say "yea good" or similar and move on.

LeoPanthera 12y ago

> Having accepted a rider, the driver has no idea of the destination. Only if you don't enter your destination in the app, which you can totally do.

SyneRyder 12y ago
Yep, every time I get in an Uber the driver already knows where I'm going - although they apparently don't know until after they've accepted the ride.
martinko 12y ago
This is not true, at least according to my limited experience in Prague. The driver will see the destination I put in only after he STARTS the ride, ie after I get in the car (as opposed to seeing it before or after he accepts the ride).
- pbreit 12y ago
  In the US, at least, entering the destination is optional.
  - martinko 12y ago
    Here too, but the driver doesnt see it either way.

LeoPanthera 12y ago

I'm surprised she complains about the directions. I was under the impression that it used Google Maps. I'm not an Uber driver but I have used the Google Maps app for driving directions and always found it to be pretty good.

rifung 12y ago
This probably depends on where you live? I use Google Maps and when I was living in California it was completely awesome. However, having moved to Seattle recently, it definitely is not as reliable as it used to be. This might have to do with the roads here being much more complicated though.
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  I've noticed that in downtown Seattle, the GPS has some difficulties maintaining a tight fix on your location. Couple that with how close together some of the roads are and you may find yourself teleporting from one avenue to the other as you move toward your destination. It works great in suburbia, as expected.
  - saraid216 12y ago
    It's been explained to me that tall buildings play merry havoc with the GPS, but I haven't been able to test that out at all.
zzleeper 12y ago
It's really bad. I'm in the triangle (NC) and I've had drivers tell me they use Google Maps from their own android as its much better (I think they use Apple Maps)

SyneRyder 12y ago

I'm not so sure about the "lousy GPS". In an UberX ride I had the other week, the driver & I were joking about how dodgy GPS can be, and we both agreed to ignore its suggestions... Uber was suggesting we take a tunnel that would take us away from our destination, and it's a tunnel no regular taxi driver has ever used with me when driving to that destination before. Well, after dealing with evening crowds & inner city construction work that night, we had to take a number of detours to get to the destination. And near the end of our lengthy detour, there was that tunnel that we'd opted not to take. We probably would have saved 10 minutes. The driver immediately apologized: "Maybe the Uber GPS was right after all."

easytiger 12y ago
You mean its Navigation Software? I'd hate for GPS to become a synonym for route planning.
- wyclif 12y ago
  Former land surveyor and GPS/GIS technician here (now a developer). I have a lot of sympathy for your perspective. I remember when consumer GPS became a thing and getting a little Sheldon Cooper on folks who used "GPS" as a synonym for consumer-grade hardware: "don't you mean GPS navigation?" But that train left the station a long time ago, and I've stopped arguing with people about it because it's a losing battle. Every normal I know, from my parents to my network of friends, refers to Garmin and TomTom auto units as "GPS." They have unfortunately become identified in the common mind with the technology.
- mbrameld 12y ago
  It's been a synonym now for a long time.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    That does not mean one can't protest it ;). You need a way to refer to an actual lousy GPS as well (long fix time, inaccurate). Lumping everything together makes it hard to be precise (like using 'begging the question' wrongly somewhere else in these comments ;)).

moonka 12y ago

I've used Uber since they showed up in Seattle, and was a big proponent of it. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of issues with the estimated eta being off by 20 minutes or so, which has led me to start using other services (Lyft, sidecar, & crown car), all of which seem to do a better job of giving me an ETA which is within a couple of minutes of them showing up.

jess23 12y ago
I have also seen the GPS estimates degrade over time -- which begs the question: shouldn't those estimate be improving over time, unless something shady is going on?
- aetherson 12y ago
  I would guess that GPS experiences like the article mentions are either driver app errors or scaling problems. That is, it sounds like the server is calculating the ETA of the driver based on a stale location. The location would be stale either because the driver app is not updating it correctly or because even when it is updating location correctly, the server is (sometimes) using an older location, probably due to an eventually consistent data store. When I worked for Flywheel (Uber competitor, same general needs of "figure out the closest driver and provide an ETA"), we'd occasionally see drivers whose phones seemed to get "stuck" in a location, essentially because the location service crashed in the O/S and would stop updating the app (though this was on Android phones and not iOS, and I'd be slightly surprised to see it happen in iOS). But I think that the scaling issue is the most likely. Location updates come fast and furious, and must be queried quickly. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Uber is using some kind of big scalable highly available database that could in the event of fairly routine network partitions report stale driver locations some of the time, and/or a cache in front of their underlying store that sometimes fails to get invalidated. That seems like it's consistent with the experience of the driver that the problem tends to happen on particular nights (when they're having some kind of underlying problem with, say, communication between components of their data store cluster), and why you might see it getting worse over time (as they scale).
  - 12y ago

dnautics 12y ago

I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas (~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the per hour and per mile in SF is higher than than in San Diego.

ghshephard 12y ago
This is easily one of the best contributions I've read in HN in the last month regarding Uber. Nothing beats someone who has actual experience (for better or worse).
dougabug 12y ago
There are other costs besides gas, there's wear and tear on your car, maintenance, interest (if you financed your vehicle, say through one of Uber's subprime lenders), insurance (does your insurance company know that you are using your car for commercial transport?). Do you spend time washing/cleaning the outside and interior of the car? I would at least double the gas cost, so say $300/wk. Do you pay self employment tax? It seems like you are at closer to maybe ~$13/hr or so, with no benefits. A regular (non-exempt) employee would also get overtime if they worked 50hrs. San Francisco also might have more competition from other drivers.
- nawitus 12y ago
  Should insurance be higher or lower for commercial transport, and if so, why?
  - uptown 12y ago
    Arguably yes. The vehicle is in-use for a greater percentage of the average day increasing the likelihood of being involved in an accident. Also, the vehicle is expected to be carrying more than the owner leading to additional injury claims in court.

ghshephard 12y ago

Regarding ETA times - They were really, really good on the Peninsula in the bay area - over 50 or so rides, and ETA of 5-15 minutes would usually be within 2 minutes of the correct time. Here in Dubai - they are ludicrously incorrect. I'll see a "8 minute ETA" that turns out to be 35 minutes, more often than not. This seems to be a very solvable problem. During certain hours, traffic is very slow. I've only been here a month, but I can tell you at 3:30 - 4:30, you need to add about 15-20 minutes if you are going near the interchange at Wafi Mall - That's without even taking into account the various traffic flow indicators that I'm sure Uber has access to.

ekanes 12y ago
Consider that Dubai might have different cultural norms as well, which could affect drivers' hurry/accuracy factor.
- ghshephard 12y ago
  That's not it - I've taken UberX here about 15 or so times - and the drivers have all been courteous, professional and timely. A lot of them are black car drivers as well, so it's hit and miss when you summon an UberX vehicle, you might just end up with a Lexus a professional driver. When I see where the cars are, and where I am, I can usually make a guess as to how long they will be based on a months worth of local knowledge - another example is traffic flows to/from Sharjah, the emirate next to Dubai. In the morning all the traffic comes from Sharjah, and in the evening it all goes the return direction. The Exact same trip from Business Bay in Dubai to Al Qusais might take 15 minutes or 60 minutes - but the time is entirely predicable - Uber just doesn't seem to do it here.
colinbartlett 12y ago
I gave up on Uber in Dubai. It seems like the maps aren't accurate enough there - or the roads are under too much constant construction. Because it would take drivers 20 minutes to find me. After presenting my complaints, Uber gave me a nice credit for my troubles and confirmed it was a difficult operating environment due to local conditions.

roarktoohey 12y ago

"Also, considering the company’s huge profits, Uber owes it to the little guys doing their driving to provide much better software..." Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? None of the decks I've seen show profits, I've always assumed that my rides are subsidized by VC money.

ytNumbers 12y ago
With their current gross revenue growth rates, some are speculating that in a couple of years their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars. http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars. Where do you see that from the article you linked? It says So $10 billion of gross revenue would equate to $2 billion of net revenue. To have profits of over $1B on $2B of revenue would mean a profit margin of over 50%!
  - berkay 12y ago
    Why do you think Uber is about to raise funding with ~$40 billion valuation? They don't have profits now because they are investing in growth.
frostmatthew 12y ago
> Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? The author isn't a reporter (or, at the very least, she's new to it). Claire Callahan Goodman is a Bay Area native from a large family, whose careers have included Classical Musician, Software Engineer and Mom.[1] [1] http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/ http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/
- good_claire 12y ago

cddotdotslash 12y ago

I've had incredibly mixed experiences using Uber in NYC and DC. It used to be great. Now, it seems that every other driver has no idea how to get both to me and then my destination. In DC, the drivers routinely go ten to twenty minutes out of the way. Almost every trip I have to submit a refund request which is always granted, but it's still a pain. In NYC, drivers have yet to figure out one way streets and watching them go up the wrong avenue and circle around my apartment three times has become a past time of mine. After reading this article, it seems like the GPS might be to blame.

zb 12y ago

The one time I ordered an Uber, we spent 25 minutes waiting while the driver drove around a similarly (but still quite distinctly) named street on the other side of town. After several phone calls, she ended up using her own GPS navigator to find us. So I can corroborate what this article is saying: Uber has absolutely no clue where you are even given both an address and map co-ordinates. Presumably they rely on a terrible reverse geocoding implementation and discard the other information. That's surprising, because years ago I used to work on firmware for navigation devices and I don't recall reverse geocoding ever causing major issues (there were always minor inaccuracies when you round-tripped the data, but you never ended up on the wrong side of town) - I thought it was a solved problem. For the record, neither Google Maps nor Apple Maps have ever had trouble distinguishing between those two locations (though humans sometimes do), so they broke it all by themselves.

good_claire 12y ago
Author here - very interesting to find that someone else had the same strange experience. Street names have no place in GPS navigation! The instance I spoke about was a time when there had been a concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, and I am sure that all available UBER drivers were busy driving people home - hence, even though I was 20 minutes away, I might still have been the closest driver. But the estimation of "3 minutes" combined the GPS path showing me leaving from Piedmont Ave. in Berkeley - when I was on the same-named street in Oakland - makes you doubt their app works at all!

cpks 12y ago

The Uber drvers I speak to have generally have had a much more positive experience. One difference may be point-of-reference. A software engineer has much higher expectations for income, treatment, etc. than blue collar or unskilled workers do. The Radio Shack article a few weeks back is much closer to what happens to most people in the US. When you talk to taxi drivers, the experience is much, much worse. They have to lease a medallion. The rates vary by market, but typical price might be $150 per day. Because they lease the medallion, they're generally forced to work insane hours. An 8 hour shift is a guaranteed money-losing proposition. Still, if they make less than $150 -- which happens on a bad day, they come out behind. If they have a good day, they'll make a bit over minimum wage. The income is incredibly variable -- a fixed $150/day cost, combined with variable revenue, guarantees that. That makes financial management tough. It's a really tough, really bad business. Compared to that, Uber and similar services are a breath of fresh air.

bko 12y ago

> After waiting 20 minutes, I called the driver, who did not speak any version of English I am familiar with. He claimed to be relatively near my house but was unable to tell me how he was going to get there. I canceled and tried again. This time I got a young woman who also apparently didn’t speak English well. As someone whose parents speak English with accents, it really makes me cringe when some Americans complain about non-native English speakers in service level jobs. I would hate to have one of my parents deemed less worthy of a job due to their accents. I understand that some jobs benefit greatly from employees that speak English fluently, but I don't think a driver is one of those positions and I doubt many would pay a premium to have a native speaker as a driver. Maybe I'm overreacting but statements like the one quoted above always come off as slightly xenophobic. It almost makes me throw out the rest of the authors arguments as a rant.

javery 12y ago
It is one big rant - as someone who has ridden with Uber dozens of times in 4 cities I have never had someone who I couldn't understand.
x0x0 12y ago
It's not xenophobic to want not to have so much difficulty that it interferes with the service. When you have a hard time communicating directions, it's a problem. Which is what this person experienced. Xenophobia is disliking of people, not disliking the inability to share directions.
baddox 12y ago
Ideally there would be no need to talk to your driver on the phone in order to find the car. I have only needed to in a tiny portion of my ridesharing trips. But if you do need to, I think it's very reasonable, and not xenophobic, to expect the driver to be able to communicate effectively with an average American (or resident of whatever region you're in).

mathattack 12y ago

I can see the issue here. Someone says, "Why is this so hard on me when the company shuffling paper is making all the money?" I could see Lyft or Uber having a competitive advantage if they gave equity or something like equity to drivers. Pre-IPO equity may be difficult for regulatory reasons around # of shareholders, but perhaps bonuses based on valuation?

dougabug 12y ago
I think these companies want to avoid making the drivers look any more like employees than they already do. Frankly, it seems to me that they are in fact employees, over which Uber exerts enormous control, to the point of spying on them, monitoring what they post on social media, what they say to customers about the company, supplying talking points, directing them to disregard certain local transportation regulations.
- mathattack 12y ago
  True - it benefits Uber immensely from a tax perspective (and benefits?) for them to be independent consultants. It's also harder for independent consultants to unionize.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Its going to be brutal on Uber (and Lyft) when the IRS recategroizes all of those drivers as employees, and both companies need to cough up the employment taxes they should've been paying. It happened to Fedex (their Ground division) [1]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-misclassified-drivers-as-independent-contractors-rules-ninth-circuit/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-misc...
    - mathattack 12y ago
      I'm not a lawyer - is this a done deal? With FedEx they were working full time, right? If someone is driving for both Uber and Lyft, isn't it hard to say they should be an employee of one or the other?

beedogs 12y ago

Just uninstalled the Uber app this morning. Never used it, and, given the way they treat their employees and their customers, I see there's absolutely no reason to start.