Cab Hailing Service Uber Collected Just $9M of Fares During 15 Months In Boston 112
curtwoodward writes "Uber, the well-funded startup that hails cabs and black cars with a smartphone app, is a pretty slick way to book a ride. But how competitive is Uber with the traditional, highly regulated cab market? According to results from the startup's move into Boston, not very. Figures released in a court case show that, over 15 months, Uber processed just $9 million in gross fares (the drivers get most of that). Meanwhile, Boston's overall cab industry is pegged at doing about $250 million a year in fares. Despite the publicity, Uber still has a long way to go."
It seems that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It seems that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It seems that (Score:5, Informative)
I'd rather be able to speak to an experienced human on a 'phone when arranging a service than use another shitty automated middle man which can only deal with the simplest cases and which operates on volume rather than quality. There's always a significant cost to automation for the end user - it's just more profitable for the system's owner.
Outsourcing is logically less efficient, because someone else is always taking a cut of pure profit which they wouldn't if you provided a service in-house or cooperatively. Giving a middleman control of the initial sale (cf. Amazon, eBay) is one of the worst ways of permanently guaranteeing that a leech will make sure that you have to do an ever-increasing amount of work while they do very little new on your behalf. It's just not business sense.
One must admit (Score:1, Offtopic)
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And I'd rather deal with an automated service, rather than a minimum wage human who will manage to screw something up even when everything has had to be repeated three times.
And outsourcing isn't "logically less efficient". Economies of scale and specialization kicks in. For example, I outsource my electricity generation to a power company rather than building and running my own electricity generation system in my house. I outsource my food production rather than obtaining enough land (and all the other ass
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And I'd rather deal with an automated service, rather than a minimum wage human who will manage to screw something up even when everything has had to be repeated three times.
Agreed. I just had a screwup for a human-made reservation from the airport. They had me scheduled for the wrong time (PM instead of AM) and then when they fixed that, they entered the wrong MONTH! If I hadn't checked the day-of by calling, I would have had to split our party into several regular cabs. Not the end of the world, but at least with a web form or app I can be pretty sure that if a mistake is made, it is mine.
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HR problem? People make more mistakes than computers. Sure, there are programming errors - but those are likely to affect multiple people and get caught. I wouldn't worry too much about those after a business has been around for a little while.
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Sure apps can make mistakes, but of all the times an error has happened when I've filled out a form on a web page it has been my mistake (heck I booked a flight on the wrong day once - I messed up the timezones).
Whereas the times it's been on the phone with a person I'm pretty sure they have screwed it up (for example, the kid was booked into two summer camps at once on one week - at the same YMCA).
Now it's perfectly feasible that I do mess things up on phone orders and then blame the other person involved
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"Outsourcing" - an annoying neologism, I admit - means rather more than "getting someone else to do something for you". Consumers, in particular, do not "outsource".
Economy of scale/specialisation does not kick in by default, and even when it does, that usually justifies only a cooperative effort, not outsourcing to a third party. The third party option is only appropriate to consider when a complex business process needs to be implemented which is already delivered well by an established provider.
Really, g
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I work in a company that has over 300 cabs leased out. Computer dispatched,
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I am a cabbie/dispatcher in the same way that everyone who says that Windows isn't awful is a Microsoft shill. Sigh.
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For Christ's sake, you're calling to get a ride from point A to point B in someone else's car. Someone who drives anonymous people (to him or her) from point A to point B for a living, day in and day out. If you have a problem doing that simply, you have a problem.
Do you really think that by talking to someone you'll influence who they send to pick you up? (And we're talking about dispatched taxis, not ones that you hail... hailing is not common in every city or neighbourhood.) The guy at the cab company w
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This is a complete paradigm shift (and I use that phrase very infrequently) in how one books a taxi. It disrupts entirely an establised method of dispatcching taxis
How so? Uber does not do anything that the local major cab company doesn't do with their smartphone app. As far as I can tell, the only real differences are that Uber uses fancier cars, and charges a lot more (they don't service my city, but their policy is a markup on normal taxi fares).
Assuming cab companies in other cities have similar apps, Uber just seems to be a case of "pay more to get a fancier cab", which isn't a paradigm shift, it's just dramatically restricting your market to people who care abou
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How is that different than, say, Taxi Diamond, where you enter your order in the smartphone app, it reserves a car, and the address pops up on the GPS screen in the cab?
Perhaps there is a human verifying it (because in the smartphone app you have to wait half a minute or so for it to allocate the driver"), but the user experience is the same. So that's not a paradigm shift, that's a slight change in behind-the-scenes process. At the end of the day, it's not an advantage to the user.
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Let's not forget that in many cities the dispatcher is also getting kick backs from the drivers to get the choice calls. It's rampant in Boston to the point that several exposés have been written about it in recent history--don't pay the dispatcher at the start of the shift, you either don't get calls at all, or you get lousy ones...
If the (dispatch) system were far more automated the potential for human intervention and exploitation starts to dwindle.
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Not pointless at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uber is rather pointless. Why would someone go through a 'middle-man' app, thus incurring a surcharge, when they can just reserve with the taxi company direct?
It's kind of pointless to hail a cab with it, if what you care about is cost; instead, you hail a rideshare. This is one part of what has the cab drivers panties in a bunch.
The second part that has their panties in a bunch is that cab drivers are notorious for "closest fare first" behaviour; so if you are outside the downtown area, or off the line between the downtown and the airport, they will leave you hanging and pick up other call-ins before picking you up. Uber and similar apps commit them to picking up the fare as booked, and they find this annoying because they don't get optimum road miles.
A couple of weeks ago, myself and two friends booked a cab to the Inner Sunset in San Francisco; this is a little way out of the way, wince it requires going about 10 blocks off of 19th Avenue, which is the normal cab travel corridor. We had a person standing outside the entire time, and the cab company tried to claim that the cabbie had attempted a pickup and "got tired of waiting". Twice. But in fact, there were no cabs through the pickup intersection, or either of the cross streets to that intersection for the entire time. We were over an hour past our scheduled arrival time to our destination, thanks to the lying cabbies.
This sounds anecdotal, but it is in fact common practice in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, where there are well known "hop-on" and "hop-off" spots, and if you want a cab, you get your but to one of those locations for your best change of getting one; otherwise, you are considered "off route", and the only way you get a cab is if someone isn't busy. This is not cool
Uber and similar services fix this problem by providing more vehicles for scheduling, through including rideshare and towncar services. This cones at the expense of the cabbies not being booked solid, but having had my butt left hanging in the wind by cabbies on multiple occasions, my heart is not bleeding for them in this case.
Re:Not pointless at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is "Likely nobody will come, if you walk Z blocks to the corner of X and Y, you'll likely be able to hail a cab." But the dispatchers lie to the caller, causing a loss. That's fraud, and the caller should be able to sue for a harming falsehood being told to them.
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In the US, if you don't put a dollar amount on the complaint and file it in court, it is ignored, even if you go to the regulators..
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1) Are you sure that merely calling for a cab obliges both parties? And has this ever been tested in SF?
2) It was not turning up which caused the loss, not the lie about turning up.
3) "Sue them!!!" is still a daft, overkill way to handle the problem of every crap business deciding not to serve you when you haven't even paid them anything yet. Anyway, the taxi company almost certainly won't have an obligation to pay for consequential loss, so good luck with that.
4) If your local (it'll depend on the city, no
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Yes, it's a verbal contract. Small claims court is the correct venue for this.
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So you're recommending a class action suit?
Like we don't have enough of those.
No there should be something else. Zoning comes to mind. Taxis companies get zones. Maybe the most profitable. Anyone else (ride share, etc) can work outside the zone.
Or complete deregulation.
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What on earth convinced you that it was a contract with penalities and not just a "best effort" assurance?
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Slashdot has become a venue for amateur lawyers and hangers-on. Every so often I return to this site and it has got worse each time.
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Re:Not pointless at all... (Score:4, Informative)
American here. Filing suit for a taxi that never showed is a bit much but having been in that position I can understand the anger. Sometimes it's necessary to read "sue" as an American idiom for "Grrrr, I'm really mad and they should have done better."
That said, these crazy new-fangled smartphone app taxi services show me exactly who's coming to pick me up and how far away they are. That's a big step up from "we'll send someone as soon as they're available".
Voting with your dollars (euros, whatever) and putting them towards a better service will ultimately make a big difference. But, wait! Are you going to find another company to provide a taxi or file a complaint with regulators (generally run by livery companies in the US) (it's a problem, we know) while you're waiting for that cab who's taken another fare and won't be coming to pick you up after all?
It's probably best not to think of uber, sidecar, lyft, etcetera as taxi companies. They're providing a marketplace for that kind of service. Folks that don't play nice (cabbies who don't show and customers too drunk to sit without vomiting) get weeded out.
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you're insane. You think cabbies should be able to sue if you call and then try to cancel? Do you want to pay upfront for taxi service? if it's such a great loss, why don't you pay for livery service?
Taxis have their drawbacks, but their unrealiability in this sense is actually one of their positives -- their desire to stick to the major routes and highly trafficked areas are what contribute to their flexibility, general availability, and cheap service. If car service were restricted to "verbal contract
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if it's such a great loss, why don't you pay for livery service?
From Wikipedia:
A "livery vehicle" remains a legal term of art in the U.S. for a vehicle for hire, such as a taxicab or chauffered limousine,
I'm trying to pay for a livery service. I'm unclear as to what distinction you are making here.
This is the same as if you went to a store to buy a couch, bought one, paid for it, then arranged for them to hold it for you for an hour so you could get a trailer to take it home, and when you rent a trailer for $50 and return to pick it up, they let you know someone else
Re:Not pointless at all... (Score:5, Informative)
I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services of those who they perceive as lower down in the pecking order.
Being a cabby is obviously a stressful and fairly tedious job (and I speak only as an occasional rider). More importantly, it's a job, not servitude. Of course they're going to prefer to the more profitable routes, and there are going to be some providers more competent than others. And if you were sat for an hour waiting for a single cab company in one place in a city, you were doing it completely wrong.
First of all, you're right: it's a job. They should do the job; particularly, they should do the job their dispatcher promised they would do on their behalf. If they have an argument with the dispatcher, that should be their problem, not mine. They're the ones who decided to be affiliated with Luxor instead of Yellow Cab, or Yellow Cab instead of Luxor, or who the heck ever. They have their hack license, and with it, they can pretty much pick what cab company they work for.
Second, I have no problem tipping well when someone has to go out of their way to accommodate me. Sometimes I forget that there are non-Americans on this site, and that most of them don't believe in tipping because they figure the person providing the service is being paid anyway. A cabbie going out of their way like this in America is going to *expect* a tip, where a European cabbie would just say "to heck with it" and pick up the nearest fare, knowing that the extra effort isn't going to be rewarded.
Third, I forgot one of the best things about Uber and similar companies: because they bill by GPS start and end point, you can't be "long hauled". The practice of "long hauling" is where the cabbie takes you on a longer route than necessary to run up the meter. When using GPS start/end points, "long hauling" will cost the cabbie, not you, so it stops the practice rather dead in the water. This is an incredible benefit, if you end up needing a cab at a trade show or conference in an unfamiliar place, since that's when you are most likely to be "long hauled".
Fourth, as far as "doing it wrong", I suppose you are suggesting that I, and my one friend, and my other friend with the walker, go 10 blocks down to 19th street and just hail a passing cab. You have obviously never had a physical disability.
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good grief, would please just shut the fuck up? You're such a self-righteous twat.
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No, the ACs are absolutely right. Your posts are vacuous and insulting. You should be modded down so other readers don't waste time on your tantrums.
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OK, champ, you go sue those taxi drivers and champion the American Entitlement Cause, argument and evidence be damned.
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Re:Not pointless at all... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services of those who they perceive as lower down in the pecking order.
Lower down in the pecking order? No, no. I absolutely do feel entitled when it comes to eliciting services which are offered for a price, and that I am willing to pay. Why the hell would I not be?
Being a cabby is obviously a stressful and fairly tedious job (and I speak only as an occasional rider). More importantly, it's a job, not servitude.
It's a job for which I am paying them, so they better do it well, with a smile on their face, leaving all their emotional baggage locked up for after they clock out and get to loosen up with their family and friends. It's not because I think they're "lower in the pecking order." It's because there is not a single person on this planet that doesn't have to do the same thing. When my boss tells me to do a tedious job I don't find particularly challenging or entertaining I don't get to say, "you know, I prefer to do something else." That's what I get paid to do, so I do it. When my boss has to deal with clients, he may have just gotten off a huge fight with his wife at home, but he will sure as hell put on a smile and treat them as if they're the most important thing in his life. When the fucking President of the United States meets with other world leaders, he is expected to follow protocol. Monarchs have a public figure they need to maintain...there is nobody, no matter how rich or powerful they are, who doesn't have to do shit they don't want to as part of their jobs.
And if you were sat for an hour waiting for a single cab company in one place in a city, you were doing it completely wrong.
He called a cab company up and asked them to pick him up at a particular time. I've done this and have never had a problem, but if things happened as he described, he most certainly was doing it right, and they disrespected him by wasting his time. It's a service they offer, so they need to do it. If they had told him over the phone, "we're sorry, we don't send cabs to pick people up in your area," that would have been fine. Like you said, it's not servitude and they have the right to decline jobs if they think the money isn't worth it. That said, the moment they agreed to the pickup, they're committed to be there, and to be there on time. He could have been going to an important job interview, and they didn't give him the chance to make alternate plans.
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He called a cab company up and asked them to pick him up at a particular time. I've done this and have never had a problem, but if things happened as he described, he most certainly was doing it right, and they disrespected him by wasting his time.
Had this happen to me. My wife doesn't drive and I had a doctor's appointment and, based on crappy / late / never showed up experiences with other cabs and cab companies in other cities, made an appointment that would allow me to be at the doctor's over an hour early. We called the cab place after the cab didn't show up 10 minutes after expected time. "They'll be there in 5 minutes!" Ok. No problem. Ten minutes, later no cab. We called again. "They'll be there in 5 minutes!" We were getting a littl
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> I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to
> feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services
> of those who they perceive as lower down in the
> pecking order.
Bull. "Pecking orders" don't enter into it. And trying to make the Uber vs. cabbies issue into some sort of class warfare nonsense is just stupid.
I regularly do business with people *higher* than me on your so-called "pecking order". My doctor, dentist, lawyer, and probably financial planner all come to mind. I still exp
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Uber and similar apps commit them to picking up the fare as booked, and they find this annoying because they don't get optimum road miles.
Traditional taxi company apps do this... You place your order in the app, it reserves a cab for you (by number), and you watch him drive to you. How is Uber's booking any different?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Dunno about you, but using my card gives me up to 56 day interest free credit, generous cashback, and statutory and/or provider purchase protection. I find maintaining a credit card to be more hassle and more intrusive than just using cash, but the benefits often outweigh the drawbacks. To implicitly pay the 1-2% credit card surcharge just because it's convenient would be absurd.
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1) 1% (min.) cashback plus up to 56 days interest-free is comparable to what large outlets pay in merchant fees;
2) Anyway, I rarely get a discount for not paying by credit card;
3) In the EU, at least, where card usage is more common, cash handling fees may be significant;
4) There is no unform fixed fee per credit card transaction here - it depends on your bank, volume, specific negotiations for larger stores, etc. - for small stores, I'll ask what they prefer;
5) For nontrivial items, the card provider is jo
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Like here in The Netherlands it's hard to find a regular store that would accept a credit card because of the 3-4% charges they would incur.
There even are a few stores that will not accept cash because the handling of and security for having cash is costing more than the easy transfer from a debit card.
Over here you need to be exceptionally dumb to not pay off credit on your credit card by month's end, the interest is criminal so
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Good, someone else is making these points too.
I know that the seller is paying a credit card fee, thus indirectly possibly raising *all* prices(*), but my purchase price is the same for cash or credit. So, after cash back, I'm getting it *cheaper* and *more conveniently* than via cash or check.
(*) I'm wondering if not having to deal with cash saves any merchants enough to wipe out the credit card fee. Also, gas is the one time I see things priced differently, but counting the increased cash back in that c
Re:It seems that (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:It seems that (Score:4, Informative)
1) Currently in San Francisco uberX (their lower-cost, non-town-car service) is cheaper than a yellow cab and, unless you live at a Caltrain or BART station, far easier to find.
2) If you were to reserve a ride with a cab company directly there's very little accountability for how long it will take to get a pick-up. All of these apps let you to see where your driver is while en-route and allow you to give feedback regarding the level of service received.
That adds a lot of value for me on top of the fact that I don't have to wait on hold.
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All of these apps let you to see where your driver is while en-route
So do regular taxi cab apps from the taxi company. If uberX is cheaper, that's all well and good, but if they're not, doing the same thing as a normal taxi company isn't an advantage.
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because reserving with a taxi is often a pain in the ass, you have no idea where the cabs are and/or if you're going to be waiting if you're in a hurry, and you want to guarantee that you can pay by credit card without getting weird hassling from taxicab shenanigans. That's 3 things off the top of my head.
there are plenty of valid reasons.
Re: It seems that (Score:2)
NYC it is
Cabbies don't want to take you outside of manhattan or anywhere there won't be a return fare
Ãoeber won't solve that problem
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And unicode, that's a problem Slashdot won't solve...
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Uber is rather pointless. Why would someone go through a 'middle-man' app, thus incurring a surcharge, when they can just reserve with the taxi company direct?
Those calling Uber "pointless" have never lived in a city with poor cab service.
In Washington, DC, for example, I use Uber over cabs many times (even to hail a Uber-participating cab than a black care). The cabs in DC are notoriously bad- they won't take you to certain neighborhoods, will refuse service if you're black, may not show up if you call ahead for an early morning airport run, drive around in circles to inflate the fare, and don't take credit cards and may not have change. One time, I had a cab
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Uber is rather awesome, actually.
#1 - No money exchanges hands.
Boston cabbies are some of the rudest businessmen on the planet. Many times they pretend their card readers don't work or make their customers feel awkward for paying by credit. It is extremely frustrating and in today's world of connectedness there is no excuse for not being more "normal" in handling everyday business transactions. Outside of Boston many cabbies don't take cards at all (despite having a card reader in the cab). Personally, I do
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If you ask a cabbie about this they will tell you that the cab company (the middle man you don't see) takes some 5-10% of their fare if you use a card.
The Boston taxi rates were raised a few years ago specifically to cover credit card fees and drivers still will bullshit you about their card readers being broken.
why? because it works. (Score:1)
uber. use app. get information on when your ride is coming and where it is now. There is no haggle over price, no need to have cash, and no decision on a tip amount. Overall experience: A
taxi. call. wait. no further information available. Some take credit cards, others not. There's always an issue of how much to tip. Many drivers spend the whole ride on the telephone even when asked not to. Overall experience: D-
In my area, taxi service is poor. I've waited up to 45 minutes for a cab. I've never
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People use and like Uber because taxis are just so bloody awful. Reserving or summoning a cab by calling the cab's dispatch number is a crapshoot at best, and more often an exercise in futility. And if/when a taxi will deign to pick you up, as often as not the cab will stink of vomit or cigarette smoke. One cab company here even has a bed bug infestation in its cabs recently.
I don't use Uber often. I try to plan things out so Muni will suffice. But when I do, the Uber car I summon shows up when and whe
Unacceptable (Score:3, Funny)
Why aren't they making billions immediately? This is an outrage!
Re:Unacceptable (Score:5, Insightful)
A company comes out of nowhere to take 3% of a major market and that's "not much." Gotta love it.
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Alternate story title: Startup fails to take over 100% of market immediately
Tried it here in Australia (Score:3)
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Explain (Score:2)
So what is the advantage of a hailing program for a phone? Is it like the food delivery service for outlets that don't have delivery? I suppose that might be useful in some areas, but I just walk down a few blocks and get the food.
This really seems like the tech bubble all over again when a sock puppet was go
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The funny thing is, the Taxi companies could easily implement their own Apps to automate the cab hiring process, perhaps some are doing this already.
www.flywheel.com [flywheel.com]
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http://www.taxidiamond.com/en/ [taxidiamond.com]
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Here in Sweden Uber is great. They are actually cheaper than all the other cabs in the nighttime. But more expensive in the daytime. But what's great about it here is that you don't need to pay in the taxi. Either you provide your creditcard info in the app or they will send you an invoice later. Sure paying in the cab isn't a real hassle but it's still a nice thing not having to do it.
Also if you're travelling with friends that also have the Uber-app the bill is split among you automatically.
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benefit 1: you don't need to talk to call center people.
of course it has less point if you can just walk outside and you have a taxi spot right there, but that is rarely the case.
Re:Explain (Score:4, Informative)
I either drive my car, take a bus, or schedule a pickup using the cab service website. About the only time when I do an impromptu taxi ride, it is fixed rate downtown and the taxis are everywhere.
So what is the advantage of a hailing program for a phone? Is it like the food delivery service for outlets that don't have delivery? I suppose that might be useful in some areas, but I just walk down a few blocks and get the food.
A number of places are hard to find cabs unless you are on the right street. It's even hard to get them to come by phone. If you call in a ride too short, but are too far off the beaten path, you'll not get a cab out, and any complaints will be met with complaints you weren't at the pickup site. But this service guarantees pickup. That's a greater value than calling in a pickup. I've personally been stranded more than once. I wasn't far off the beaten path for one, so I stopped calling in from that location, and instead walk to a nearby hotel, where there is always someone waiting. But with this, if it covered where I live now, I'd use it for all trips in that area.
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Amazon's is hardly a comparable business model so we'll look past that straw man. Uber is already profitable in most cities so, as a business, it kinda makes sense.
Don't know where you're from but having recently moved to San Francisco from Boston it's not very likely in either city that you'd be able to hail a cab on the street save for at major transit stations. The value of this kind of service is to get a ride quickly, easily, and with a reasonable expectation for the level of service provided. Here in
Regulated cab services? (Score:2)
How hard is the regulation? Is there room for competition?
If the regulation prohibits competition then that's the real problem.
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As Tom Slee pointed out: There isn't one big taxi cartel controlling regulation from Aberdeen to San Fransisco. Taxi companies, like B&B (which Airbnb plays Uber's role for) are typically small scale operations.
Yet everywhere, from Aberdeen to San Fransisco, Taxi services and hosting services are regulated. Why is that? If it was just regulatory capture, don't you suppose there would be ONE municipality somewhere where it wasn't regulated, where it worked great, to serve as a beacon for would-be deregul
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Big bucks lobbying
With public relations and lobbying efforts fueled by hundreds of millions of Wall Street dollars, these new app companies want to pummel the
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You did not answer my question, and your idea of freedom is too simplistic to be useful. Even in simple games, it's sometimes better to not have an option than to have it, and as soon as you include any notion of information and information asymmetry this:
For every thing I'm "protected" from, I have my freedom reduced.
goes down the drain fast.
Taxi drivers aren't powerful. They certainly aren't more powerful than the kind of people they commonly drive. If lack of regulation served taxi customers, why is it
Drunk Apping (Score:2)
explain this to me (Score:2)