Seoul City To Introduce Uber Rival Premium Taxi Service 50
An anonymous reader writes Seoul city has today announced that it will be launching a luxury taxi service this summer to rival the global cab-hailing app Uber, adding to the obstacles that the U.S.-based firm is currently facing in the Asian market. The government's move comes after the country's transport department rejected a proposal from Uber last week for a new driver registration, and enforced its stance against Uber operating in the area. The new premium service will be introduced in Seoul city in August with 100 luxury and mid-sized saloon cars. "We will provide a premium tax service which excels that of Uber..." the Seoul government said in a statement. It stated that a taxi association would be partners of the scheme to help establish the service, but added no detail regarding which company they would be working with.
So why is Uber is in difficulty? (Score:1)
btw, some people live only by copying and finally build the whole economy on it :)
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Seems like Seoul has missed the point. I don't think Uber is upending taxis worldwide because they are luxury! It's because they are cheaaaap!
How will a luxury taxi service in Seoul affect the traction that a car-sharing service could gain by undercutting standard, economy taxi pricing? (Except that apparently they have banned them from operating. That sounds like an effective obstacle.)
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they add 150% surge pricing to that. Taxi's at least keep the same price at 9PM and 3AM.
I would rather pay a surge premium than rely on a taxis that are cheap but unavailable.
Re: So why is Uber is in difficulty? (Score:3)
I lived in Seoul for most of my life, and the only time I took taxis were either when I had a lot of luggage, or on late nights when there is no public transport. On daytimes the traffic situation is so bad that anything other than public transportation is just horrible. So horrible that I didn't even consider buying a car.
Buses are on a better situation since they get to use bus only lanes(which are on pretty much every busy road), which are enforced using dash-cams on the buses themselves.
Now I live on
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They are missing many points about Uber. Two big ones are: It is fast because of their driver ubiquity. And their drivers have a reputation that matters because it follows their profile which has customer feedback. These are good.
The downside is that this is austerity sock-puppetry saying, "We are not going to be building anymore public transit. Share your shit among the techno-poors instead."
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Then why ban them? And then clone them?
Some people are saying good, even more competition. Government running competition out of town on a rail to hand it over to itself and its crony taxis is not freaking competing! It's old-school corruption.
It's why politicians seek office.
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Seems like Seoul has missed the point. I don't think Uber is upending taxis worldwide because they are luxury! It's because they are cheaaaap!
How will a luxury taxi service in Seoul affect the traction that a car-sharing service could gain by undercutting standard, economy taxi pricing? (Except that apparently they have banned them from operating. That sounds like an effective obstacle.)
Is it Seoul, Seoul City, or are either acceptable? It sounds like saying Chicago City to me (i.e. the wrong proper noun), but maybe City is a part of the English name of it.
Also, Uber won by not being unpleasant, not by being cheap. Cheap helps, but regular cabs often suck. Uber cars are clean, most of the drivers are nice-ish, they almost never give the customers a hard time, you don't have to wait long for them...
There is a segment of the market that will buy by price--but most of the market that shift
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"City" is part of the Korean name of it. It's an issue of poor translation. The only purpose it serves is to make clear that you aren't talking about the entire Seoul Metropolitan Area (but why would you assume that?).
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Detroit lost its seoul a few years ago.
Detroit Rock City!
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Thanks for the research!
And, BTW, such a classic, funny Asian name. Just like Tokyo is officially named: Tokyo Happy Special Fun Town City.
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There is a segment of the market that will buy by price--but most of the market that shifted to Uber did it because service quality is better.
I'm assuming neither of us has done a proper customer market research survey to probe this (I haven't, but hopefully Uber has), but anecdotally, among the many people I know using Uber, the only reason I hear people cite for why they use it over taxis is price.
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I don't think Uber is upending taxis worldwide because they are luxury! It's because they are cheaaaap!
They're also usually driven by drivers who actually give a shit about customers, not by assholes who think their taxi medallion is a monopoly that lets them treat customers like shit. Also Uber drivers do little things like cleaning their cars more than once a year, and bathing regularly.
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well it's 100% purely about protectionism in this case.
You see, otherwise they wouldn't mention Uber in their press. Asians are stupid in that way that they don't understand public relations and when they're doing something fishy(competition or whatever wise) they _will_ make a public statement that they are not doing it, even if it makes no sense to make such statement, because it makes it just seem like that they're banning a competitor.
if there's a public statement from some government figures for exampl
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They aren't that cheap. Well, the base fare is cheap, but then they add 150% surge pricing to that. Taxi's at least keep the same price at 9PM and 3AM.
When the price is surging, even taxis are not available. And 100 extra luxury taxis won't even make a dent when the demand outstrips the supply during peak hours. In fact, since those new taxis are touted as saloons on wheels, they won't even be competing against regular taxis (that's probably why the government likes the service so much). They will probably be hired the entire night and they'll be clogging up the gangnam streets waiting for their patrons to get in and out of night clubs.
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It's good, that both of them would compete, and ultimately consumer would be supported!
btw, some people live only by copying and finally build the whole economy on it :)
Sounds more like a "We like your idea Uber but fuck you because we're going to block you from the market and do it ourselves"
No doubt the unknown company that they're going to work with will be owned by the transportation minister's uncle's cousin's favorite son.
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The difficulty is right here, from that link:
In January, Seoul city started offering rewards of up to 1 million won (£608) for people who reported private or rented car drivers providing transport through Uber.
In December, South Korean prosecutors indicted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and the company's South Korean unit for violating transport rules which require drivers and vehicles used in taxi services to be licensed.
When is Pyongyang next? (Score:2)
With all the great news and new sayings of the state media ahead of the 70th year Anniversary I am sure NK has to have such better service
This coming from such a great airline service [businessinsider.com]
The Plot Quickens (Score:1)
a taxi association would be partners of the scheme
Well that about sums up what you'll get from THAT.
Uber responds with its own premium service (Score:1)
Uber responds with its own premium service [theonion.com].
Easy to have competitors (Score:2)
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Taxes (Score:1)
Headlines are hard (Score:2, Interesting)
"Seoul City To Introduce Uber Rival Premium Taxi Service"
This, this makes no sense. Is Seoul introducing a rival to Uber called "Premium Taxi Service" (Koreanglish)? Is Seoul introducing an uber rival to premium taxi services? As Seoul introducing a Premium Uber Rival called "Taxi Service"? There are tens of ways I could go with trying to parse this.
Clearly the problem is that someone, either an editor or the submitter, wanted to steal Reuters' sensible headline (Seoul city to launch premium taxi service to
Liars (Score:2)
if their service would be better then Uber then why forbid Uber to compete?
You either let them compete or you're afraid of them. And if you're afraid then you think they're going to out compete you. Which means you think they're better at providing the service then your native industry. And given that every driver would be a korean... and the pay for drivers is pretty good... who are you protecting?
Not the consumer. The consumer is the one that would choose uber.
Not the driver. Uber drivers are well paid an
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because uber drivers would be cheaper, so they think they have to make this statement that the people will get a "better" service and that they're not screwing over the people. that's why they're mentioning uber.
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Except how is the government able to decide what is and is not better?
Do I let the government decide what is a better pair of shoes or a better plate of food or a better house or a better hotel room? I'm sure they regulate all these things and sometimes even for good reason. But no one has a problem with a reasonable amount of regulation. The issue is that they are effectively inflating the cost of taxi service to either protect campaign donors or to protect extortionate fees they charge cab services.
Eithe
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What I found interesting is that Uber is now the competition. They're not announcing that they're creating a fleet which is superior to other cab companies, they're announcing that they're competing with Uber. They really couldn't have produced a better commercial for Uber if they tried.
Good, let taxpayers share instead of Uber CEOs (Score:2)
Building a more luxurious horse carriage (Score:2)
We in the carriage industry, while we do support the "automobile" ban, do recognize that you, the public, values some aspects of this new technology. Therefore, we are announcing an effort to build new and more luxurious horse carriages with much larger manure traps to meet your needs. We trust that these wonderful new carriages will prove much more popular than these dangerous, unlawful automobiles.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Metropolitan Seoul has a population of 25 million. Furthermore, unlike New York City which is laid out in a nice grid, the streets in Seoul [google.com] are a byzantine mess of turns, angles, and alleyways. Also, as per Asian custom, most of the streets don't have names - the destinations do. (Kinda like Squares in Boston - instead of the street being called Boylston St, it'd simply be ca
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