Uber Was the Most-Expensed Service, With 6% of all Business Receipts in 2016 (venturebeat.com) 61
Uber continues to be the transportation service of choice for business travelers, making up 52 percent of all expenses in Q4, according to a study by Certify. From a report: The online travel and expense management service provider today claimed Uber received the majority share of ground transportation, compared to 40 percent the same quarter in 2015. Additionally, the private on-demand ride hailing service was the most expensed service in 2016.
Re:6% yearly? I find that hard to believe (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:6% yearly? I find that hard to believe (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine that they mean Uber as a company, not "Transportation" as a category. The article seems to imply that it's Ground Transportation specifically in which Uber is capturing 52% of receipts. So food, drink, and lodging aren't even in that particular figure.
The 6% figure might seem high but you should think about the fact that Uber is the giant in this space so there's little competition. It's not that it had more expense receipts than all of food and lodging, but it had more than any single other company. Therefore it's not that Uber was expensed more than lodging, food, etc...but that folks are not using one service provider more; the rest of the spaces available have too much competition. I also wasn't clear whether they were looking at "most" to mean net sales or number of transactions. The study doesn't make that clear.
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looking at "most" to mean net sales or number of transactions
The 6% figure seems to be counting "receipts" which would lead me to believe "number of transactions."
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I find it very hard to believe that Uber takes up more receipts than food and drink and lodging. I also find it very hard to believe that the top receipt is only 6% of total receipts. That seems like a small number.
captcha: treasury - no really are the captchas really random?
It's the top VENDOR not category. They are looking at specific companies. There are lots of car rental companies, airlines, and hotel brands, but Uber is the 500lb gorilla in ride sharing these days. In the transport category their numbers show Uber had 40%, Lyft 2%, Taxis 20%, and rentals 38%. The others in the top 5 vendor list were Starbucks, Delta, American Airlines, and Amazon.
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I can see it, 6% of a three day trip to a medium sized city makes sense.
Figure food $150, hotel, $400, flight $300, client dinner $150, that's $1000, so $60 on uber would be 6%, that's less than the airport alone (there are of course non travel related things that get expensed though).
The more interesting thing to me is that this shows Uber is crushing taxi companies not because if price (it's expensed after all), but because of quality of service.
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I live in small to medium sized city (Wilmington, de) and the taxi service is worthless.
I've seen people wait for hours when an uber was ten minutes away, they complain about rides too close or too far (NYC is like that too, they hate gonna be passed Williamsburg in Brooklyn).
When I was in Philly it was even worse. They cried and lied when they were forced to get GPS and credit card machines (way too late for not having credit card or GPS to be a thing). Hour for pick up in city limits.
For me not only is Ub
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not because if price (it's expensed after all), but because of quality of service.
If Uber keeps promoting Pool, the quality of service is going to decline dramatically. Experienced drivers won't take Pool rides, even in the face of being deactivated. That means the best cars and best drivers are the most likely to go do something else rather than be forced into competing with mass transit with bottom feeder rates. Uber had a great business model but Pool is corrupting the entire industry.
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How?
I suspect every time I use uber it's using more gasoline.
Re:There is no such thing as "Uber" (Score:5, Funny)
I live in a small town. Uber does not exist. Stop posting stories about non-existing crap.
I want to hear more about what Apple is going to ditch next. It takes courage to ditch things that people still use.
If they're really brave, the next iPhone (or Samsung Galaxy) will ditch the ability to make phone calls- because no one uses phones to make voice calls anymore. (or very few people do). Imagine how thin they can make the phone if they take the phone part out.
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Thats just an iPod Touch. It already exists. And its very convenient to give to you kids as a toy when you dont want to give them a phone.
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Just go with the base storage of either 16GB or 32GB because people stream their music and store their pictures in the cloud. /s
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I live in a small town. Uber does not exist.
If you sign up to drive for them then you can monopolize the local market.
The truth (Score:2, Insightful)
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We all know what the real answer would be, but most companies won't reimburse for hookers and blow.
No, but the federal government is a major employer in this country, and they will as long as you file it under "misc. entertainment"
And yet. . . (Score:2, Informative)
How long can this bubble last?
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Whereas Amazon's US retail business finally makes a profit, the corporation as a whole is still losing money every year over 20 years after it first started.
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They've raised ~$100 billion and have a net loss rate of ~$1 to $2 billion a quarter. They already have self driving cars on the roads and will probably have truly driverless self driving cars in 2-3 years at which point they'll be totally vertically integrated and costs will drop, service areas will explode and service quality will go through the roof.
If they didn't even have a self driving car prototype I would be concerned about their long term business plan, but they're executing on it, the eco
Convenience, assurance and cost (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't have to pull out my wallet, worry about tips or even talk to the driver. The receipts are conveniently accessible at the end of the month.
I think the reason is similar to why people simply drive to McDonald's instead of exploring local restaurants.
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I don't have to pull out my wallet, worry about tips or even talk to the driver.
Drivers have a word for people like you, Captain One Star. Keep that up and your user rating will eventually drop low enough you'll start having trouble getting a ride.
Tip your Uber driver...every single time. Just a couple bucks is enough. Most of them are making between $9 and $13 hour, before expenses. In a few major high density areas (LA, New York, Boston, Seattle) they're making between $18 and $25 but that's not norm
No surprises here (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite all the Uber-hate on Slashdot, the fact remains that the average business traveler doesn't care about labor controversies where Uber is concerned. All they care about is getting from point A to point B with a minimum of expense and hassle.
With Uber, I know when a car is going to show up after I press the button on my phone. I know in advance approximately how much the ride will cost. I won't have the driver take me on the "scenic route" just to pump up the fare. The car will be clean and in good shape. The driver and I can view the same route on our smartphones. And if I have any issues with the driver or the ride, I will have a name and an electronic record of the trip.
And best of all, I don't have a driver tell me, "Cash only, credit card machine is broken." I get a real receipt by email, not a blank piece of paper handed to me so that I can put in whatever amount I please, and thereby cheat on my expenses.
So, yes, I use Uber (and Lyft) and will continue to do so whenever I can. I can tell you a dozen different stories of bad experiences I've had with taxis on business trips. Uber and Lyft have never been anything but a pleasure to use.
Re:No surprises here (Score:5, Informative)
Ha those are the best in Boston you just tell them ok sorry thanks for the ride and leave. You are not obligated to pay them then. Then you watch them say that then the "machine is now working" and then they get their 0% tip for trying that crap.
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Maybe he didn't accept AMEX. Visa and Mastercard are much more accepted in Canada.
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I just got back from the business trip from hell: 3 states in two days with a dozen stops. We took Uber and Lyft everywhere. Every time I've taken a taxi it's been a disaster. Incidentally this is the first time we've tried an Airbnb in lieu of a hotel. It was equally as good.
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And best of all, I don't have a driver tell me, "Cash only, credit card machine is broken."
The last cab I took, the driver asked for my credit card and skimmed my card. That's why it was the last cab I took.
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It happened to me too, on a business trip to Toronto. They were clever about it, too .... the second charge came from a different cab company name just a couple of days after my trip, for an amount of money that, at first glance, would seem legitimate. Fortunately I only used that particular credit card for business expenses, so it stuck out like a sore thumb. But I could see where a lot of
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I have noticed that at least in Los Angeles, since Uber has taken hold, almost all Taxis that pick up at LAX have begun to fully support credit card operation, even American Express. I never get the "cash only" or "machine not working" excuse any more...but it shows how competition from Uber has shaken up the Taxi industry, for the better.
Also many Taxis now have an "app" with a map like Uber's, but I tried it once and watched a cab coming to pick me up stay in one place for almost one half an hour before
Hmm (Score:2)
So if I get this straight, it means nobody wants to pay for an Uber?
I use it every time i travel (Score:3)
For the emailed receipts I wish the date and amount was in the file name, that makes it easier for expense reporting in my case.
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The reason cabbies don't use GPS is that it'd be too obvious when they take you on the scenic route, or get you stuck in traffic intentionally.
In the rare times where I am in another city and taking a cab, I always pull up my destination on Google Maps or Waze and use that to track where we are going to make sure we aren't "detouring".
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smart phones have fixed this but it has happened to me quite a bit in my hometown Dallas TX before maps/gps were common on phones. Get a cab at an airport and they assume you're not from there and so start down the wrong route. Once you correct the driver and they realize you know the town the route magically changes to the shortest one.
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There are taxis that don't have GPS?
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A problem of the study (Score:2)
Certify is a management software for employee expense report and expense management. Such reporting system is generally used by larger corporation and and the sample used in the study may be biased.
Also because of the nature of the software, some travel data, for examples, trips using public transit (which do not always have receipts), might not be captured by the software. I sometimes take public transit during trips and my company would just take my word for it (based on reasonableness, of course. It is a
why can't taxis compete? (Score:1)
Really - Taxi companies can't get together and provide an uber like service ? I don't get that.
There does seem to be a fundamentally unfair playing field here where Taxis have to abide by city/state regulations and uber doesn't.
I really don't understand why this isn't a big issue or why municipalities are so eager to keep it that way.
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The Uber app may seem like a trivial app to make, but it isn't. Some taxi companies (or even country-wide) try to make their own, but they have to outsource the development to a company that won't make a great app, nor support it correctly, nor develop new features. So they'll always be 5 years behind Uber and Lyft.
Also, Uber is worldwide, so you don't have to install a specific local app (which you don't ever know the name) to get a taxi.
But in fact, taxis can as well use the Uber app. So why don't the