8 years ago
3
Approaching Policy After Uber’s Scorched Earth
The blowback to Uber reached a new level of intensity this week with massive and occasionally violent street protests in France.
Continue Reading
http://techcrunch.com
Join the Discussion
Taxi service around here is freaking convoluted and horrible, stinky cabs, sticky seats and people that take advantage of the convoluted fare system are horrible. Our system is some parts of the county are one price, entering into another area doubles or triples the pricing and then another you have a flat system where no matter if you go one mile or twenty you pay a certain amount, usually between 30 and 50 plus any other fees. On top of that you sometimes have crazy wait times, sometimes they never show up and you call and ask them why and claim they never got the original call.
With Uber you hit the app and 10 minutes later you're on your way in usually a very very clean vehicle with somebody that isn't unhappy to be there and get to your destination with a reasonably fair price. It's absolutely no wonder people prefer it. Sadly they cannot operate around the airport where they are needed most.
In their defence, I think I've only had 2 cabs in the time that I took them that have been disgusting / smelly. But when it comes to them turning up, oh I have a good story about that. So one company added cab tracking to their mobile app. I watched as the cab took a wrong turn putting it onto the freeway (right next to me) and watched as it went up and down the freeway looking for the exit. There's no exit to my place right off the freeway, you have to go through a few side streets to get to it. The driver gave up and it was re-assigned. That driver got to me in 10 minutes.
The worst part about this is that before the tracking on the app, you could be waiting for an 30 minutes plus before you rung up and they told you either "they couldn't find you so they cancelled", or "you weren't at the address". No notification at all so you could tell them that you were still there... waiting.
I used cabs to commute to and from work for about 10 years 3-5 times a week. I would say less than 10% of the cabbies knew where they were going, 5% would actually talk to you. The others just ignored you, read their GPS and talked to someone hands-free on a phone. We have the same uproar here in Australia with Uber, maybe not to the extent of overturned cars, but the angry cab drivers who don't want their ineptitude publicly pushed into their face. I haven't taken Uber, have had no need, but if they are even 20% more efficient and polite than our current cab drivers, then I welcome their inclusion.