Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/23/beware-of-uber-vomit-fraud.html
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Yet even more bad news about how shitty a company Uber is;
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Explain to me again how using Uber is better than just hailing summoning a cab?
ETA: clarification since other people use “hailing” for waving a cab down in the street and only for that.
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Beware of Uber vomit fraud
I’m vomiting right now.
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You don’t have to hail it, you can just use the app.
Cab services have apps now too. So… Even that’s no longer an advantage.
Uber is usually cheaper. Or at least, surge pricing gives it the appearance of being cheaper on average. But then tempts you to pay the higher price when a regular cab is nowhere to be found.
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I’ve been banned by Uber. Strange thing is I’ve never actually used Uber. Tried signing up for it a couple weeks ago … downloaded the app and put in my info … banned. They refuse to respond to any of my e-mails as it “doesn’t match any on record”. And, it appears the only way to talk to a real person is if you’re a driver … so, no Uber for me. Maybe getting preemptively banned is not such a bad thing.
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The company has proven itself to be a terrible entity. My thought’s below are in no way endorsing the use of Uber. In 2016 I permanently deleted my account and it seems like they and their service has steadily gotten worse. So some of the below may no longer be accurate.
As for how it compared to taxi services on launch. Leading up to when Uber went live I was very active in the cocktail scene here in Seattle. This meant I was trying to hail taxi’s home 5-6 nights a week, late at night from random dark corners of the city. My average experience was to call the dispatch and get told my taxi would arrive in 20 minutes and then wait 40 to 90 minutes. Calling to ask if the taxi was delayed seemed to make things worse and the dispatch would often scream and cuss you out for bothering them. Trying to grab a random taxi zipping buy that was not the one assigned to you from dispatch would backfire. If/when you finally got your taxi the rate were always quite high. The feeling at the time was we as customers didn’t have a choice and so we had to take this crappy service and abusive treatment.
Along came Uber. No longer did I have to get screamed at by someone that sounded like they were talking through a tin can. I could see my car on the map as it made it’s way to me. Average time to get picked up was 5-10 minutes. And back then the price was much less than what the same taxi ride would cost. It was a late night commuting miracle at the time.
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Apparently you’ve never had to rely on hailing a cab.
To be clear, I’ve never used Uber, but I use Lyft all the time now, and really like it. And so far as I can tell, the company is at least not-shitty enough to generally stay out of the news.
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I’ve used them a few times but the experience was not always stellar. One guy was very confused about where airport pickup was - the airport had a dedicated area for ride service pickups but for some reason he didn’t want to go there. Another guy got lost trying to find my hotel (which was, to be fair, hard to find: not very visible at all from the road it was on). Lyft appears to be marginally better, in my limited experience. But the problem remains that, even if they are providing a good service, they are exploitative of their workers. They seem to hire a lot of laid-off folks who are hard up enough to not be choosy about their work conditions and pay. So they can treat them bad and pay them poorly, and when they find something better and are gone, they just get another temporary worker.
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You would be wrong. Maybe my sample size is too limited, maybe I’ve never lived in towns with bad cab service. But I really have never encountered any of the situations that anti-cab people like to trot out as examples of why Uber was so much better an experience than calling the dispatcher and having them send you a cab. And now that most cab companies have their own ride hailing apps, I really don’t see any downside to just using a cab, and many, many upsides, not least of which dealing with a local company and professional drivers.
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They don’t “hire” anyone of course, they just connect drivers with people who need rides, and take a cut of the revenue for hosting and maintaining the app.
The “exploitation” issue revolves mostly about somewhat esoteric accounting: the drivers are providing their own car, so the concern is that they are likely not correctly factoring depreciation of their asset against their income. That’s a real problem, although interestingly every Lyft car I’ve gotten into was either very new or at least in pristine condition.
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My experience and understanding is that the quality of service has gone down over the years. The last few times I used them before canceling my account, I nearly offered to drive for the driver as they really had no idea how to navigate in Seattle to the point of being painful.
These days I use the bus (which isn’t great here) for 90% of my commuting. I don’t drink anymore so the need to picked up from random places is not longer a personal need. I use Lyft to get to the airport. No issues with the service level. I wasn’t aware Lyft was being exploitative like Uber.
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Maybe it’s very different where you are: my experience was the SF Bay Area. “Professional” drivers was a sad joke, dispatchers were useless. Many drivers didn’t know their way around the city (even with GPS), others would assume you were a tourist and try to defraud you by driving in circles. None of them would ever take you anywhere unless both points were downtown. When cell phones were finally ubiquitous it was a blessing because the drivers would spend their entire time babbling on their phone to some friend (how do people find 12 hours worth of things to talk about every day?), or like one methed-up driver I had, spend the entire drive trying to get people to take his calls. Before that you had to endure racist diatribes for your entire trip. With all the ethnicities in SF and driving taxis there, they were at least usually original. I missed a flight one time because I foolishly called a cab to take me to the train station early in the morning (when there was no hope of flagging one).
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Yes, very much so. Both for medium towns in upper New York state and for Toronto.
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Yes, I think that is the main issue. Uber at least too is eyeing self-driving cars very seriously. Their business plan appears to be to price low, drive competitors including taxis out of the market, then cut their labor costs nearly to zero by going self-driving. Another reason why driving for them is not really a career.
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If you had ever tried to hail a cab in the west end of the San Fernando valley after 10, you would not ask this question. “Hailing” really wasn’t an option; you had to call dispatch, and then stand on a corner hoping that neither dispatch nor driver had blown you off - which they did with annoying frequency. And if/when they finally came, the cab generally stank and the ride was always hideously expensive. As bad as Uber is, they are a million times better than what Angelenos - especially us Valley rats - used to have to put up with.
I’m deeply conflicted about the whole gig economy, ridesharing most definitely included. But for the customer experience, at least in Los Angeles? It’s been an unalloyed good.
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So an unethical Uber driver can make a quick hundred bucks and pin it on a hapless user. Once they’ve done that trick once, how many more times can they get away with it before someone gets suspicious?
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“every Lyft car I’ve gotten into was either very new or at least in pristine condition.”
That’s actually the point in a car’s life when it depreciates most drastically. A new car looses maybe 20% value when it rolls off the lot, and another 20% in the first 50k miles. Maintenance costs are a bit lower at that point, which may be what makes people think they are making out OK.
What you are effectively doing when you drive for one of those companies is leasing your car to them (for the miles you drive) PLUS providing labor.
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I deleted my account, and their app, after the revelation of their data breach, after which (as I recall) they didn’t think the fate of the users’ data was a big deal.
<sarcasm>But I have to say I’m happy to see a company sticking up for its workers.</sarcasm>
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The pending lawsuit should settle things a bit. Either Yber employs their drivers which means they need to pay benefits and do all. Kemal employees stuff OR they are participating with a bunch of independent ontractors and facilitating illegal price fixing. Wait for the dust to settle and see where their prices end up.
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