Uber receives "F" from Better Business Bureau

boing
21

Again, feeling the olds? KBA? PITA? Am I being dense here?

And who is the “staff” exactly, since isn’t the whole point to have people act as independent contractors? And how does using a phone create bad morale - which is what my question is about? Since, in theory, we all have phones on us at all times (not all of us, but you get my meaning).

Again, sorry to be an old fogey Gen Xer here, but I think it’s important to understand what these businesses are actually doing and how they impact the local economy, etc, which means looking at warts and all.

22

I’ve noticed that. Sometimes, an email is fine, But emails are also easier to ignores and I actively hate those online forms that some companies force you to fill out. Likely, if I get that on a website, I’m going to avoid it if I can and attempt to make contact in another way or not use that company if I have an alternative. I actually appreciate it when a company makes it easy to get in touch with them. I’ve used the same AC/heating company because they are easy to contact, and I know when I call, I’ll get a person (the same person I’ve been talking to for 10 years, actually) who’ll listen to me and work with me. The more we make things abstracted from other actual human beings, the easier it is to forget that human beings are at the other end of things (going both ways actually - the people who run businesses are of course people, too and entitled to respect same as the customer) and the easier it is to treat people like crap. You see it on emails, where tones can be taken the wrong way, I’d imagine that SMS amps that up even further.

I don’t know… I’m getting all philosophical on this now. Basically, give me a phone number where I can talk to a person and I’m more likely to use your service… if that makes sense.

23

That’s not really a solution, as those car services cost significantly more than a taxi. The fares usually start at $20 and go up from there.

Uber X, however, is priced similarly to yellow cabs.

24

I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess you don’t live in NYC. There are zero cabs in the outer boroughs, unless you count the ones trying to haul ass out of there.

A perfect example happened last night: I accidentally left my wallet on the B52 bus. I was stranded in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with no metrocard, no cash, and no credit card. I couldn’t have paid a cab even if there was one around (and there wasn’t).

If I hadn’t had my phone to call an Uber X driver, I would’ve had to walk from Bed-Stuy to Park Slope at 1:30 in the morning.

1 Like
25

Irrelevant! That one time he was in Times Square at 8 on a Saturday there were cabs everywhere. Thus, 110th and East End must be the same way at 4 PM, it is also in Manhattan.

I used to work on a residential project up on East End and we’d walk out of meetings to barren streets with Harlem River Drive jam packed with cars. I could never figure out who’d want to pay high-end Manhattan prices if they couldn’t walk out of their building and catch a cab.

2 Likes
26

Or in San Francisco. I can’t count the number of times, when friends of mine lived in the Excelsior*, that we’d say “let’s take a cab to the club rather than drive,” and we’d call one of the dispatch companies… and wait… and wait… and wait… and wait… and the cab would just never show up, and an hour later we’d go drive ourselves. Then there’s the fun thing where you walk out of a club at the end of the night, grab a cab that is lingering in the area, give them your address, and they’d say “no, too far, get out.”

*Neighborhood in south SF - but remember SF is only 7 square miles.

3 Likes
27

My in-laws have lived in Manhattan and Long Island for 80+ years.

28

And email is totally useless when you are standing in the rain at South Central Station in Boston trying to get a ride to your B&B. I think if your business depends completely on using an app on a phone, and offers a service that is time dependent, you need something better than email as a backup contact when the app doesn’t work.

1 Like
29

See my reply to goodpasture.

30

So, you don’t live in NYC but visit it a few times a year, typically around the holidays?

2 Likes
31

Which makes your assertion that NYC is “crawling with cabs like rats dumped out of a bag” even more bizarre.

Again, speaking as someone who actually lives here, I’m telling you, first-hand, that the amount of cabs in the outer boroughs of NYC is functionally close to zero.

I’ve never been able to hail a cab in Brooklyn or Queens (I can’t imagine the hell of trying to hail one in Staten Island or the Bronx), whereas an Uber X driver has come to my door each and every time I’ve requested one.

2 Likes
32

I don’t think I have ever seen a cab on SI. The only cars I see meeting the ferries are jitneys.

I have literally seen more NYC cabs in New Jersey than Staten Island.

You can generally do okay hailing a cab on the Grand Concourse going downtown in the morning (as the cabs come into Manhattan), but otherwise you’re better off doing a street hail of a jitney. Typically the same price up there though, I’ve never felt like they were outrageously priced…

2 Likes
33

The Tyranny of the Taxi Medallions which has a number of interesting points, has this to say about the number of taxis in NYC:

But the taxi medallion requirement had an unintended consequence - it made taxis scarce. The “right” to drive a taxi become very valuable as demand outstripped supply. When this medallion system was introduced in New York City in 1937, there were 11,787 issued. That number remained constant until 2004. Today there are 13,150. [emphasis added]

As demand for taxis has increased with supply relatively fixed, the cost of the medallion in New York City has skyrocketed to over a million dollars a year. [empahsis added]

34

Yup. I live on the south side of Chicago. Even if I call over 24 hours in advance and make a reservation, there will be no cab at the time I requested. If I keep calling back and hounding them, I might get a cab one or two hours later. I’ve actually had cab company staff say to me: “I’m just dispatch…I can’t tell a cab driver to go to your address.” Um, isn’t that the definition of “dispatch”? Meanwhile, public transportation requires multiple changes with walking and waiting in between. Before Uber, the method of choice was getting the number of an independent driver-for-hire from a trusted friend; basically, Uber in beta format.

Uber may not be the best choice for everyone, but for some communities it’s a great option.

4 Likes
35

I have only used Lyft, not Uber. From my perspective, they’ve innovated a lot:

  • I can see (a) that a car is coming for me and (b) how far away it is. With taxis I have no idea when the car will come or even if it’s on the way (despite the dispatcher’s optimistic promise of “15 minutes”).
  • If I leave something, like an umbrella, in a Lyft car, I can easily contact the driver and get it back. With a taxi, I probably won’t be able to remember which cab company owned the car (DeSoto? Yellow? The green checkered ones?), let alone the name or vehicle number of my driver. With Lyft, I have the driver’s name and phone number right in my phone.
  • I can book in minutes using an app. With taxis, I would call, then wait and wait and wait on hold sometimes for 20 minutes.
  • I can pay online–no cards, no cash, no transaction in the car at all.

Whether you like the service or not, they are certainly offering benefits and innovations that cab companies in my city are not offering.

3 Likes
36

That was my point… a phone would work, since we all have one. But the youths seem averse to using phones now a days (get off my lawn, btw).

37

Good post, thanks. I guess it’s a regional thing. In my city, every one of those bullet points applies to the cab company I work for. The only time someone might get a late cab is around spring break or the last week of September when classes start at the University, and everyone in town wants a taxi at the same time to catch a flight during a three hour window. Even then, at worst it’s 20-25 minutes late. But otherwise, we’ve had an app that does everything you listed for a few years now.

So I guess it’s basically a Wal-Mart (Uber) vs. mom-and-pop (local cab company) dilemma, and it sounds like it depends on whether or not your local cab company is meeting your needs. Speaking for myself, I’m tired of unfathomably wealthy ‘libertarian’ style corporate monopolies, i.e. Comcast, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Uber, Google, and am willing to tolerate the eccentricities of mom-and-pop for the welcome relief of being able to maintain my identity and sanity. It seems like the little extra convenience or savings offered by these mega-corps always comes with hidden caveats that you aren’t made aware of until they’ve already destroyed any competition. One thing I will say about Uber with absolute certainty, is that the service is going to decline very rapidly, mark my words. Right now, they are floating on that 18 billion, and paying drivers absurdly high referral bonuses to recruit new drivers and subsidizing rides. This is all business 101. They intend to flood each market with as many drivers as possible, which sounds good on the face of it, and is good for passengers, but not so good for drivers (which is not good for passengers), and basically means that they will individually be making next to nothing, as they spend most of their time sitting dead in the water. (One of the problems of taxi demand is that it peaks for two or three hourlong periods each day. The rest of the day demand is extremely low. So if you flood the market with cars, it smooths out that 5-8% of the day where demand is high, but insures the rest of the day and the entire shift will be spent sitting idle. This is what Uber’s ‘surge pricing’ was supposed to address, and what taxi ‘medallions’ were supposed to address.) As such, when drivers are making $2-3 an hour (no joke, it’s common in saturated markets) quality and maintenance of vehicles, driver moral and level of service, etc… will all drastically decline (are already in some cities I’ve heard). Then we will see how well this ‘ride-sharing’ really works, once it’s not being heavily subsidized by start-up capital.

Taxi businesses already operate on wisp-thin margins, dispatchers and drivers make close to minimum wage (I do ok because of tips. I’m one of the best, friendliest, most-accommodating, most-knowledgable drivers in town), owners make comparable to what other small business owners make. How Uber thinks it’s going to maintain something superior to the current model for even less doesn’t add up. Drivers won’t stand long term for having vehicle maintenance, insurance, etc. externalized and foisted on them.

Spend some time on the ‘UberPeople’ driver forum if you want to get an idea of what Uber is really like. You sound like an educated, smart person, I would love to hear what you experience on that forum. I am all for technology, and considered driving for Uber for a brief period. I spent a lot of time looking into what they are doing, and what they want to achieve. And I am telling you, if you look into it, you’ll see that it is not possible without drastically lowering the already absurdly inadequate level of driver compensation, the quality of the service, and without supplemental collection and capitalization of rider’s personal data. If I seem passionate about it, ironically, it’s not because I am a taxi driver. It’s because the amount and intensity of the disinformation and outright lies coming from Uber brass is staggering, and I don’t like that, at all. Any company that operates that way immediately raises red-flags for me, and I feel compelled to break out the ol’ Occams razor and do a little bullshit detecting. Thanks for reading, and sorry about the verbal diarrhea (first-morning-cup-of-coffee-buyout).

1 Like
38

I notice you didn’t respond to other posters who have legitimate complaints about how taxi companies run their businesses in certain areas.

This is the free market in all its glory: a need exists which is not being satisfied by current businesses, so a new company is created to fill that niche.

I’ve spent enough time with friends and relatives in rural areas that I’ve seen how difficult it is for ma-and-pa stores to make it in low-income, low-density areas; in many cases, the WalMart opening was just the final straw to the camel’s back. I despise WalMart in every way and won’t shop there myself, but I understand why many people in the U.S. do: if you have to drive 40 miles each way every time you run errands, being able to get everything in one place makes sense.

1 Like
39

This is all stuff cabs have had for ages, just America takes the absolute piss out of its customers all the time, no matter what the business as far as I can see. All y’all get screwed. The biggest cab firm round me might as well be run by a Culture Mind it’s that high tech. I’m interested to see what kind of dent Uber will make in the cab market in the UK. And how ‘disruptive technology’ style companies will be looked on by those in the late-night cocaine delivery business… :slight_smile:

40

I’m a little hazy on this.

In one case, we have a very large organization that steadfastly refuses to do any kind of innovation because “that’s how things have always been done,” who try to convince people their credit card machines aren’t working, who have zero customer support, and are pretty much what a lot of people use because they’re everywhere.

And in the other case it’s a much smaller organization restricted to only a few cities, who has a technological edge that strives to create a driver/customer communication at every transaction, and is typically seen as trying harder to be a better service.

Which one is WalMart again? Just because the former are owned by a loose conglomeration of owners who treat their employees terribly and don’t maintain their equipment well doesn’t make it a more of a “mom and pop” operation, but sound suspiciously close to WalMart’s tactics.