Pretty much this with my experience with Uber vs taxis. My wife has more experience in the Uber part of things (and she loves it), but my experience with Uber made me never want to take a taxi again if I can avoid it (or until they step up their game and provide the same level of service.) I don’t mind drivers that talk to me (I actually like it), but drivers that are on their headset phones all the time in an unkempt cab, ugh. And the complete unpredictability of arrival times. I’m sick of calling a cab, not knowing if I’m wasting my time because the cab company says they’ll call me back when they find a driver (all through automated messages and a phone tree, of course), and then, I’m sitting there twenty minutes later, wondering if there is or isn’t going to be a cab nearby anytime soon. With Uber, I know exactly where the drivers are and how fast they can reasonably get to me.
So, whatever minimal risk there is, I’ll take it. It’s far preferable to the major cab companies in Chicago in my experience, and if it gets the cab companies to improve their service and get into the 21st century, all the better. But, until then, I and many others like me are not going to take a cab if they can help it.
Which is all well and good, but it’d be even nicer if they bothered to actually adhere to the laws for licensing and fare rates that taxi companies (which they are no matter how much they like to mince words about it) are required to adhere to, and actually paid their taxes like they’re supposed to. I refuse to patronize a company whose business model is based on getting ahead by breaking the law.
I can call a livery car service outside of Uber and get picked up - legally and licensed by the city/state. How is doing the same thing via an app suddenly illegal?
It’s not. What’s illegal is a company that isn’t licensed as a livery car service providing livery car service, without fixed fares based on time and distance plainly advertised, and not paying the taxes that the city and state assesses on livery car services.
I think Idle Thoughts was clear. No more threadshitting. This thread is about comparing two apps. If you want to start a thread about how the concept behind Uber sucks go right ahead. Do not continue to derail this thread.
I’m young and live in a major city and know people who have used Uber, but I don’t think I’d ever use it myself. I pretty much take subway wherever I need to go, and on the rare occasions I take a cab, I just take a yellow cab. Uber has just always struck me as a little sketchy.
ETA: Apologies, re: mod instruction. Anyway, it does sound like Lyft offers pretty lame service…
I can only go on my experience which has been awesome. I have a credit card on file so I don’t have to mess with cash or paying the driver. I don’t have to find a cab, click on the app and one appears. The only time I had to wait more than about 5 minutes was New Years eve. About the only way I’d take a taxi now is if either uber didn’t provide service where I was or if I was in a huge rush and a taxi was right there.
In my experience Uber, especially the levels above UberX are very nice and nowhere near as sketchy as a cab. The divers are better behaved (less cell phone talking) are better drivers, and the cars are in much better condition than the vast majority of cabs I’ve been in. We often get offered bottles of water and some have all the cords you might want to charge your phones. It’s like a private limo service, compared to a cab, which feels like a personal mass transit bus.
The only issue I have with Lyft is that they raise their rates during prime times. By raise, I mean triple the price. I avoid them during those times. Other than that, no problems.
They don’t have mustaches on the cars here. It looks like a regular car.
Not all of us live in MiddleOfNowhereVille with a yard large enough to park our 18 vehicles in various stages of working order in, nor would we ever want to.
Some of us having been riding with strangers every day for years … on the subway, the bus, in commuter vans, jitney buses, car services, taxis. We’re not afraid.
Uber doesn’t publish their data, but some of it leaked out in 2013 and they were doing 100,000 trips a week in each of their largest cities. December 2013 earned 26M from NYC, 12.7M from Chicago, San Francisco 17.7M. From the data that leaked, the 2013 revenue estimate they came up with was over 1 Billion. With the growth explosion in 2014, they figure 2014 probably hit 2 Billion. Lyft doesn’t make their data public either, but they are making a lot of money also.
It’s not just a handful of people generating all that revenue for them. It’s customers, and lots of them.
In DC, Uber is a must. DC cab drivers are scum and straight up refuse to take people to their destinations, or accept credit cards (all of which are a violation of the law).
I’ve never used either, but I’ve taken 4 taxi rides in the past 3 years - 3 to the airport & 1 from the airport, & two of those were arranged by the hotel.
Does either app let you know when they have surge pricing &/or estimate how much it will be when you go to hail them?
I’ve not used Lyft, but Uber had surge pricing on NYE from like 2-4am or something like that. It does give you a fare rate before you actually summon a car.