Really? You’re so enamored of T[COLOR=Teal]he[/COLOR] Experience that you haven’t actually read the preceding 178 posts?
This is the second thread in as many days where you’ve suggested that people asking you to make some kind of specific claim have trouble reading. It’s an annoying and disrespectful response to a straightforward and reasonable question.
Perhaps the problem is not with our reading skills, but with an actual lack of specificity in your claims. Responding with “The Experience” in many colors rather than an actual concrete point certainly supports that.
That, and him repeatedly using juvenile name-calling, like “tech-weens” shows some biased resentment on the people who bring their ideas from concept to a bustling business model. These ad hominem arguments don’t support his claims at all, rather than just reveal he harbors some disdain for those venturing in new endeavors; be it successful or not.
I think there also concern that the pricing will go from “surge” to “gouge”. If a fare goes from $5 to $7 that’s one thing, but if the same ride goes from $5 to $25 that’s a little different.
I honestly don’t know how the surge pricing actually works in practice, nor do I know if there’s some upper limit on how high it can go.
There is a limit, I think. Although it used to be quite high and I think it was lowered due to law/public outcry in some places.
I disagree that going from $5 to $25 is “gouging” if that’s the market rate. I think that most people misinterpret supply shocks as “gouging”, when they’re actually the market working as intended.
If there’s a hurricane coming and gas goes up to $20/gallon. That’s not gouging. That’s a recognition that whatever gas is in the station tanks is it until after the hurricane. So if you only need 3 gallons to get where you’re going, then only buy 3 gallons. If you leave gas at the normal price, everyone goes and fills up their tanks and cans and then there’s no more and people are stranded.
If there’s a crazy snow storm and it’s Saturday night at 2am when the bars all let out, I’m certainly not going to haul my ass out of bed to go drive a cab for an extra $2. But I might for an extra $20. The purpose of the surge pricing is to match supply to demand. And it won’t work properly if you cap it.
Actual gouging would be changing the price based on an individual’s circumstance, rather than general market conditions. If the gas station owner sees you pushing your car in and goes out to change the price in the absense of any supply or demand shock, just because he knows he has you over a barrel, that’s gouging, and should be prohibited. But if you make general laws with price controls, you just get shortages. Which I think is worse than high prices.
Actually, that very specifically is defined as gouging in most states.
The result of this in the Boston area is a severe taxi shortage. (I don’t know the actual limits applied in Boston, but they’re too low)
Uber is thriving at the moment because it’s nigh impossible to call a taxi to get picked up - you’re lucky if one shows up within 45 minutes, and doubly lucky if your “booked” taxi doesn’t just pick up a street fare instead of you and then never show up. And I’ve given up hailing a taxi on the street because it’s so hit or miss. Taxi stands? Often empty.
Then, when you do get a taxi it’s too often dirty, broken seatbelts, smelly because the driver smokes in the cab when no passengers are there, and talks on the phone the whole time, swerving in and out of traffic and risking your life. Shitty, shitty taxi experience here in Boston.
By contrast the Uber cars (I stick to black cars and SUVs because they are always livery vehicles) are clean, well maintained, and the driver doesn’t multitask while driving.
And you never have to deal with the “oh my credit card reader is broken you’ll have to give me cash” bullshit.
I am curious about what Uber drivers are compelled to do, regarding service animals and where to pick up and drop off.
It does sounds like there are instances of “redlining”, refusing to go to certain areas of the city. Here’s an article discussing it, and here’s an article about a suit in Chicago alleging that the apps aren’t serving all parts of the city. And since Uber drivers can choose to accept or not accept a ride on their phone before they go pick up the person, it’s easy for the drivers to avoid going to certain areas. I’m not sure how in the current system that it could be fixed for Uber.
I don’t want Uber and the other apps to replace current taxis services. Ideally the competition will improve them both, and fix gaps in service that they have.
This is so true. I had been skeptical of Uber when I’d first heard about it. But I’ve taken cabs to the airport before, where I scheduled it a day ahead of time on the yellow cab website, and 5 minutes after the cab was supposed to be at my apartment I got a call from the cab driver needing directions to my apartment complex because he couldn’t find it. This happened more than once. I would schedule the drive early enough so I wasn’t late for the airport, but it was still stressful, since I’d be hoping that the cab drivers would only be 15 minutes late instead of 30 late and wondering if I should give up and drive myself. As opposed to last few times I’ve used Uber, and I could see that there were multiple drivers around, and then I could see exactly how far away my driver was.
I can understand surge pricing in general, but I agree that there should be regulations on it. The idea is that if there are more people requesting rides, then Uber needs incentives to get more drivers out on the roads. During the South by Southwest festival, I was staying with someone who was driving Uber. There were a few times he was thinking of staying at home and relaxing, or going to a SXSW film, but instead he was out driving because the surge pricing was too good to ignore.
But for situations like a terrorist situation, there should be something to override it. I know that there is an algorithm that automatically starts surge pricing if there are a lot of people requesting rides, maybe there could be an alert if there are an unusual number of people requesting rides at unexpected off times. Seems like an easy solution.
Also, maybe a way to predict what pricing would be at the end of the night? It would be hard to be exact, but if I request a ride at 7 pm on Friday night to head towards downtown, maybe it could pop up saying “Surge pricing of 1.5x-2.1x is often in affect in downtown Houston from 11pm- 1am”. And then I could either decide to drive myself, or try to get a ride from someone else coming home, or just plan on using Uber and paying a surge, or plan on going home early or late.
Also, the surge pricing is why I don’t want taxi services to go away. Picking up people who don’t want to pay for surge pricing seems like an easy thing for taxi services to exploit, but I don’t know if any are.
I agree with this. I’m not familiar with all the regulations on regular cabs, but I’m okay with loosening some if they are overly restrictive, along with adding more to Uber and others where necessary.
I guess it’s hard to compare taxis and Uber regulations, since there are city and state regulations, and Uber is a national company having to navigate each place separately.
But like I and others have said, taxi drivers aren’t uniformly knowledgeable about driving directions. Of course in a city as big as Houston it would be extremely hard to know how to get everywhere, which is why Uber has been better for me, since they are just following their GPS anyway.
I do wonder about the safety stuff. I haven’t been exactly able to find out what would happen if I’m in a regular cab, and the cab driver ran a red light and got t-boned and I’m injured and have medical bills, as compared to if the same thing happened when I’m in an Uber.
I don’t know how easily you could apply for an Uber license and pass your phone to your cousin. If I’m remembering correctly from last time I used it, when you call for an Uber, it shows a picture of the driver, their name, a description of their car like “blue Toyota Corolla”, and their license plate number. And I think with Lyft it’s the same but there’s a picture of their car. So you’d have to either similar enough and your cousin go by your name and use your car as well, or plan it out and have the background check be under your name but figure out how to put his car in and his picture, or something. It’s not impossible, but by the same token sometimes taxi drivers let others use their taxis when they’re not supposed to. I don’t know how often it happens in either case.
Right, it’s possible that in another five years Uber might not be around, but there will probably be some other similar type of service that will be better, and taxi services will have started using some of the same ideas that Uber and others have implemented.
Also, some people are saying that they are expecting some big lawsuit or something to happen and for that to bring everything crashing down for Uber and the others, but Uber has been around since 2010, and in multiple US cities since 2011. Which isn’t a super long time, but it’s also not a flash in the pan app that comes and goes in a year.
The main problem with surge pricing is that I can know what pricing will be right now, I can’t know what it will be for the return ride home. Unlike if you took a cab or public transportation and you know what the price will be at any time.
at least in Michigan, if you’re getting paid to transport people you need a “chauffeur license;” you can’t legally do so on a standard “operator” driver’s license.
Also, your insurance company may leave you hung out to dry if you’re operating your car in a commercial manner and you only have a personal policy. god help you if you have an accident and your fare gets injured.
I’m pretty willing to bet most Uber drivers have neither.
so, to answer your question, the “real world thing” it’ll have to fit into is “admitting that it really is a taxi service.”
I don’t think AB has said it doesn’t work. It’s pretty clear he’s been railing on the way the company lies about how it works. “We’re a ‘ridesharing’ company.” Yeah, sure you are. “We don’t have any employees, our drivers are contractors so we’re not liable for what they do.” We’ll see how that line holds up.
Wait, why? Shouldn’t we want more drivers on the roads to get people the hell out of a dangerous place if there’s a terrorist attack?
Surge pricing complaints often seem to assume that the alternative is that everyone gets a ride at a low price. But that’s not the alternative. The alternative is that some people get a ride at a low price, and the rest of the people can’t get a ride at all because there aren’t enough drivers. That seems much worse to me, especially in cases like a terrorist attack where the demand spikes and there’s a real need to mobilize people to be drivers.
Especially when the drivers would naturally be running away from the terrorist attack as well.
Yep, that is gouging. But I will point out that you dont have to accept Ubers price, you can just call a cab company.
Since they’re not at all clear from my post, I’ll now offer my opinions on Uber, regulation, etc.
[ul]
[li]I’m not opposed to regulating Uber, I am strongly opposed to hammering them into the same restrictive model that has resulted in taxi companies providing dismal service[/li][li]I want taxi companies to take note of what aspects of Uber people are attracted to and adjust their own service. Cleaner cars, app-based booking and payment, trip tracking, visible driver photos and customer ratings, MORE CARS![/li][li]I’m in favor of caps on surge pricing if they don’t already exist, but think that surge pricing serves a legitimate purpose so should remain in some form. Perhaps the “killer app” for taxis will be no surge pricing.[/li][li]I’m in favor of some mechanism to prevent or refund surge pricing in some situations. [/li][li]I’m in favor of some type of licensing and background checks for Uber and Lyft drivers that do not already have livery or hackney licenses (at least here in Boston all the Uber Black Car and SUV drivers are already licensed livery drivers and cars - and of course the taxis that throw their hats into the Uber ring have hackney licenses and are operating under a medallion)[/li][/ul]
Moderator Note
I’ve already requested that people not make personal remarks about other posters. No warning issued, but let’s keep the snark down.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Uber is like a ticket reseller-it provides a means for a vehicle owner to contact and contract his services to the public. Does your local ticket reseller assume any liability? Of course not, because it only resells an existing contract. Uber may be many things, but it is adept in positioning itself. I am sure that it could be sued, but how successfully? who knows.
In other news, I am renewing my auto policy this week. There’s a new addendum that very specifically and very sternly warns that my personal policy DOES NOT cover use for any kind of ride-sharing, commercial hire or “Transportation Network Company” - like Uber or Lyft, specifically named. It further says that state law requires a commercial auto policy for such uses.
I asked my agent for a quick rate, and he said to use my 2007 Odyssey for Ubering, I would need a commercial policy at almost $2,800 a year. (Mature driver, perfect record, multiple discounts, etc. - I don’t think anyone other than a slightly older woman could get lower rates.) That’s almost four times my “personal” policy cost.
So raise your hand if you think that all Uber drivers making an extra buck are paying double to triple rate or more for their insurance… and consider that in an accident, they may be effectively uninsured despite having put up a good front.
Does the surge pricing get more drivers out on the road when there’s been a terrorist attack? I’m legitimately asking. A driver might see that there’s surge pricing on a regular Friday night and decide to go out and pick up more people, but I don’t know if someone will see that there’s surge pricing because there’s a crazed gunman going around and decide to go out and pick up more people.
And I think it should be regulated just like gas stations can’t do price gouging. The free market would let a gas station charge $20 when there’s a hurricane, but there are regulations against that in most places.
But terrorist attacks are fairly rare, and things like the price surge in Sydney make the news because they are rare and because it seems a little heartless. Most surge pricing is just from regular events like rush hour or after the bars close or maybe bad weather. I’m pretty much okay with surge pricing for those normal reasons, as long as there are alternatives like regular taxis.
As I’ve (and others) have said before, this is something I’d like to see tightened up. Right now in Illinois, there are two options for rideshare drivers: one is Metromile, which charges based on miles, and the other is Erie Insurance (a smaller, but highly rated auto insurance company) which is around an extra $9-$15/month. Apparently, USAA also has a “rideshare” add-on in Colorado for $8-$10/month. That said, this is hardly universally available, and I don’t have any way of knowing (that I know of) which of my drivers have what kind of insurance. I personally would like that to be standardized and regulated.
(Moves little piece with the Uber logo one step towards the “Taxi!” end of the scale.)