What I am not sure Uber corporate understands is that they are. They have such an overblown sense of self-importance with changing the world and all that crap. Changing the world might happen but it will be because you provide a service people want. Uber exists because people wanted something better than traditional cabs. With the way these guys are going about it, in a short period of time, people will be begging for traditional cabs.
That’s the added Uber insurance they promise us. You didn’t get one in your kit with the phone. Maybe it’s a Canadian thing.
I’m thinking of registering my dogsled to pick up PAX. I could make huge profit at the current rates and offer frozen bottles of water.
Another reason outside of crappy compensation that will cause the quality of Uber to drop below that of a cab. A business can’t keep lying to those it does business with and expect to keep doing business with them.
Financial masochism is not a new mental health problem/phenomenon. Amway made quite a success of their scheme for awhile.
There just seems to be something about not facing financial reality and having a dream of utterly phony success that appeals to Amerikans. Uber has tapped into that psyche for the time being. Reality ususally strikes these folk one at a time. If you’ve been fooled and abused a time or 2 prior it takes less time to come out from under the stupor.
I had a pretty pathetic car yesterday. My wife said are we actually going to take that car. (After watching him get lost trying to find us because he does not know the turn restrictions in the area).
He was rated a 4.6 and was a nice enough guy who spoke broken English. Car was clean in side but felt like I was in a 1990’s Toyota Corolla.
Was fine had to direct him a bit and got 5 stars. But I can see how people would rate lower as I think the cab outside may have been a nicer choice.
It’s a real shame about that. The whole concept is so cool and fantastic. In my view it was the perfect in between a black car and a taxi. Going out with my wife suddenly became so much easier and safer now that either of us can drink during dinner. I still intend to use Uber however it will always be black from now on.
Just thinking aloud here Simon - So you have decided to move to Black for your UBER trips. Has it been OK? In your opinion worth the cost difference?
We can’t forget that Travis did start UBER as a Black Car service exclusively. He followed all the local licence and insurance laws for those cars. There was some grey area in regards to the use of a metering device to price fares and the definition of a pre-booked fare.
Then came Lyft, cannabilised his concept, flouted laws and started pulling start-up funds away from UBER. He gave Licensing Authorities an ultimatum I believe, force licenses on Lyft or UBER will go Rideshare.
The rest is history so to speak. Do you think Uber is simply trying to crush Lyft who have pulled out of some cities, and wait for slow moving authorities to shut loopholes in Rideshare, forcing more work towards Black cars?
That does make sense. But I am thinking from a purely user perspective. My previous experience with X was Black Car to Dinner Beat up stick shift Honda to the movies then a driver showing up with a car that was not listed in the app.
My concern is that Uber is going to crush it’s black car service over time. With the introduction of Uber + and UberLux (Or services like that). They are looking to control more of what is being done from a non regulation type of cars.
are you guys also noticing a bunch more crappy fares? I used to average $10 per ride… it has gone down to $6-7 with the rate cuts; even if lowering rates increased rides/hour, it only increased short fares. Also, the quality of the people also went down in terms of how many more cheap asses we are getting. The only salvo is the guarantee, and I better see it reflected faithfully on the statement.
I might observe that this particular transportation arena seems to be prone to manipulators of the underclass by numerous willing under class participants who can’t do simple math.
They manipulators will only burn through them in droves and be left to deal with that class of people. And that GAME will naturally expire on the backs of the underclass participants.