pretty much. there were some mortifying incidents where the positive state reception led the state press to believe that it was to welcome Uber's shakeup of the industry. But highly-educated highly-paid English-speaking journalists reproducing Western talking points triumphantly slamming working-class taxi drivers as 'lazy' (in the state media, no less) went down like a lead balloon
it triggered every alarm of the Singapore state, it's the nightmare scenario of foreign capital corrupting the press and igniting social conflict for a profitable interest actualized with no warning
it's a little funny, since Uber's disruptive potential was always going to be weak. The local taxi industry isn't medallion-based, so fares were low to begin with, and existing taxi drivers are not sitting on a huge capital stake subject to abrupt devaluation. It's a city-state, so problems over service availability are weak. Cars are fantastically expensive so Uber drivers try to rent rather than own, as existing taxis do; unsurprisingly, many Uber drivers turn out to be existing taxi drivers using Uber as an additional dispatcher. So there wasn't much scope for economic disruption to begin with. Less disruption, less profit. A race-to-the-bottom of being the slightly cheaper dispatcher doesn't pay the San Fransisco rent.
still, it shows that Uber is quite willing to tolerate these checks - under certain kinds of political terrain
I'm a little bemused about Uber's press statements in Austin, given what they said locally
SINGAPORE: The National Taxi Association (NTA) and transport apps Grab and Uber have released statements in response to changes to the licensing frameworks for private hire car drivers and taxi drivers, as announced by Senior Minister of State for Transport Ng Chee Meng during the Committee of Supply debate in Parliament on Tuesday (Apr 12).
"We view these regulations as an endorsement of private hire cars and a positive development for the industry as a whole," said Grab.
During his speech, Mr Ng announced that there would be a new Private Hire Car Driver Vocational Licencing (PDVL) framework in place by the first half of 2017. This framework requires that drivers providing chauffeured services undergo sufficient training on safety and the regulations, as well as medical and background checks.
He also said there would be updates to the existing Taxi Driver Vocational Licence (TDVL), such as including training for taxi drivers to use tools like the Global Positioning System (GPS) and shortening the duration of refresher courses from six- to nine- hour sessions to between three and five hours.
In separate statements on Tuesday, Grab and Uber - which both offer private hire car services - said they supported the new regulations, while NTA said more could be done to level the playing field between taxi drivers and private hire services.
GRAB, UBER EXPRESS SUPPORT FOR NEW RULES
Ride-hailing service provider Grab said it was in favour of regulations that complement its "robust driver registration, training and ratings and vehicle inspection framework" to drive the transport industry forward in safety and accessibility.
"We commend the Singapore Government’s willingness to embrace innovation and build Singapore as a Smart Nation," it said, adding that the company had been working closely with the Ministry of Transport (MOT) and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) since it began operations in Singapore.
"Grab is aligned with the MOT’s and LTA’s efforts to create a sustainable transportation ecosystem where private hire vehicles are a trusted and reliable transport option and co-exist with taxis, benefiting and protecting both passengers and drivers' interests," it said in the statement.
It added that many of the requirements announced by Mr Ng complemented the company's existing practices and "strict driver code of conduct". In addition, it said the PDVL will enable Grab to reduce its operational costs in enforcing background and medical checks, and instead focus its training on delivering a better ride experience and service standards.
As the passenger demand for ride-hailing services and alternative transport options continues to grow, Grab said it would make sure that its drivers receive "the fullest support they can get from us during this transition period".
Fellow ride-hailing app Uber's general manager Warren Tseng also said the company was "pleased" that the Government had "adopted many of our existing world-class safety standards in these new regulations", such as pre-screening and robust driver skills training.
Mr Tseng added that the measures continued to put safety first, which was "the single most important thing" for the company.
the PDVL seems similar to the policy being contested in Austin: background check, medical screening, and most importantly, the elimination of the notion that any driver can just install an app and go
the conciliatory attitude of Uber here is probably tied to their being severely humbled when they blundered in their early marketing (protip: don't market yourself as a rebel in an authoritarian state). This rapidly transformed an initially warm reception by the infocomms ministry into a mobilization of party, state, and press against it
still, it's obviously contradictory to their statements re: Austin
It's not though - the critical, and least effectively communicated, problem in Austin was the lack of street pickups. Also it seems that the regs make it more equal there, whereas the new fees made it more difficult for Uber here, especially on top of the dramatic impact on finances from the lack of street pickup.
Also I learned today from KUT.org that the city isn't even enforcing the fingerprint requirement and now that Uber is gone, doesn't plan to for its tiny competitors who stayed until at least June, with no penalty for failure to hit the projected goals, and that even their February 2017 100% compliance deadline is now a "close to 100%" compliance "target" with no enforcement component for drivers or companies.
The whole point was to drive out Uber and Lyft.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Also I learned today from KUT.org that the city isn't even enforcing the fingerprint requirement and now that Uber is gone, doesn't plan to for its tiny competitors who stayed until at least June, with no penalty for failure to hit the projected goals, and that even their February 2017 100% compliance deadline is now a "close to 100%" compliance "target" with no enforcement component for drivers or companies.
The whole point was to drive out Uber and Lyft.
Sounds like lawyer fodder.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
pretty much. there were some mortifying incidents where the positive state reception led the state press to believe that it was to welcome Uber's shakeup of the industry. But highly-educated highly-paid English-speaking journalists reproducing Western talking points triumphantly slamming working-class taxi drivers as 'lazy' (in the state media, no less) went down like a lead balloon
it triggered every alarm of the Singapore state, it's the nightmare scenario of foreign capital corrupting the press and igniting social conflict for a profitable interest actualized with no warning
it's a little funny, since Uber's disruptive potential was always going to be weak. The local taxi industry isn't medallion-based, so fares were low to begin with, and existing taxi drivers are not sitting on a huge capital stake subject to abrupt devaluation. It's a city-state, so problems over service availability are weak. Cars are fantastically expensive so Uber drivers try to rent rather than own, as existing taxis do; unsurprisingly, many Uber drivers turn out to be existing taxi drivers using Uber as an additional dispatcher. So there wasn't much scope for economic disruption to begin with. Less disruption, less profit. A race-to-the-bottom of being the slightly cheaper dispatcher doesn't pay the San Fransisco rent.
still, it shows that Uber is quite willing to tolerate these checks - under certain kinds of political terrain
There's been a similar phenomenon with Uber with Taiwan (even after it was ruled illegal back in February). Putting aside that Uber is apparently losing a billion dollars a year in "Greater China"--the PRC, the ROC, Hong Kong, etc.--it's really not an ideal marketplace for Uber. Taxis aren't much more expensive, extremely accessible, and drivers are generally very polite. They can afford to be a low luxury because the entire island has a comprehensive bus and county rail system, city MRT and the national highspeed rail running across the island--cash is more popular than credit in Taiwan, which harms Uber, and some Taxis will take MRT and other transit system cards too.
Still, Uber still operates in Taipei, despite the fines any Uber driver can expect to get.
Good news everyone! DWI arrests are up 7.5% over last year.
Wait, that's not good news at all.
They'll just say its a result of them "cracking down" on drunk driving because there's no way this could be a negative side effect (that literally everyone predicted) of them limiting the availability of cheap and dependable livery service.
Good news everyone! DWI arrests are up 7.5% over last year.
Wait, that's not good news at all.
They'll just say its a result of them "cracking down" on drunk driving because there's no way this could be a negative side effect (that literally everyone predicted) of them limiting the availability of cheap and dependable livery service.
...in the city with the most bars per capita nationwide
Good news everyone! DWI arrests are up 7.5% over last year.
Wait, that's not good news at all.
Anyone have the year-on-year stats for April? The May numbers would be way more useful if we knew what the trend was before Uber left.
If I remember right from the exit, it was a 13% decrease in drunk driving fatalities the year before Uber left.
I scheduled an airport ride with Fare. The app is meh, the driver almost didn't show up because I scheduled it for 4am then went to bed and he texted me to see if I still wanted the ride. Scheduling is a nice feature, and easy to do if basically no one is using your service because it's almost twice as expensive as Uber.
Get Me actually was twice as expensive as Uber.
Cabs are still nonexistent, couldn't get a confirmation after a half hour of trying. They have practically disappeared from Austin roads now, where seeing a cab was becoming more and more common before as they tried to compete with Uber.
Losing Uber is going to kill people. Also, articles continue to miss the more critical issue of banning street pickups. Even if they offered to fingerprint everyone for free, Uber would still be squarely fucked because of the requirement to find a parking spot before collecting the rider, and another one before dropping them off. Cabs don't have to do that, and it makes doing pickups downtown basically impossible.
In Pittsburgh they're trying to compete, the local Yellow Cab company either rebranded or was bought out or something. The replacement, called zTrip, advertises that you can order rides by phone, by app, or by hail, trying to eat Uber's lunch and still do the traditional cab thing.
The question is if they meet the all-consuming supply problem of traditional livery services. Are there enough of your cabs on the road?
So I just started ubering for fun. Uberpeople definitely sucks the fun out of everything but I'm enjoying lyft/uber so far. I'm in pittsburgh, funnily enough.
I almost got smashed by a ztrip car going the wrong way on a one way street. That was fun.
Getting some extra cash on the 4th instead of sitting at home watching west wing again was the best part.
This is the first trial and conviction of any Uber driver in Denmark, so it is going to be interesting going forward what this will do to the remaining Uber drivers (and if Uber will be forced to exit the Danish market due to amounting conviction):
"Sagerne kan blive skæbnesvangre for den amerikanske transporttjeneste, der kan ende med at måtte trække den såkaldte Uberpop-tjeneste af markedet i Danmark, hvis også eventuelle ankesager tabes."
The cases can have dire consequences for the American transportation service which can ultimately result in an exit from the Danish market if also potential appeal cases are lost.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Internet transport firm Uber used controversial and complicated international tax structures to reduce its New Zealand tax bill to around that of an average Kiwi worker, records show.
Through a structure known as "Double Dutch" accounting, the online transport network channels revenue to subsidiaries in the Netherlands that hold earnings and minimise its worldwide tax bills.
According to financial accounts filed with the New Zealand Companies office, Uber declared gross revenues of $1,061,018 in New Zealand in 2014 but paid just $9397 in income tax. Someone on the average wage of $45,000 is taxed about $7800 through PAYE.
When someone catches an Uber service, 75 per cent of the fare goes to driver and the rest is sent to parent company Uber BV in the Netherlands. In an article last year, Fortune magazine explained one per cent tax was paid to the Dutch government when royalties were sent to another Dutch Uber company, costs were deducted, a share was sent to another Uber-owned firm in Bermuda and then a small percentage was sent back to local branches such as those in New Zealand.
The activity is not illegal and former Inland Revenue manager Adam Hunt said the "Double Dutch" structure was common in the digital economy. There was an argument if they didn't minimise tax they paid they could be considered negligent by their shareholders, "which is why law is the only way to stop it".
Hunt said it was important to remember all of their drivers' earnings were liable for tax and GST if over the threshold. But using the Double Dutch system meant Uber wasn't contributing to the infrastructure that makes their business possible: roads, police and educated customers.
In a statement, an Uber spokesman said the company complies with all tax obligations in New Zealand.
Revenue Minister Michael Woodhouse referred the Herald to the IRD, which said it didn't comment on individual taxpayer affairs.
A Herald investigation this year revealed the 20 multinational companies most aggressively shifting profits out of New Zealand - which did not include Uber as the company's reported operations were considered too small - paid virtually no income tax, despite recording nearly $10 billion in annual sales.
Uber has come under fire after it set up its own vetting system and stopped requiring drivers to have passenger endorsements - a legal requirement for anyone being paid to take a passenger in their car. The company - which says it provides a "rideshare" service - said it implemented its own process because of "existing red tape".
But Transport Minister Simon Bridges said the company couldn't "cherry-pick" the laws they didn't like.
"The rules are the rules and they've got to follow them. Under the old regime and the new one, they have to have a [passenger] endorsement and the reason for that is really simple - the safety of our people."
How many companies /don't/ use every international tax shelter available to them? Really? It's nonsense, it has to stop, but it has nothing to do with Uber. Every last company, good and bad, does this.
Tax shelters aside. I know there has been some stuff about their profitability improving in the US, but Uber is generally not making a profit.
Paying 9k in tax on 1 million in revenue doesn't really tell you anything if the company is spending $970k to grow/make that revenue.
To be fair, they're also explicitly not complying with licensing laws here, and have stated that they'll continue to not do so, which is probably why someone looked at their financials specifically
Tax shelters aside. I know there has been some stuff about their profitability improving in the US, but Uber is generally not making a profit.
Paying 9k in tax on 1 million in revenue doesn't really tell you anything if the company is spending $970k to grow/make that revenue.
To be fair, they're also explicitly not complying with licensing laws here, and have stated that they'll continue to not do so, which is probably why someone looked at their financials specifically
If that's the case, than they should have had someone who knew the first thing about business tax look at their financials instead of the dummy that wrote the piece.
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
More data or links to some of the data from the Austin PD mentioned in the article would be nice, but going strictly off of the article's text it doesn't seem like any of the doom and gloom predicted has come to pass thus far.
Still perusing the financial analysis linked in the article. Unfortunately, I don't have an extensive background in business or start-ups, but the analysis isn't optimistic anyways (Is Naked Capitalism a legitimate source?) and confirms a lot of my earlier suspicions about Uber's business model (confirmation bias?). Also no idea who Hubert Horan is:
Anyone with classic economics/MBA training would assume that while there might be some confusion and uncertainty at first, Uber drivers would quickly figure out that it would make no sense to work for Uber unless their gross take home pay (fares minus direct daily costs like gas minus Uber’s 30% cut) would need to much higher than take home pay with a traditional taxi company in order to cover all the vehicle ownership, financing and maintenance costs. It would actually need to be higher than that, in order to cover the risk that Uber could terminate them at will, leaving them stuck with all the vehicle costs. Again, people trained to think that markets work perfectly might understand that drivers might underestimate these costs at first, but word would quickly get out that you need a significant premium at Uber just to reach a breakeven versus driving elsewhere.
My articles argue that the assumption of an efficient driver labor market based on good quality information about pay is wrong because there was a fundamental “information asymmetry” between a multi-billion dollar company and hundreds of thousands of isolated drivers, and Uber worked aggressively to exploit this imbalance by providing blatantly false information (drivers making $90,000) and deliberately misleading information (implying higher gross earnings directly translated into higher real take home pay).
What hasn’t been clear to me is whether good information would finally cut through the initial barrage of deliberate misinformation, and the inherent difficulty of dealing with issues like depreciation costs, and how depreciation and maintenance costs increase if you drive your personal car 65 hours a week instead of 10. Oho’s comments strongly suggest the problem is even worse than I’d imagined.
To simplify just a bit, the Uber strategy was to (1) jumpstart rapid growth with driver pay premiums that would get lots of drivers to switch from traditional operators; these premiums were real but not as large as they seemed because drivers hadn’t figured out how to properly deduct vehicle costs to determine true take home pay, and by willful falsehoods (our drivers make $90,000) (2) gradually cut back driver pay once Uber was clearly a large established play by eliminating incentive programs and increasing the percentage of fares Uber retained; but drivers can’t do anything about pay cuts because they’ve locked themselves into car payments (3) At some point—and according to the study quoted in the second article in the series, it may have already happened—true Uber take home pay (after vehicle costs) is no better or slightly worse than what Yellow Cab paid before (4) Uber achieves industry dominance, drivers have no alternatives, and take home pay falls to (or even below) minimum wage level.
They're subsidizing over half of every ride. Uber has been trying to use the playbook major airlines used during deregulation - undercut your competition by relying on your war chest to outlast them at unprofitable rates. Problem is, the competition hasn't gone away, they've had a number of foreign expansions fail (most notably China), and their war chest is shrinking. In addition, drivers are starting to grasp the concept of TCO, and realizing that Uber isn't the great deal they thought. And raising prices won't work either - they would need to double prices, and any revenue gain would be counterbalanced by losses due to reduced usage.
They're subsidizing over half of every ride. Uber has been trying to use the playbook major airlines used during deregulation - undercut your competition by relying on your war chest to outlast them at unprofitable rates. Problem is, the competition hasn't gone away, they've had a number of foreign expansions fail (most notably China), and their war chest is shrinking. In addition, drivers are starting to grasp the concept of TCO, and realizing that Uber isn't the great deal they thought. And raising prices won't work either - they would need to double prices, and any revenue gain would be counterbalanced by losses due to reduced usage.
Yeah Naked Capitalism laid out a pretty compelling argument for why Uber has no path to profitability. One line should jump out:
Drivers, vehicles and fuel account for 85% of urban car service costs. None of these costs decline significantly as companies grow. As the P&L data above demonstrates, Uber has not discovered a magical new way to drive down unit costs.
You can only drive driver pay so low, they're losing any economies of scale in "fleet costs" (which they don't directly pay, but which must eventually factor in to their reimbursement model), and fuel is fuel. So unlike something like, say, Amazon there's no way for them to "grow into profitability." Simply leveraging "underutilized" POVs part-time will never be enough to meet demand, and as soon as you're having cars driven full time fleet cost kills.
And I'm skeptical that driverless cars can eliminate their driver expense and simultaneously drive fleet costs down enough to get them there...not before they run out of money.
It does make me sad though, as one of the people who would happily pay double for Uber just based on the service provided. And many aspects of that service I prefer aren't the parts that necessarily break the financial model.
I did have occasion to try a traditional taxi recently, thanks to Vancouver deciding to fuck Uber with a rusty pike. Which, hey, is their choice. However, the experience was less than optimal.
- Tried calling their number, old-school style, because hey why install rando apps for a one-night trip? Busy signal. Busy signal again. Then I get put on hold, which I give up on after ten minutes. Okay, so guess it's all now on their killer app, which I'm sure is just as good as Uber's.
- Their app fails to detect my location properly. That happens, no big. I enter it in. I will have a cab in five minutes. That was easy!
- After ten minutes the driver calls. I realize I fat fingered the address, he is at 1000 not 1200. That is two blocks. I tell him, he says he's on his way. My bad!
- After several more minutes, I call. He didn't see me at the new address (which he heard wrong), and had already bounced. Um...okay. He told me to just book another ride through the app.
- Second ride booked. Five minutes. Okay, we still have time before the game starts, no big.
- Ten minutes go by. Twenty. I try to call again (hahaha!). No driver has been assigned. I try canceling the ride and requesting another. This may or may not have caused further day, I have no way of knowing, because the app gives no feedback on where you are in any sort of queue (other whether a driver is assigned yet). Okay, five minute wait. I'm pretty sure now that's just a default wait time and a bald-faced lie.
- Ten minutes go by. No driver assigned. I've seen many cabs drive by down the street, all seemingly on the way to pickups...pickups that aren't us...based on their lights. At this point we decide to walk there, in the rain, because we could still get there for most of the first period.
- As we get to that street, a cab is coming. I go ahead and step in front of it, and ask the driver how the hell we can get a cab assigned through the app. I didn't expect much. He told us we could just walk six blocks that-a-way and probably flag one down on the street. Yeah, guess we should have done that to begin with instead of trusting your shitty app-based dispatch.
- We get about two blocks when my phone buzzes and we've been assigned a driver. That was a long five minutes. Okay fine, we walk back, wait (he wasn't close) and catch the cab. It gets us there barely in time for faceoff. The driver seems both fast and furious, and I was fairly certain we were going to die in that car. I've had similar experiences in Uber, but it's not the norm. Maybe it's not the norm for Vancouver taxis either, I only have one data point. But it was a terrifying one.
- We check out using the card reader. It is defaulted to 20% tip, which I'm noticing is a thing at restaurants now too. Disapprove.
So we got ready to leave like an hour before we needed to, figuring we could grab a beer nearby then head to the game. Instead we got to our seat right at faceoff. An hour wasted, thank god we had it to waste. Fuck you, Vancouver cabs. You may have run Uber out of town, but you did a great job reminding me why other cities have had such a hard time doing so. It's because people hate you, because you are fucking terrible.
In other news, California pulling the registrations on Uber's self-driving (but totally not self-driving) cars is hilarious. Once again Uber learns that if a government plays hardball, they lose every time. Kinda unfair, they'd done a great job programming them to run red lights just like real Californians and everything.
They're subsidizing over half of every ride. Uber has been trying to use the playbook major airlines used during deregulation - undercut your competition by relying on your war chest to outlast them at unprofitable rates. Problem is, the competition hasn't gone away, they've had a number of foreign expansions fail (most notably China), and their war chest is shrinking. In addition, drivers are starting to grasp the concept of TCO, and realizing that Uber isn't the great deal they thought. And raising prices won't work either - they would need to double prices, and any revenue gain would be counterbalanced by losses due to reduced usage.
Yeah Naked Capitalism laid out a pretty compelling argument for why Uber has no path to profitability. One line should jump out:
Drivers, vehicles and fuel account for 85% of urban car service costs. None of these costs decline significantly as companies grow. As the P&L data above demonstrates, Uber has not discovered a magical new way to drive down unit costs.
You can only drive driver pay so low, they're losing any economies of scale in "fleet costs" (which they don't directly pay, but which must eventually factor in to their reimbursement model), and fuel is fuel. So unlike something like, say, Amazon there's no way for them to "grow into profitability." Simply leveraging "underutilized" POVs part-time will never be enough to meet demand, and as soon as you're having cars driven full time fleet cost kills.
And I'm skeptical that driverless cars can eliminate their driver expense and simultaneously drive fleet costs down enough to get them there...not before they run out of money.
It does make me sad though, as one of the people who would happily pay double for Uber just based on the service provided. And many aspects of that service I prefer aren't the parts that necessarily break the financial model.
I did have occasion to try a traditional taxi recently, thanks to Vancouver deciding to fuck Uber with a rusty pike. Which, hey, is their choice. However, the experience was less than optimal.
- Tried calling their number, old-school style, because hey why install rando apps for a one-night trip? Busy signal. Busy signal again. Then I get put on hold, which I give up on after ten minutes. Okay, so guess it's all now on their killer app, which I'm sure is just as good as Uber's.
- Their app fails to detect my location properly. That happens, no big. I enter it in. I will have a cab in five minutes. That was easy!
- After ten minutes the driver calls. I realize I fat fingered the address, he is at 1000 not 1200. That is two blocks. I tell him, he says he's on his way. My bad!
- After several more minutes, I call. He didn't see me at the new address (which he heard wrong), and had already bounced. Um...okay. He told me to just book another ride through the app.
- Second ride booked. Five minutes. Okay, we still have time before the game starts, no big.
- Ten minutes go by. Twenty. I try to call again (hahaha!). No driver has been assigned. I try canceling the ride and requesting another. This may or may not have caused further day, I have no way of knowing, because the app gives no feedback on where you are in any sort of queue (other whether a driver is assigned yet). Okay, five minute wait. I'm pretty sure now that's just a default wait time and a bald-faced lie.
- Ten minutes go by. No driver assigned. I've seen many cabs drive by down the street, all seemingly on the way to pickups...pickups that aren't us...based on their lights. At this point we decide to walk there, in the rain, because we could still get there for most of the first period.
- As we get to that street, a cab is coming. I go ahead and step in front of it, and ask the driver how the hell we can get a cab assigned through the app. I didn't expect much. He told us we could just walk six blocks that-a-way and probably flag one down on the street. Yeah, guess we should have done that to begin with instead of trusting your shitty app-based dispatch.
- We get about two blocks when my phone buzzes and we've been assigned a driver. That was a long five minutes. Okay fine, we walk back, wait (he wasn't close) and catch the cab. It gets us there barely in time for faceoff. The driver seems both fast and furious, and I was fairly certain we were going to die in that car. I've had similar experiences in Uber, but it's not the norm. Maybe it's not the norm for Vancouver taxis either, I only have one data point. But it was a terrifying one.
- We check out using the card reader. It is defaulted to 20% tip, which I'm noticing is a thing at restaurants now too. Disapprove.
So we got ready to leave like an hour before we needed to, figuring we could grab a beer nearby then head to the game. Instead we got to our seat right at faceoff. An hour wasted, thank god we had it to waste. Fuck you, Vancouver cabs. You may have run Uber out of town, but you did a great job reminding me why other cities have had such a hard time doing so. It's because people hate you, because you are fucking terrible.
Hey at least they didn't try to cheat you with a long drive/thumbing cash/saying their reader was broken which has been my general cab experience.
More data or links to some of the data from the Austin PD mentioned in the article would be nice, but going strictly off of the article's text it doesn't seem like any of the doom and gloom predicted has come to pass thus far.
This is not what the article said. It said that:
Sexual assaults haven't decreased, like the anti-Uber people claimed. So the fingerprints are doing nothing.
Drunk driving hasn't increased like Uber and the APD claimed, but college was out during the measured period so there's no good data.
Hey at least they didn't try to cheat you with a long drive/thumbing cash/saying their reader was broken which has been my general cab experience.
Oh been there too. It's why I always have the destination up in Google before I get in, and always pay by card, and if they say their reader is broken I'll say that sounds like their problem and I'm leaving. I've noticed that trick seems to have fallen out of favor though.
The main things about Uber that I simply cannot imagine giving up and which I see no reason cab companies couldn't implement if they just wanted to stop being shitty shitty shit shits:
1) Decent hailing app, with ability to leave feedback on drivers, and decent estimates on wait time for a car, and estimate of fare if I input a destination
2) Email receipt with time, mileage, fare, and a map of the ride
3) Payment handled through app, not driver, so I simply get out when we get there
4) No tip. Yes, Uber needs to charge more in this case. But I firmly believe paying for service shouldn't be optional. I cannot stress enough how much I enjoy eating out in countries where tipping just isn't a thing. Tipping is stupid, and should die. However, if tip is still a thing, see (3)...I want it done through the app, after I'm out of the car and the driver is gone.
Really that's it, and I don't think that's too much to ask. Sure, I like having normal POV trims rather than the plastic/vinyl motif of most cabs, but provided it doesn't smell entirely of vomit I'm really not that picky there. On (3), I believe Vancouver's app had this option, but you had to sign up for a whole account and such, which I don't want to have to do in every city I visit, especially for a single ride.
Posts
it triggered every alarm of the Singapore state, it's the nightmare scenario of foreign capital corrupting the press and igniting social conflict for a profitable interest actualized with no warning
it's a little funny, since Uber's disruptive potential was always going to be weak. The local taxi industry isn't medallion-based, so fares were low to begin with, and existing taxi drivers are not sitting on a huge capital stake subject to abrupt devaluation. It's a city-state, so problems over service availability are weak. Cars are fantastically expensive so Uber drivers try to rent rather than own, as existing taxis do; unsurprisingly, many Uber drivers turn out to be existing taxi drivers using Uber as an additional dispatcher. So there wasn't much scope for economic disruption to begin with. Less disruption, less profit. A race-to-the-bottom of being the slightly cheaper dispatcher doesn't pay the San Fransisco rent.
still, it shows that Uber is quite willing to tolerate these checks - under certain kinds of political terrain
It's not though - the critical, and least effectively communicated, problem in Austin was the lack of street pickups. Also it seems that the regs make it more equal there, whereas the new fees made it more difficult for Uber here, especially on top of the dramatic impact on finances from the lack of street pickup.
The whole point was to drive out Uber and Lyft.
Sounds like lawyer fodder.
I mean it makes sense, it kinda puts a time limit on your options.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
There's been a similar phenomenon with Uber with Taiwan (even after it was ruled illegal back in February). Putting aside that Uber is apparently losing a billion dollars a year in "Greater China"--the PRC, the ROC, Hong Kong, etc.--it's really not an ideal marketplace for Uber. Taxis aren't much more expensive, extremely accessible, and drivers are generally very polite. They can afford to be a low luxury because the entire island has a comprehensive bus and county rail system, city MRT and the national highspeed rail running across the island--cash is more popular than credit in Taiwan, which harms Uber, and some Taxis will take MRT and other transit system cards too.
Still, Uber still operates in Taipei, despite the fines any Uber driver can expect to get.
Well, I never!
$3.5 billion to be exact. From Saudi Arabia.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
And the Saudis get a seat on the Uber board.
Good news everyone! DWI arrests are up 7.5% over last year.
Wait, that's not good news at all.
But at least they showed those damn techies, am I right?
They'll just say its a result of them "cracking down" on drunk driving because there's no way this could be a negative side effect (that literally everyone predicted) of them limiting the availability of cheap and dependable livery service.
...in the city with the most bars per capita nationwide
Anyone have the year-on-year stats for April? The May numbers would be way more useful if we knew what the trend was before Uber left.
- John Stuart Mill
If I remember right from the exit, it was a 13% decrease in drunk driving fatalities the year before Uber left.
I scheduled an airport ride with Fare. The app is meh, the driver almost didn't show up because I scheduled it for 4am then went to bed and he texted me to see if I still wanted the ride. Scheduling is a nice feature, and easy to do if basically no one is using your service because it's almost twice as expensive as Uber.
Get Me actually was twice as expensive as Uber.
Cabs are still nonexistent, couldn't get a confirmation after a half hour of trying. They have practically disappeared from Austin roads now, where seeing a cab was becoming more and more common before as they tried to compete with Uber.
Losing Uber is going to kill people. Also, articles continue to miss the more critical issue of banning street pickups. Even if they offered to fingerprint everyone for free, Uber would still be squarely fucked because of the requirement to find a parking spot before collecting the rider, and another one before dropping them off. Cabs don't have to do that, and it makes doing pickups downtown basically impossible.
The question is if they meet the all-consuming supply problem of traditional livery services. Are there enough of your cabs on the road?
You can't get a Ztrip from downtown to your home in the burbs.
I almost got smashed by a ztrip car going the wrong way on a one way street. That was fun.
Getting some extra cash on the 4th instead of sitting at home watching west wing again was the best part.
Article is in Danish unfortunately:
This is the first trial and conviction of any Uber driver in Denmark, so it is going to be interesting going forward what this will do to the remaining Uber drivers (and if Uber will be forced to exit the Danish market due to amounting conviction):
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Paying 9k in tax on 1 million in revenue doesn't really tell you anything if the company is spending $970k to grow/make that revenue.
To be fair, they're also explicitly not complying with licensing laws here, and have stated that they'll continue to not do so, which is probably why someone looked at their financials specifically
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/308102/anger-over-uber's-advice-for-drivers-to-break-law
If that's the case, than they should have had someone who knew the first thing about business tax look at their financials instead of the dummy that wrote the piece.
More data or links to some of the data from the Austin PD mentioned in the article would be nice, but going strictly off of the article's text it doesn't seem like any of the doom and gloom predicted has come to pass thus far.
Uber's 2016 losses to top $3bn according to leaked financials
Still perusing the financial analysis linked in the article. Unfortunately, I don't have an extensive background in business or start-ups, but the analysis isn't optimistic anyways (Is Naked Capitalism a legitimate source?) and confirms a lot of my earlier suspicions about Uber's business model (confirmation bias?). Also no idea who Hubert Horan is:
Still... $3B?
Yeah Naked Capitalism laid out a pretty compelling argument for why Uber has no path to profitability. One line should jump out:
You can only drive driver pay so low, they're losing any economies of scale in "fleet costs" (which they don't directly pay, but which must eventually factor in to their reimbursement model), and fuel is fuel. So unlike something like, say, Amazon there's no way for them to "grow into profitability." Simply leveraging "underutilized" POVs part-time will never be enough to meet demand, and as soon as you're having cars driven full time fleet cost kills.
And I'm skeptical that driverless cars can eliminate their driver expense and simultaneously drive fleet costs down enough to get them there...not before they run out of money.
It does make me sad though, as one of the people who would happily pay double for Uber just based on the service provided. And many aspects of that service I prefer aren't the parts that necessarily break the financial model.
I did have occasion to try a traditional taxi recently, thanks to Vancouver deciding to fuck Uber with a rusty pike. Which, hey, is their choice. However, the experience was less than optimal.
- Tried calling their number, old-school style, because hey why install rando apps for a one-night trip? Busy signal. Busy signal again. Then I get put on hold, which I give up on after ten minutes. Okay, so guess it's all now on their killer app, which I'm sure is just as good as Uber's.
- Their app fails to detect my location properly. That happens, no big. I enter it in. I will have a cab in five minutes. That was easy!
- After ten minutes the driver calls. I realize I fat fingered the address, he is at 1000 not 1200. That is two blocks. I tell him, he says he's on his way. My bad!
- After several more minutes, I call. He didn't see me at the new address (which he heard wrong), and had already bounced. Um...okay. He told me to just book another ride through the app.
- Second ride booked. Five minutes. Okay, we still have time before the game starts, no big.
- Ten minutes go by. Twenty. I try to call again (hahaha!). No driver has been assigned. I try canceling the ride and requesting another. This may or may not have caused further day, I have no way of knowing, because the app gives no feedback on where you are in any sort of queue (other whether a driver is assigned yet). Okay, five minute wait. I'm pretty sure now that's just a default wait time and a bald-faced lie.
- Ten minutes go by. No driver assigned. I've seen many cabs drive by down the street, all seemingly on the way to pickups...pickups that aren't us...based on their lights. At this point we decide to walk there, in the rain, because we could still get there for most of the first period.
- As we get to that street, a cab is coming. I go ahead and step in front of it, and ask the driver how the hell we can get a cab assigned through the app. I didn't expect much. He told us we could just walk six blocks that-a-way and probably flag one down on the street. Yeah, guess we should have done that to begin with instead of trusting your shitty app-based dispatch.
- We get about two blocks when my phone buzzes and we've been assigned a driver. That was a long five minutes. Okay fine, we walk back, wait (he wasn't close) and catch the cab. It gets us there barely in time for faceoff. The driver seems both fast and furious, and I was fairly certain we were going to die in that car. I've had similar experiences in Uber, but it's not the norm. Maybe it's not the norm for Vancouver taxis either, I only have one data point. But it was a terrifying one.
- We check out using the card reader. It is defaulted to 20% tip, which I'm noticing is a thing at restaurants now too. Disapprove.
So we got ready to leave like an hour before we needed to, figuring we could grab a beer nearby then head to the game. Instead we got to our seat right at faceoff. An hour wasted, thank god we had it to waste. Fuck you, Vancouver cabs. You may have run Uber out of town, but you did a great job reminding me why other cities have had such a hard time doing so. It's because people hate you, because you are fucking terrible.
Hey at least they didn't try to cheat you with a long drive/thumbing cash/saying their reader was broken which has been my general cab experience.
This is not what the article said. It said that:
Sexual assaults haven't decreased, like the anti-Uber people claimed. So the fingerprints are doing nothing.
Drunk driving hasn't increased like Uber and the APD claimed, but college was out during the measured period so there's no good data.
Oh been there too. It's why I always have the destination up in Google before I get in, and always pay by card, and if they say their reader is broken I'll say that sounds like their problem and I'm leaving. I've noticed that trick seems to have fallen out of favor though.
The main things about Uber that I simply cannot imagine giving up and which I see no reason cab companies couldn't implement if they just wanted to stop being shitty shitty shit shits:
1) Decent hailing app, with ability to leave feedback on drivers, and decent estimates on wait time for a car, and estimate of fare if I input a destination
2) Email receipt with time, mileage, fare, and a map of the ride
3) Payment handled through app, not driver, so I simply get out when we get there
4) No tip. Yes, Uber needs to charge more in this case. But I firmly believe paying for service shouldn't be optional. I cannot stress enough how much I enjoy eating out in countries where tipping just isn't a thing. Tipping is stupid, and should die. However, if tip is still a thing, see (3)...I want it done through the app, after I'm out of the car and the driver is gone.
Really that's it, and I don't think that's too much to ask. Sure, I like having normal POV trims rather than the plastic/vinyl motif of most cabs, but provided it doesn't smell entirely of vomit I'm really not that picky there. On (3), I believe Vancouver's app had this option, but you had to sign up for a whole account and such, which I don't want to have to do in every city I visit, especially for a single ride.