It's also important to realize that the reason Uber and Lyft were able to crush the taxi industry is in part because the taxi industry was absolutely horrible to consumers.
The simple act of being able to know what I'm going to be charged beforehand, and know that the driver has little ability to scam me out of as much money as they can extract from me at my destination made Uber and Lyft SO much better. That should be the bare minimum, and yet the taxi industry couldn't figure that out for the most part.
I do not care about them breaking taxi laws or regulations. Their treatment of their "employees" absolutely needs improvement, but my god I do not care about the taxi industry as a whole.
I'm old enough to remember calling a taxi company the day before a flight to arrange a pickup at my place for 5:30. Then calling them again 5:00 the day of the flight and them telling me that the one guy didn't come in so now they couldn't pick me up until 7 -- My flight departure time! Then me frantically calling other taxi companies. I had to skip my shower.
I had the same issues with airport trips and taxis, frequently having to build in an extra 1-2 hours on top of the typical airport buffer to make sure I'd get there. So many no-shows, empty promises, and lies by dispatch. So many scams, fare spiking, outright hostility, and shenanigans from drivers.
I signed up for Uber after a panicked morning in Denver with 2 no-showing taxis. Never looked back after that, though I use Lyft 90% of the time now.
I have no tears at all for anyone involved in the taxi industry.
This is a funny thread because Uber at least has started doing both these things.
Uber will show a message saying you won't see the fare until there's a ride. Their FAQ claims it can happen if you hail faster than they can calculate a price, but it happens awfully often to me.
I've also noticed their scheduled rides are really unreliable. They seem to start searching way too late, and I've almost missed a flight over them not finding an available car in Miami of all cities...
Uber did exactly this to a friend of mine just a couple months ago. Except they didn't even offer the 7am pickup. They just cancelled the ride 15 minutes before the pickup.
It happened to me. The Uber app assured me that a driver was on the way, then it was late, then it canceled, and not a single driver was available within the area.
This was at 6a to catch an 8a flight in a Bay Area town that’s 35 min from SFO.
Uber and Lyft are now exactly like cab companies, the only difference being that their “credit card machine works”
Private car services work remarkably well if you’re done with Uber, Lyft, or taxis not showing up.
They want the time constraints back too. So many streaming services these days still have shows that air episodes at regular times rather than a while season at once. They also drop content regularly, offer to steam content for limited times, or only provide recent episodes.
They can't wait to back to the point where they can dictate people's schedules and induce FOMO in their customers. They just have to condition us slowly into accepting it after netflix spoiled us.
Well the main thing with taxis is that getting any ride to show up on demand is a shitshow, whereas with ubers you just have to wait 5-10 minutes (at least in my area).
It's funny though: cabs have gotten better and Uber has gotten worse.
I've switched back to taking cabs from the airport. Ubers are slower (cabs are sitting there just waiting) and much, much expensive now (like 2x the cost of a cab).
The product isn't any better anymore. The cars are rundown and often smelly. It is nice to be able to put in an address and not deal with a credit card payment at the destination -- but that's about the only benefit left.
I didn't realise this until going through JFK recently. Cabs: no wait, fixed price, professional driver. Uber: long wait, twice as expensive, driver and car a complete crap-shoot.
Feels like the economies of scale only work when you own the taxi fleet itself. I.e. you have dedicated mechanics etc etc. As soon as the consumer has to pay the true price of a taxi ride, Uber crumbles. There's another world in which Uber was a whitelabel app for cab firms, making millions but certainly not worth billions (so, making millions rather than losing billions!).
If the cabs are half the price of a rideshare and they have typically have to wait in those long taxi lines before a fare, how are those drivers not the ones being more exploited?
Lyft/Uber take 20-25% of the fare, so the ride share drivers are making more on the trip. They have variable vehicle upkeep costs, but taxi drivers renting medallions and the vehicles are hardly better off.
Those lines move pretty fast at major areas, and if the total calls/dollars per hour are higher, they may come out ahead. Utilization matters, as does how the taxi company "rents" the vehicles/medallions.
Many criticize the state and local officials who profited (or generated tax revenue) from exploiting those in the medallion system. My understanding is we are seeing a reformed taxi system on the other side of a truly horrible bottom, especially for those who bought the grossly inflated medallions. That the taxi system is/was exploitative and that ride share is/was exploitative are not exclusive though.
Agreed -- the last couple of times flying home I've found very few, or no Ubers or Lyfts available near the airport (particularly later at night) but plenty of clean, new-ish cabs (mostly hybrid vehicles) waiting with modern payment systems and yes, cheaper! I had also noticed a significant decline in the quality of the Lyft/Uber cars and actually I haven't used a Lyft or Uber in probably a year now.
> I've switched back to taking cabs from the airport.
Yup cabs are way better experience at the airport and the same price or cheaper. I haven't tried using our local cab app, but its been on my mind.
Meanwhile Uber drivers still haven't figured out where to park, or stop in the middle and wave you to run out to their car... while everyone honks at them.
I don't take Uber/Lyft often but yes, it seems like at least 25% of the time it's obvious that the driver smokes in the car when not driving customers. I've also been in a lot of vehicles which very clearly had blown shocks (based on the noises I heard when we went over even mildly rough road)
Depending on where you are, you can use Curb or something similar to pair with your ride and let the app handle payment. I use it (or just hailing cabs) almost exclusively over Uber/Lyft these days, typically 1/2 the price and the drivers don’t get lost in the city either.
On a recent trip to Chicago, from the airport, the taxi was about half the price of Uber to downtown, which my wife and I waited about 20 minutes for. Uber would have been a faster pickup at that point, however.
The taxi picked us up, proceeded to drive us Downtown and upwards of 85-90mph on the highway (was about 11pm at night at this point). The car was probably at least 15 years old and the shocks nearly as old.
After that experience, we used Uber the rest of the trip (and back to the airport) and it was an overall better experience by far.
> The taxi picked us up, proceeded to drive us Downtown and upwards of 85-90mph on the highway (was about 11pm at night at this point).
85-90 might seem like a lot to some folks, but it's not at all uncommon for traffic on the highways around Chicago. Personally, I'd much rather a driver get me to where I'm going quickly if it's safe. 80-90 on an open highway isn't a problem, it's the drivers who are constantly switching lines and cutting off other drivers to "get ahead" I have a problem with.
I drive those highways every day, that's absolutely uncommon unless you're in the exurbs. I drove to Aurora yesterday and speed of traffic was barely over 70.
If you're cruising at 90 in cook county you're asking for a court date. 15mph over the limit mandates it, and I think the highest speed limit is 60 on 290 out in Arlington Heights. It's 45 on the Kennedy once you get into the city right now.
I wonder if the laws are different in Kane/DuPage. I-90/I-94/I-294 are where I tend to see it the most. I tend to stay around 80, but I'm routinely passed by folks far more concerned about getting to their destination quickly. Once I get into the city itself it's too crowded for that and I'm happy just to be going something near speed limit
Interesting - I used to drive I-88 daily from Wheaton to Aurora. Although I was going counterflow, I rarely saw the speed of other vehicles average less than 80-85.
I think it's almost impossible to judge the speed of others unless you're consciously trying to maintain speed with the flow of traffic. If you're constantly passing people as you travel you're not doing that.
From O'Hare to downtown, there are two routes: either the I-90 or I-294 then I-290.
In my experience, 80-90 mph would be uncommonly high for either route even on an open highway. It's not the norm until you get out to the far flung suburbs like Naperville (I-88).
My local taxi companies will text you a link which allows you to pay online, so you can pay on the way to the destination. I usually just call and say "taxi from A to B please" before putting my shoes on, because in my experience apps are more hassle.
Because pay for the drivers is awful when you consider the actual cost of maintaining a car that runs for hundreds of miles every day. So the only ones that survive are those that do not do proper maintenance and those that game the system (e.g. by reporting fake customer no-shows).
This is exactly it - Uber tries to have "fancy cars" as compared to cabs, but there's a reason cabs are made out of washable materials; the first time someone vomits in the back of the Uber it's never really coming back out (there's a "vomit" button in the driver app apparently, it's that common).
You're not caring about them corrupting democracies world wide ? They not only "took care" of taxis, they also pushed for less workers rights (so they can keep not employing their workers) Pushed the stupid unsustainable "gig economy" propaganda.
And what for? For a business model that make no sense (unless they become a monopoly)?
> is in part because the taxi industry was absolutely horrible to consumers.
But mostly because it didn't had to pay the same fees. It treated employees as independent contractors and negate their rights. And it burned millions on AstroTurfing and ads.
The Mafia also can overtake business where others where there before.
The *majority* of times I've taken a taxi in my life, the driver has tried to scam me. It was ridiculous. I guess I just look like an easy mark or something. It was very routine for them to turn off the meter in the middle and say "don't worry, I know the cost of the trip" It's absurd that it's happened multiple times to me.
No Uber driver has ever tried to scam me. I'd gladly pay a premium for it.
> It's also important to realize that the reason Uber and Lyft were able to crush the taxi industry is in part because the taxi industry was absolutely horrible to consumers.
No. The reason was that Uber has been losing billions of dollars a year, every year, for over a decade and hasn't imploded as a company. Providing a nice ride hailing UI is just the cherry on top.
Nice. It's ok to brake laws just because the service is/was bad. One can extrapolate this type of thinking to any facet of human interaction and the results are scary. Forget about the slippery slope, we're sliding hard with this one.
I have zero sympathy for the yellow cab industry. None.
I have a lot of negative feelings about Uber, and I would never work there myself as a SWE, but these feelings pale in comparison to my experiences with yellow cabs (NYC bias here).
I've had my partner be threatened (the usual pay cash/credit card machine broken or "better be a good tip"), cabs drive right pass after asking where you're going, scammed. I've had female friends molested by drivers.
Sure, all this could happen (and some have) in an Uber. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that Uber can track down the driver must easier than your usual taxi driver. (Who the hell remembers the medallion numbers?)
TK is an asshole, and I'm no fan of assholes (e.g., screw Apple products). But if he was the price we have to paid to upend the yellow cab industry, then I for one am willing to pay it.
I've taken cabs all over the world in the pre Uber days (Literally, like 60+ countries on 5 continents). I can count the number of normal or pleasant experiences I had in a cab on one hand, out of HUNDREDS of rides. Not all cab drivers are/were asshole scammers but I have a decent sample size and can confidently say at least 95% or more were. I have zero sympathy for any of them.
The cab industry as it was pre Uber needed to die. These days it's gotten a bit better now that they actually have some competition. But I simply have no tolerance left for anything to do with cab drivers given how bad it was in the late 90s and early 200s.
And yes, I am 100% in agreement that Uber sucks too. But they suck 1000% less than cabs did at least for the riders.
Japan was the first (only?) place I've been where the taxi experience was comparable to Uber/Lyft. Every payment method accepted, apps, GPS routes, non-hostile drivers, and clean vehicles. It's no wonder why ridesharing companies have failed to gain much market share there.
Some of my very few pleasant experiences were in Japan. I don't doubt that Singapore would be fine too but public transit was generally faster there so I never took a cab.
London definitely has a better standard of cars and service, but they will still try to take longer routes and play games with you if you're obviously a tourist. Definitely better than most places though, their standards for cabbie training are very high.
Yes, same here for Japan and Singapore. Drivers super polite and never, ever tried to cheat me. I cannot say that from almost anywhere else, at least ocassionally or more than that tried to cheat.
As a teen in the early 00s I rode in plenty of taxis around LA and never had a problem. None of them were people I would like to hang out with but none were bad enough to leave a bad impression either.
My only pleasant cab experience was a black cab in London. He found an old Native American body digging in Hyde Park. Apparently the first time Native Americans came to the UK one of them died and they covered it up saying only 3 came not 4.
He went to a local College in my area and spoke about it. Showed us a hat from the College and pictures.
Don't worry, the yellow cabs put handy mnemonics inside so you can remember what your cab number is instead of just remembering the cab number. So instead of having to remember the impossibly difficult "4M95", you can instead easily remember "purple antelope 7"
Man, if you think cabs in NYC are bad, try Toronto some time. Our cabs are beyond awful. At least you have credit card machines in the back of your cabs!
Our cabs are probably twice as expensive as NYC cabs, and there is no credit card machine in the back. 90% of the time the driver lies and says "it's broken" to try and force you to pay cash. They'll even drive you to an ATM sometimes to get cash, just don't leave your stuff in the cab because they may just drive off with it instead of waiting.
When they DO give you a cash machine there is a high chance of getting your card swiped. And yes, they commonly do the "where are you going?" trick then refuse you a ride because it's not far enough for them, they want the more lucrative fares. Also, the cars are all completely awful quality, just terrible.
> 90% of the time the driver lies and says "it's broken" to try and force you to pay cash
Two can play at that game. Despite the practice being illegal, cabbies in the Vancouver area ask if you've got cash before you get in. I always say yes. But, I never carry cash. When we get to the destination, I play dumb, and ask if they've got a machine. They do, because they're required to by law. Or, on the off chance I do have cash, I'll say "oh, but I only have a $10" and sometimes they'd rather knock $5 off my fare than take a card.
Also, I live in a burb, so I've taken to lying about where I'm headed until the car's in motion. Since they always want directions, not a destination (are they dishonest or ignorant about what route's best?) this has always worked for me.
I don't think this guy deserves the title whistleblower. A whistleblower leaks the crimes as they're happening in order to stop them. Not 6 years after participating in the crimes to settle a grudge.
Other than the term "informant" or "insider" I can't really think of how you would describe this type of thing. There's whistleblowers, and death bed confessions.
I suppose someone could simply be called a "tattle tale" or a "former employee", but neither really describes the act of revealing knowledge that was not publicly available.
"Leaker" might fit, but that seems to be more for someone who is a current employee, who is trying to disclose information in a secretive manner. Advocate has an equally weird meaning, too.
Perhaps “disgruntled former employee”? “Disgruntled” is a term that often comes up in mandatory security training and describes people to whom you probably do not want to share production secrets.
Plus the whistleblower was at the head of Uber's push into Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All the horrible stories I've read are about those markets.
But the comments here seem to be about American taxis!
Shocking stuff like this, weaponising drivers against city governments:
> MacGann insists that Uber drivers were seen by some at the company as pawns who could be used to put pressure on governments. “And if that meant Uber drivers going on strike, Uber drivers doing a demo in the streets, Uber drivers blocking Barcelona, blocking Berlin, blocking Paris, then that was the way to go,” he said. “In a sense, it was considered beneficial to weaponise Uber drivers in this way.”
> The files show MacGann’s fingerprints on this strategy, too. In one email, he praised staffers in Amsterdam who leaked stories to the press about attacks on drivers to “keep the violence narrative” and pressure the Dutch government.
And most comments are quasi-whataboutism on the taxi industry vs Uber. Yes, the taxi industry is bad, in lots of places ran by some kind of mob, etc. Still, Uber was weaponising their workers (while fighting as hard as possible to not call them workers and pay for workers' benefits) against local governments, they were behaving like a tech-mafia.
> "How can you have a clear conscience if you don’t stand up and own your contribution to how people are being treated today?”
What a laudable moral pivot! Good for him, finding a path to redemption. I guess he was just haunted by all of his sins and felt a need to make things rights with the world.
> MacGann is understood to have recently reached an out-of-court settlement with Uber after a legal dispute relating to his remuneration. He...acknowledged he had had personal grievances with the company.
There are some problems in life that cannot be solved by begging for permission, but by going ahead and then asking for forgiveness.
There is no legal way that the taxi cartel could have ever been challenged without some company like Uber just ramming it through regardless of the technical legality of certain actions. Insofar as they didn't steal from customers, them taking down the taxi cartel is arguably a public service that should be forgiven and applauded.
Well said. I sympathize with their drivers for wanting to get paid more and get better treatment - I think they deserve to be treated better. But I just can’t understand the backlash and controversy in public perception surrounding Uber breaking laws - as though laws dictated morality.
Uber and Lyft did incredible things in the aggregate to improve transportation, including getting horrible laws updated to be less horrible. I don't think they were perfect, but fighting against unjust laws is a very good thing, and I appreciate that they did so. If you are mad at them, it seems analogous to being mad at high quality nonviolent weed dealers, who did nothing other than provide a service which was legal for a long time and is legal again.
Completely unrelated to Uber but I wish I could hear a similar confession from Bill Gates before I die. The amount of greyish and plain bad things in the 90s and early 20s he is responsible for is enormous. Still, no single "I'm sorry, what we did at that time was wrong."
While I have no sympathy of the taxi industry some of my family lives in/is from a resort destination, and Uber has created a huge problem, while it’s massively improved the availability of rides in the high season, it put many of the cabs out of business, so in the low season there is no capacity, which is especially hard on senior citizens etc. who need transport to doctors appointments etc.
A lot of people are defending Uber against taxi, based on the fact that the service is better.
But the important thing to remember is that we were in this situation because the lobbying of Taxi companies was doing the same thing as Uber previously and this is why we are in this situation in the first place.
And compared to its beginning, you can see that the service and prices provided by degraded a lot in last years now that they are in a kind of dominant position!
So, in my opinion, everyone should reprove such a behavior. Ensuring that our leaders can't be corrupted like that by lobbyist is the only way out of problematic situations like that.
I’m tech-fluent and lived pre/post-Uber around NYC. The crime cabs committed was behind the times on tech, the medallion system was wage slavery for drivers, and fleecing tourists sometimes on airport rides.
However, cabs were abundant and easy to hail, and prices weren’t much different than Uber. Cabs are about 30% cheaper than uber today.
This was replaced by Uber, one of the most destructive influences on cities via the traffic and the “gig worker freedom” wage slavery. Add in its shadow war against public transit.
Cabs really weren’t as bad as this thread seems to imply. I hope Uber goes down for this.
Unless someone leaks information which points to materially illegal behaviour, I don't see how people are going to get away with this.
If you leak private emails of any arbitrary company, there's a 100% chance some things will be taken out of context.
I suggest Travis was in some ways a kind of a giant turd, but that's definitely his right, unless it involves something illegal.
I'm wary of the press misrepresenting the issue like they did the FB CA scandal, which was actually a scandal, just presented as the wrong kind of scandal.
> They include Travis Kalanick, Uber’s combative co-founder and then chief executive, David Plouffe, a former Barack Obama campaign aide who became a senior vice-president at Uber, and Rachel Whetstone, a British PR executive who has also held senior roles at Google, Facebook and now Netflix.
Why is this so common and acceptable? You have these towering technological firms who already possess vast amounts of power who have a pattern of hiring former political elites. Interestingly, apart of a top conservative at Facebook, many of these people have worked for powerful liberals. There's no excuse for this behavior, if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.
It's also interesting that Tony West, Uber's current Chief Legal Officer, is the brother-in-law of US VP Kamala Harris. The political connections of this company are something to behold.
That said, I consider ridesharing apps better than traditional taxis.
> if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.
That's not how democracy works. You'd be creating a second class of people who are ineligible to participate in their own society. And you'd be selecting along the dimension of those who actually do participate.
I am a data engineer. If my state representative calls me to advise in a technical capacity on data legislation should I resign from my day job? Do we want our lawmakers to be well informed?
What's the line to be barred from private industry? If I have to resign from private industry to advise my representatives then won't I simply become a career lobbyist?
You giving advice to a campaign is not analogous to what these folks are doing. At Facebook, Uber, etc these people are being hired straight out of full-time, highly influential positions with direct contact to political elite. It's not even hidden, many of them proudly brag about it on social media.
The current situation is affording a whole host of people who make everyone else second class citizens to their reach and ideas.
> if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.
Wait why? There's already such little incentive to get into public service. The pay is certainly garbage. Hell, the top position in the US government only pays $400k.
Who is going to want to work in government if we get rid of the ability for them to transition to private industry afterwards?
What's with the DVs? This is correct. You'd have to raise pay much, much higher to keep decent (for even very bad values of "decent" that we currently have) gov. workers and politicians if you also want to saddle them with a very broad and painful non-compete when they leave. That or they'll turn even more openly to bribery and corruption to make up the difference.
While it's true that you can make more money elsewhere, lots of people take jobs for reasons other than money. As one example, nearly every game programmer I know could be making a ton more outside games but they don't leave game dev.
The reason you're supposedly supposed to get into public service is because you want to serve the public.
I know it's being naive on top of being fiction but it reminds me of this ep from West Wing where they recruit a press secretary who's making $550k a year in Hollywood and tell her the press secretary job pays $31k a year
I started taxi driving in early 2012. I'd drive my little 1994 Honda Civic Hatchback to the taxi yard and check out a cab for 12 hours or 24 hours. It was a pretty good deal: the taxi company took care of complying with Arizona's minimal taxi regulations, provided insurance and customers. I could do anything I wanted with their taxi, I just had to pay them at the end of the shift. I always made money, even on my 4th day when the dispatch system went down. On that day I found some people in downtown who'd scheduled a cab to go to the Frank Lloyd Wright museum in Scottsdale. The taxi was free that day. After the 'new driver' $20 off coupon the taxi company actually paid me to drive their taxi around.
Uber arrived in Phoenix ... in 2013 or 2014? I remember sitting at the Cardinals' football stadium. Another of the company's drivers had gotten an uber fare. He said something like, "it's not that cheap". We didn't realize at the time that what the driver got was not what the passengers paid (that is, drivers' pay was subsidized).
Things started to get bad for us taxi drivers in 2015. I remember sitting in old town Scottsdale. Two ladies were waiting for their ride-share driver to show up. A "gypsy-cab" driver (someone not associated with one of the big taxi companies - who'd gotten a taxi meter and insurance, and complied with Arizona's minimal licensing) asked if they needed a ride. The ladies said, "you're too expensive." A Honda Accord showed up, with two ladies in the front... I figured the female driver didn't feel safe driving around by herself late at night, and recruited her friend to copilot with her.
Cars are expensive. I'd made enough to upgrade my old honda civic to a Uber-acceptable Ford Fusion by ... 2013? (Truthfully my father paid for most of the vehicle, I took out a $5,000 loan.)
When I did the calculations on driving my Fusion for Uber, the numbers just didn't work. I figured I'd need a transmission sooner or later, and the miles really add up quickly when you're driving. We'd put 100,000 miles a year on our taxi-Priuses. The early years of 'ride sharing' was an exercise in Wall Street tricking people who wanted nice cars into wearing out their personal vehicles for barely minimum wage.
I took to blogging about my fares, initially at kuro5hin.org [rip]. Lots of stories... reposted them at https://www.TaxiWars.org/
Had this recent comment about the taxi industry get a couple upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31065345 ("The company had economy of scale in their fleet operations that was hard to beat: mechanics who knew the Prius like the back of their hand, boneyards (for parts), connections in the automotive industry.")
On the one hand, Uber's software was better than our 'electronic taxi dispatch v1.0' system [0]. But Arizona's taxi regulations were so incredibly minimal, that it wasn't very fair for Governor Ducey, et al, to throw us under the bus.
I’m glad you pointed the driver economics out, I meticulously keep track of my auto costs (hour out to road trip [1]) and am always surprised by what my actual mpg/cost per mile is, as well as how repairs and maintenance add up over time - I honestly don’t think most Uber drivers realize they are just trading deferred maintenance costs, and depreciation expense for cash now.
A lot of miles were not paid for. A typical shift in the cab (12 hours) would have maybe 200 miles, with half of those being paid. I drove for an owner-operator - I think I paid her $75/shift for the use of her car... Maybe $20 for gas, and the rest paid me.
The taxi company put together a system where drivers could take their contract fares (such as in the video I linked) in personal vehicles. I had to get a commercial license plate. Then the company did a safety inspection on my car. Their contracts paid better than standard ride share fares, but the numbers still didn't work. I only did that a couple times. One time I got a solid fare, but it took me out to Apache Junction. It was 40 miles to get home. The technical term for unpaid miles is deadheading [0].
> I honestly don’t think most Uber drivers realize they are just trading deferred maintenance costs, and depreciation expense for cash now.
I referred to this as this 'economic cancer'. Professional drivers figure out how to keep their expenses down.
I am glad the taxi industry worked for you as a driver for a while. But it was unbelievably bad for consumers for so long, I have no sympathy for anyone related to the industry pre Uber at all. You might have been a good driver but most were not and frankly the odds aren't in your favor either. I am sincerely glad that the taxi industry got fucked as hard as it did, it forced them to at least think a little bit about customer experience and improve in some places.
The hn comment I linked told of how the company I drove for became the default cab company for the Phoenix area. One aspect was how passengers could file a complaint, and they'd look into it.
I got taken for a ride by a taxi driver in San Jose, cira 2003... That should have been a $20 fare, not a $100 fare, but I was naïve.
Sometimes my passengers would watch our route on their phone.
You're not exactly wrong but your comment isn't really reflective of anything meaningful. Correlation does not always equal causation. And I know a LOT of people with the same experiences. The commonality of these experiences leads me to believe it's a cab thing and not just a me thing.
In all other aspects of my life I tend to be pretty easy to get along with and generally have reasonable expectations. I don't have any reason to think my expectations of the cab industry are out of line with my expectations for everything else.
I have no respect for The Guardian. MacGann is an absolute dirtbag, as even a cursory investigation would show. This is not Whistleblowing. This is a disgruntled guy who made a ton of money on Uber stock and is disgruntled he didn't make more. Is he going to give all his Uber money to charity? No? Then he should really not be acting like a whistleblower.
Also, what Uber did is what every single corporation does with respect to its interactions with the regulatory states across the world.
People have this fantasy that regulations are these perfect bodies of law that really do accomplish their stated goals. WRONG! They are more often counterproductive crap that people work around because they have to. The regulations create incumbents who have an interest in maintaining regulations because it cements their market power. The citizens are bamboozled by useful idiots like The Guardian journalists who just spout the party line without actually investigating how regulations actually work on the ground.
Is there a single person at the Guardian who is aware that Private Equity firms and other investors bought up all the taxi medallions in NYC and were extracting monopoly rents to consumers, while simultaneously abusing a pliant population of renter/drivers. The profits were going to the medallion holders. Consumers were being f'ed by a corrupt and inefficient system, and drivers were getting the shaft. Only politicians and the investors were pleased.
Yeah Uber busted that wide open. Drivers don't like the situation now? Guess what, if you stay off Uber and use a competitor, you will shrink Uber's dominance over time. There are competitors in every city.
The simple act of being able to know what I'm going to be charged beforehand, and know that the driver has little ability to scam me out of as much money as they can extract from me at my destination made Uber and Lyft SO much better. That should be the bare minimum, and yet the taxi industry couldn't figure that out for the most part.
I do not care about them breaking taxi laws or regulations. Their treatment of their "employees" absolutely needs improvement, but my god I do not care about the taxi industry as a whole.