The only thing it has “over” taxis is an app instead of a phone call to dispatch.
Comment on Everything old is new again.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 week ago
Uber was always intended to be taxis that ignore the laws and regulations of taxis and put all of the vehicle maintenance on the drivers who are paid through tips instead of Uber.
Not sure why anyone didn’t see that from the very beginning.
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
snooggums@midwest.social 1 week ago
Originally it was also cheaper for the customer because it was subsidized by venture capital.
SonicDeathTaco@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I can do that with my local taxi company anyway so they don’t even have that to differentiate themselves.
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That’s cool. Where at? I mean, I haven’t seen any taxi in a place I’ve ever visited with an app.
And then there’s the issue of knowing what app before you get there, or just trusting the sign on the side of the taxi, and subsequently the app to not farm your data.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 week ago
Wait, you trust cab companies less them uber?
Jarix@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You can now… Because uber and lyft finally forced them to change
Krauerking@lemy.lol 1 week ago
I mean that actually was one of the things that made them so great. Tracking, arrival timer and an easy app.
Literally those being things that the taxi companies had to push to replicate is a good thing it’s a shame we had to give up the idea of properly funded labor and job protection to get it.
commandar@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Tracking, arrival timer and an easy app.
The fact that they would actually show up.
Before Uber, you needed to call the cab company at least an hour before you wanted to get anywhere (in a city where you can get anywhere in 15 minutes). The dispatcher would tell you someone will be there in 20 minutes and, if you were lucky, somebody might show up in 45. Before Uber, there was more than one occasion where I ended up stranded downtown until 4 or 5am after the bars had closed at 3:00.
Being able to request a ride, having someone reliably show up, and show up reasonably close to when they said they would was an absolute game changer at the time.
14th_cylon@lemm.ee 1 week ago
The fact that they would actually show up.
unless you see the uber car circling around you on the map, then canceling the ride and cashing in the “cancelation fee”
The dispatcher would tell you someone will be there in 20 minutes and, if you were lucky, somebody might show up in 45. Before Uber, there was more than one occasion where I ended up stranded downtown until 4 or 5am after the bars had closed at 3:00.
yeah, but this is not an invention of uber. it is just that technology allowed what was not possible before. yes, uber was faster to adapt it than traditional taxi industry, but they are not doing it for your blue eyes, they are doing it for profit and they do lot of shady stuff to achieve it.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Which is both a good point and quite a different scenario from what’s being illustrated here which is just Uber’s version of a taxi stand.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 week ago
we had to give up the idea of properly funded labor and job protection to get it.
We didn’t have to, and we can always take it back.
jaybone@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The only reason I even started using Uber is because of taxi’s shitty dispatch system. All they had to do was write an app (or really some third party could have written it and then sold it to local cab companies) and they never would have been whining and complaining for years on end about how Uber turk der jerb.
14th_cylon@lemm.ee 1 week ago
has
had.
xpinchx@lemmy.world 1 week ago
In Chicago all the big taxi companies have apps
deathbird@mander.xyz 1 week ago
And a transparent price up front.
It’s annoying enough to get in a vehicle and not know how much it’ll cost by the end of the trip (would you do this on a bus? Would you let an airline change the price of a ticket mid-flight?), but there’s something viscerally galling about watching some asshole take a longer route just to pad out the fare. Last I checked, when Lyft or Uber gives you a price, that’s the price.
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Thinking about this… I wonder if the fediverse could be used for an “open source” app, to then hail and track a taxi in whatever area you’re in…
Of course adoption would be the hardest part, but any taxi service could host their own server (even single driver operations) and anyone with an app that interfaces with the system could hail a taxi.
Privacy would be difficult, as, inherently you need to somehow inform the taxi where you are and possibly who to expect. And anyone in the system could potentially monitor anyone else.
I’d say that payments should be outright blocked from the system. Taxi should have to do that separately.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Not incorporating payments into the system makes fraud prevention a lot harder, though.
bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
I think a lot of people also forget that taxis in San Francisco, which was basically the impetus forUber’s creation, were fucking horrible at the time. Things have changed a lot since then. But the one thing I will credit Uber with is making taxis functional again.
Nothing I distinctly remember from the times I was working out there was how terrified I was to be in their cars. There was absolutely no vetting of drivers, and Uber distinguished it by doing that at the time.
ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world 1 week ago
People saw it, but if you remember Taxis before Uber it wasn’t exactly great either.
No-shows, demanding flat rates double what the meter would charge/refusing service, various forms of harassment, etc.
Turns out when there is very little competition, businesses treat their customers like shit.
Uber definitely does some things better than traditional taxis. Things like work flexibility are great, but workers still need better protections and pay (aka, a union).
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 week ago
I mean, enough countries did see that and those are the countries were Uber didn’t manage to push away taxis.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Once cabbies got their own apps, the only market advantage Uber had was lower costs because of not obbeying regulations, which wasn’t there in those contries which forced Uber to obbey the same regulations as cabbies.
RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Not entirely true.
In some countries (UK, NZ) Uber has to give you the price of the journey up front. Whereas taxis are metered and do not.
Uber UK has competition in thin regard with Minicabs, but the minicab apps are still shit.
Capped costs for consumers is a competitive advantage over taxis, and Uber has managed to find the sweet spot between hailing a taxi, and booking a minicab.
deathbird@mander.xyz 1 week ago
Up front pricing is almost always going to be more attractive than metered pricing.
If you offer me metered pricing, I’m going to assume you’ll charge 20% extra.
Steve@startrek.website 1 week ago
We did see it. Everyone saw it, and it worked anyway.
snooggums@midwest.social 1 week ago
Most of the people I know in person that spoke highly of it when it first started up referred to it as an alternate to cabs because it was totally different. The fact that people still refer to it as ‘ride sharing’ is a sign that people do think it is something different than taxis.
A lot of us saw it, but I don’t think the majority of people saw it.
Steve@startrek.website 1 week ago
I think a lot of people saw it and let it happen because taxis suck
Nougat@fedia.io 1 week ago
And relieve corporate from all sorts of other liabilities, placing those on the individual drivers, too.
Workers' Comp claims? Malfeasance (driver or passenger)? Health insurance? Paid time off? Vehicle insurance? All fall to the driver.
Jarix@lemmy.world 1 week ago
And they had thousands if not millions of drivers (worldwide) who didn’t give a shit about any of those things either.
So they had a ready made work force waiting to be just as shitty people as the taxi companies by not giving a fuck about those things either.
And that’s where opportunity is often found. Covered in shit