Submitted 5 days ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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That said, Taxi drivers have something Uber drivers don’t- a union.
A taxi that doesn’t play games with the meter, that always takes a credit card, and that has a rating system that harshly punishes drivers with bad attitudes.
The problem with it is Uber’s cut.
I would say lack of a union is a bigger problem. Most of what you say isn’t really true about taxis anymore, but even if it were, that doesn’t justify Uber fucking over its employees.
My city’s taxi system was completely changed by Uber, as were many parts of the country. So while it might not be true anymore, and taxi drivers with bad attitudes and those fudging the meter might have been mostly weeded out, it’s because of Uber that this happened. And it’s because of their unions that it hadn’t happened before. But the moment there started being some competition in town as opposed to their previous monopoly on the market, they had to back down if they wanted to even survive, let alone come out on top over Uber.
So while yes, uber employees are being fucked over, that has less of an impact on things than you imply. I’ll still get an Uber/Bolt instead of a taxi 9/10 times, because immoral business practices are still better than immoral & illegal practices with a monopoly that you are powerless to change backing them.
This could also be solved with a little more competition tbh. The same system that allows Uber to exploit drivers lets them jump ship with literally zero effort
Last time I tried a taxi was because and Uber or Lyft was going to take 20 minutes to get to us (waiting? Gross.) I’m close to the air port, 15 minute ride home. Uber or Lyft would have been $30. The taxi was going to cost me $140. For a 15 minute drive? Get fucked. Dude is driving for almost $600 an hour?
Uber has variable pricing, whilst taxis do not (it’s the whole point of the meter, which is why shady types try to “play games” with it).
Nowadays taxis will also take credit cards (I guess in some countries maybe some don’t).
Agree on the need of a rating system though.
An Uber will never pick you up and tell you “My credit card reader is broken” at the end of the ride after driving you in circles.
And a way to contact drivers if you’d just something in the car, and a system to notify others of your route and progress.
Fuck Taxis and Uber
An entire industry that’s playing the victim. Stop falling for it and stop romanticizing taxis, the shit they pulled was just as bad, if not worse than what Uber does.
Biggest difference is their drivers were complicit in the shenanigans and primarily targeted their customers. Taking LONG routes because their customer “wasn’t local”, saying a route will “probably be 10$” and then it’s 50 and “the meter says what it says man”.
They literally used strict regulations as a shield to hold local monopolies for decades which resulted in terrible downright scammy service, cash only for an unacceptable amount of time, 0 innovations, dirty ancient barely running cars, a dispatch who would constantly say a car “was just around the corner” for 2 hours
The taxi industry doesn’t give a fuck about you, they’re just mad because they didn’t think to do what Uber is doing and now they’re dying. When/If Uber/Lyft dies, I guarantee the Taxi industry will resurge for the worst and take pages out of Ubers playbook. It’s just going to go back to the wait it was before.
Fuck Uber AND Taxis, they both can rot in hell, but I don’t mind seeing taxis get there first.
Dude, my driving instructor charged less than a Taxi and that guy was charging in the triple digits per hour, it is insane as to how Taxis are still in business. Who the hell pays those prices?
I don’t know but probably the same people that use the Uber Eats type services. Seriously, how are people affording to pay $25 for a $10 meal?
Once took a taxi downtown with my family when we were in a different city, and the drive home was twice as much as the drive there (second driver took a different route). My dad challenged him on it and he backed down an accepted the same fare as the first driver.
Same company, same rates, just a dbag driver
The taxi industry hates you and Ubers main competative advantage is just breaking the law. Everyone sucks.
main competative advantage is just breaking the law
If you’re talking employment law, then yea for sure
If you’re taking laws like those that cap taxis licenses arbitrarily that the Taxi industry pushed for so that bigger companies could buy them all up and establish a monopoly, then I can look the other way on those
they’re just mad because they didn’t think to do what Uber is doing and now they’re dying.
That and they’re mad because their virtual monopoly status didn’t protect them from market disruption. They just sat back, assuming that there was no way these rogue taxi services were going to evade the law for long. The fact that an entire industry acted on such a bad take suggests, to me, a lot of anti-competitive bullshit behind the scenes.
Anyway, I agree. All they had to do was either add rideshare-like features to their service, merge with rideshare services, or become one themselves. The investment capital was clearly there, and making a modernization pitch with brand recognition of an established taxi company would have been a slam-dunk.
I’m not sure if anyone else here has mentioned this… At least up until Uber/Lyft came out, taxis were suuuuper racist. It was really hard for black men to hail taxis.
I’m a brown dude. I have so many stories about bad taxi experiences. From Taxi drivers refusing to pick me up, to them going, “You’re lucky to be in my car”, to “I’m not driving there. Get out.”
Uber and Lyft changed it all. I have no sympathy for taxis.
Thanks for sharing your experience even though I know it can’t feel good typing it all out.
Was looking for this comment. Racism was extremely pervasive in certain areas.
The biggest reason Uber and Lyft took off is cabs sucked for the most part. Uber and Lyft aren’t great either, but people forget how bad Taxis were at that time.
That is true. In the 90s, Michael Moore had a TV show where he did a segment showing the actor Yaphet Kotto trying to get a cab in increasingly ridiculous ways and not getting picked up.
In every single way Ubers are more convenient than a taxi. It’s amazing to me that taxi companies can’t see all the little improvements that going by Uber brings.
Unless you’re the driver.
Sure, Uber brought competition. But in certain places they got banned and the local taxi authority greatly improved on the service, learning from the gig apps’ offerings.
Back in the day Opie and Anthony tested this.
Patrice o Neal with a gold chain vs Anthony cumia in a nazi helmet
Cumia got more cabs.
The fact Ant had a nazi helmet does not surprise me at all.
And also super expensive. I’ve had times where it was half the price to rent a car for the day than to get one taxi from the airport.
I remember one time, in Boston, I (white dude) was downstream of a black guy.
Cabbie went right by the black guy and stopped for me.
Black guy came running up and slashed his tire and then ran off.
I was like “cabby deserved it, but at the same time black guy justified it.”
Not really a justified decision if it was the wrong one. The cabbie got his tires slashed by being a dickhead. If he’d have not been a racist, he would’ve had no problems. This is like the guy in the meme who puts a metal pole in his bike spokes. Cabbie caused his own problems.
I am once again asking for widespread public transportation
The big difference here is that I know the cost. Getting into a cab it was always kind of blind, and a cab driver definitely tried to screw me one time by driving in circles (we were very drunk, and I noticed at some point we hadn’t made it very far, so I started paying attention and it was clear pretty quickly that he had circled back almost to where he had picked us up).
Also when I lived out in Queens, cabs rarely came out there. I had to hike all the way to Queens Blvd to have a chance, and even then they would barely stop at night. Would often get told to “get out” when asking for them to take me back to Queens. I’ve even been able to get a Uber out almost out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
Lyft/Uber definitely has their problems, but cabs weren’t some shining beacon on the hill.
Uber can drive in circles and up your fare too… They have per ride, mile, and minute fare just like taxis. The coverage thing is just a problem with New York’s medallion system. But also, speaking from experience, rideshare drivers can and will refuse rides into places they don’t want to go. The difference is you’re talking with dispatch instead of a single driver so they get replaced without you knowing anything. Traditional taxi companies also have a dispatcher you can call and they will handle the recalcitrant drivers, but they may also negotiate a dead head fee.
But guess what? Uber and Lyft build dead heading directly into their fee structure. If you go out of the zone you pay an extra fee so the driver isn’t completely out of luck making money.
Uber and Lyft really are just digital dispatchers for privately run taxis.
I dunno about you guys, but using a rideshare app, I’ve been canceled on numerous times, by multiple drivers. Often at the last minute, when maybe he app thinks they’re taking too long to reach me? I had a driver I was watching get closer and closer to me, and when they were around the corner the app changed my driver to someone a couple miles away. That shit didn’t happen with taxis because we weren’t reliant on some shitty algorithm that is only coldly making the most rides happen per minute to get higher margins for the company.
There are definitely drawbacks to the old school cab system, but I don’t like the app system. Sure, the meter would go up as you drive and sometimes you’d have to have an idea of where you’re going to not get screwed by a dishonest driver, but the app also randomly charges way more for the same ride depending on the app’s fuckin mood.
Crazy what we’ve let private companies do just because they marginally made our lives somewhat more convenient (on the surface).
When I drove, the destination was hidden until you start the ride.
I’ve taken hundreds of ubers and it’s always been within cents of the price I was quoted. I’ve taken hundreds of cab rides and only a handful of times was in given a price before hand.
I think it’s fair to say I know the price when it comes to an Uber and even if they can drive around to raise the price, it’s going to be obvious.
And on that note, at an airport near me there is a close by convenience store and if the Uber doesn’t want to take the fair, it’s know they will sit in there and wait for the customer to cancel it so they don’t get the hit. I’ve had it happen to me, contacted uber, and they gave me a discount on my next ride. I’m sure they don’t want to give away money, so I assume they are dealing with the driver at that point.
I’ve heard from Uber drivers that a longer trip can increase the price, but I’ve never seen it happen
Except taxis take cash and don’t track your trips in an irreovacble database. I’ll take anonymous transport whenever it’s a reasonable option.
All fun and games until you are given a ride around town and asked for x times your cash
You ever had that happen in the post GPS in your pocket era? If so, how (lots of alcohol?).
And you leave your phone at home right?
Where the fuck are you going, or what are you doing, to where you don’t want your taxi trips tracked?
I understand privacy and stuff, but sometimes people take it and “muh freedoms” way too seriously overboard.
You can’t imagine famous people, federal investigators, Union organisers, protected witnesses, or literally anybody else that wouldn’t want their movements trackable by a company or anybody that company gets hacked by?
Whores and coke.
Which is why I prefer them.
Tech bros love reinventing old technologies with slapped on some technical jargon.
The trick is you have to pretend that you’re actually a “tech company” to avoid all the regulations that apply to companies that are honest about what business they’re in.
I keep hearing like they didn’t really do shit. When Uber did a fuckton.
Reputation. If a taxi driver was a racist POS, literally nothing I can do.
Agreed upon fare. You literally see a estimate of the cost. I had a taxi add extra fees the moment I sat in the car.
GPS. The route on your phone is the same route they follow. How many times have taxis went on a fucking joyride to rank up more money?
See when the ride is coming. “Cab will be there in 15-45 mins.” Never fucking shows up.
Automatic payment. How many fucking CC machines didn’t work so they forced you to pay cash?
I can go on and on.
But to say some tech bro slapped some tech jargon onto taxis and became rich is disingenuous to all the innovations they’ve done to unfuck taxis.
A few times as a kid I had to take a taxi alone. I knew the way home, but the driver decided to make a lot of unnecessary turns and go this round about way to run up the fair. I was probably in 3rd grade and knew what he was doing but didn’t have the guts to call him out.
Would be epic for a third-grader to loudly firmly vociferate a taxi driver back into shape
“Sorry, sir. No tip because you kept getting lost.”
Uber effectively weaseled their way into the taxi industry by somehow enticing drivers to work for them while also assuming all of the liabilities. Truly, capitalism at its finest.
Taxi drivers in my city also have something else Uber drivers don’t- a licence that was bought decades ago and is limited to a certain number, they never expire and can be bought and sold between private parties and you end up with one asshole who owns a bunch and rents out the licenced car to drivers who pay him a rent. It’s a pretty hardcore mafia and predates on immigrants.
They are also fucking maniacs who almost kill people every day with their reckless driving, but Ubers do that too.
But now you can’t just tell the driver where to go and give him cash, you have to use the app first and you are out of luck if you phone battery is dead. So technology makes the experience activly worse in this case.
Techbro has an app for 5,000 year old thing: “wow this is so novel and innovative!”
Technobros and reinventing something that already exists, but worse.
Name a more iconic duo.
“Just a taxi” I mean, can a taxi actually regular charge me MORE than a taxi used to cost from the airport to my home PLUS the magic bonus of surge increases in that also higher cost when I’m most vulnerable… I think not - check mate assholes, Uber for the win!"
-a tesla owner while his broken tesla is in the shop waiting months for parts
Taxis made their bed by being pieces of shit for a long time. No one will have any sympathy for their plight.
Because the taxis would scam you on the price. Or his card reader would be magically broken. Or they’d take you half way around the city crossing as many zones as possible.
Uber brought accountability. Any improvements traditional taxi that had been made with apps are because of Uber.
Way back in 2009 or so… my uber/taxi story. So I land in Newark, NJ and try to catch a cab and it’s $50 to go to the hotel on the other side of airport because we traverse 3 zones (and they charged by zone). Uber was $11. See, when Uber came out it was like a gamified systems and almost always cheaper. Drivers were getting crazy perks too, i swear one guy in seattle said he was banking north of 2k a day just back and forth to the airport. This was the only time in Uber’s history where a normal human could grind and make a nice pay with some added personal risk. I was all for it because in cities like Newark, unions control the politics and the average traveler (in this case, me) gets screwed in the name of “fairness”.
Unions are great, but not when they use that same political power to squeeze regular people for profits by controlling the pricing and forcing zones. I understand why they said they put that in place (fair competition), but in this case we all know it’s about profits first, better working for taxi drivers, second. Does that mean i love uber now? Hell no, they need a union (yep, i agree), but uber broke a broken system and made taxi companies be competitive. I can now open up several apps and see which is cheaper and choose accordingly (and these last 2 years it’s been cabs).
Yes but don’t forget about the shareholder value that Uber is bringing! Or will bring when they bankrupt all the competition and then ratchet up the prices so the hedge funds can recoup their losses
Why would you give a regular taxi an Uber PIN? You just walk up to a taxi and get in.
This reminds me of uber in several third world countries. Most drivers only take cash or direct epay because it bypasses uber’s heavy service cut. Everyone benefits because the app lets you hail drivers, but they charge you a fair fee just like a taxi.
Disruption!
It actually just means to undercut a existing industry with venture capital, taking on a loss until the existing competition is out-priced out of the market. Then once a monopoly is established, tear down quality service, hike up prices, shaft costumers and use the money to pay huge bonuses to the executives. If the company is still profitable afterwards then just recreate the same old industry and competitors but with an iron grip monopoly. If it is not profitable, just sell the company and distribute the dividends amongst the C suite. Rinse and repeat.
I’m old enough to remember the EDC artist named Überzone
Ngl Lemmy’s one drawback are the boomers being mad about stupid shit like this.
Cool, zero wait GPS tracked and background checked drivers that work with my company’s corporate account that I don’t need to submit a reimbursement ticket for? No no no, BUT MUH YELLOW 19TH CENTURY CAB?!
LMAO have fun taking the “tourist” route.
Its a taxi with extra steps.
Uber exists in countries where taxicab services were terrible. Uber is not competitive in countries where taxicabs were already good.
The taxi driver union is a joke, almost no driver is a member of it.
I don’t know if you want your taxes so bad just keep using them. They smell like ass, huge vehicles that guzzle gas, have ads that won’t stop playing, don’t take credit/debit card, charge insane amounts, but if this is what you really fucking want go use it.
Tech bros also just reinvented trains recently, so this is pretty appropriate
At least Uber challenged the system, a system which desperately needed innovation. it was highly disruptive to the taxi market. And the taxi market is better off for it.
In live in DC and I wish we had a well functioning taxi system here. The airport is about the only place you can reliably get one. If I want to get picked up at home their is no one number to call since every taxi is independent and the Curb app is worth shit. When I do get a cub from the airport the experience is on par with Lyft and usually cheaper.
snooggums@midwest.social 5 days 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.
Nougat@fedia.io 5 days 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 4 days 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
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
The only thing it has “over” taxis is an app instead of a phone call to dispatch.
snooggums@midwest.social 5 days ago
Originally it was also cheaper for the customer because it was subsidized by venture capital.
SonicDeathTaco@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I can do that with my local taxi company anyway so they don’t even have that to differentiate themselves.
Krauerking@lemy.lol 5 days 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.
jaybone@lemmy.world 5 days 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 5 days ago
had.
xpinchx@lemmy.world 5 days ago
In Chicago all the big taxi companies have apps
deathbird@mander.xyz 5 days 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 5 days 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.
bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days 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 5 days 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 5 days 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 5 days 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.
Steve@startrek.website 5 days ago
We did see it. Everyone saw it, and it worked anyway.
snooggums@midwest.social 5 days 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.