I already pick Lyft whenever I can just because I noticed in the past drivers with Lyft were happier and some mentioned they were treated better by Lyft than when they were with Uber.
In Phoenix, I pick Lyft because it's significantly cheaper than Uber. Lyft drivers also seem happier but that might just be in my head. I did notice more Uber drivers are doing it full time.
In addition to being treated better, my Lyft driver yesterday claimed that he preferred Lyft because the software is better, with more efficient routing and fewer bugs.
Also, Lyft's GPS location for the car you're looking for is basically real time. Uber's seems to be off by about 1 minute, which is really not a great experience.
I have noticed a marked change in the quality of ride on Uber in DC in the last couple of months. It makes me wonder if Uber is tracking my engagement with their app and is deprioritizing me as a low-value customer since I only ride about once a week.
I've never heard of Juno before and it took some serious A-level googling to find their website. Only PR articles (like this one) show up when you search for them and none of them actually link to their site. That's some seriously odd SEO.
I haven't looked at their HTML source in a while, but last time I checked Uber's, it was meta keyword stuffed to an extent that would make a blackhatter proud.
Did you try targeted or scoped Google searches? (EDIT: disregard second paragraph, thats A-level googling)
Everyone knows Google ignores the meta keyword, so it's hardly blackhat - at worst Google actually penalizes it (just my speculation), at best it just slows down the page load a tiny tiny bit.
Their target market is taxi & livery drivers in NYC, who they seem to have been very effective in reaching. Look at their homepage[0] - does it seem to be trying to speak to you?
Ah yes, Juno. Along with NetZero and Freewwweb, I journeyed the path of the "grey"-side with free internet hacks (which just blocked the ads). My parents didn't yet see the value of internet -- nor did they have the extra cash for it.
Free internet and "click this Ad to get paid $0.10" were some really interesting hacks back in the day. Oh, the money you could make with Visual Basic and a dial-up modem....
Juno still provides dialup service and free email. I just fixed a Juno email issue for a friend (which turned out to be their AVG blocking it). Not sure how this other company gets away with calling themselves Juno.
Trademarks exist to prevent confusion between similar products. Juno, the free dial-up and e-mail provider and Juno the taxi/transportation(?) company are very different.
I guess it couldn't hurt the older Juno either, since people may google Juno to look for it and poke around the Juno website looking for the app for ridesharing.
That was my first thought when I saw "Juno" as well.
At the time, we didn't have local dial-up numbers so I used it very extensively. Standard Internet access was very expensive (and I was a young teenager so my parents were paying for it) so I subscribed to dozens of mailing lists and read them all off-line, dialing up to Juno just to send and receive. Most of my "downloading" in those days was facilitated by Juno and "ftp by e-mail".
Probably 20 years or so ago, there was a company named Juno that provided free (ad-supported) dial-up Internet access -- even via toll-free numbers if they didn't have a local number in your area.
I cant help but wonder if Juno and others are overestimating how much people care about the treatment of their drivers. I think very many people, myself included, would say that it is important to them that their driver is happy with his relationship with his employer. But at the end of the day does that really translate to a change in purchasing behavior?
For me it does not.
I use Uber here in Austin because it is significantly cheaper that Lyft. I hear people say that their drivers tell them that Lyft treats them better. Apparently that's not so much better that they stop driving for Uber. I've actually never had a driver make a comment to me in either direction about Uber. And I've had many drivers who drive for both companies. They have told me, on the few times that I've asked, that the reason they do it is to increase their likelihood of getting a fare.
When I think about it more it really seems like drivers for these services are all getting a raw deal just based on the wear and tear on their vehicles and so small differences in business practices don't really count for much to me.
I disagree. Theres plenty of alternative services. If all Uber drivers left for lyft and Juno, then Uber would drastically be hurt in terms of drivers available, and users would have to migrate. As long as there is competition, theres no need for regulation in this market.
To me, the exploitation that occurs in this system are the government regulations involved in someone just wanting to be paid to drive me from Point A to Point B.
Can you explain to me how you feel exploited by the government protecting someone from being taken advantage of economically? I would genuinely like to understand this.
Government regulation exists to protect people. Whether that's labor regulations, fire code, zoning ordinances, etc, its to ensure the health and well being of citizens.
Now, you'll argue that always isn't the case, and I'll agree with you. Incentives with taxi regulation went sideways, hence the medallion system. But that doesn't mean regulation is wrong, that means that apathetic, disinterested stakeholders are the problem. Just as we've made the problem by not caring enough to fix it, we can care enough to work towards fixing it. The number of vehicles for transport in a metro can be regulated using an unbiased algorithm. The wages of drivers can be determined by labor regulations. These are not hard technical problems to solve. They're political problems to be solved.
Should we throw out the medallion system? Yes. Should Uber get to stampede all over transport regulations? No. There should be a middle ground.
People say someone should be able to accept a job no matter what the pay is, as long as they're willing. No one is willing when they're an economic captive. It costs a minimum amount of money (dependent on locale) to have shelter, food, and clothing. This is what government regulation is for (see: minimum wage, employee/contractor classification, etc), to ensure that people can support themselves on the work they can obtain. If they can't support themselves on what a job pays, the job pays too little and the business relying on that undermarket labor rate is unsustainable (see: Walmart educating its workers on relying on social benefits, thereby using the government as a subsidy).
There is more too it. I don't "exercise my purchasing power" because I know whether I ride Uber or something else won't make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things. But I'd be willing to pay more for drivers to make a little more if everyone else also had to do it so there would be a real impact.
Just to counter your anecdata with my own, I deleted the Uber app because I wasn't happy with their business practices (especially wrt their treatment of drivers).
Seems weird to me that these are still called 'ride-sharing' services. Having used blablacar, which I would consider does true ride-sharing, uber and its ilk are more in the vein of ride-hiring.
> All drivers there are licensed by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), as required by law. Their vehicles must also be licensed with the TLC, and they have to carry commercial insurance.
This is going to negatively impact driver supply (making wait times higher, especially in the outer boroughs) and increase the cost of the service vs Uber.
> Juno’s drivers will provide better service because they’re happier, Marco said.
The only 'service' I want from a taxi driver is to show up, follow the GPS, and not double-swipe my credit card or claim the machine isn't working. Uber already has basically perfect service.
Unless they have some secret innovation I'm not seeing this is going to be a massive failure.
I use Uber as shorthand for UberX, where the vast majority of drivers (at least in my city) have no commercial licensing or insurance. That's what enables them to be so cheap and ubiquitous.
Maybe NYC specifically is different, I don't know.
Yes, NYC is different. All for-hire drivers are required to go through the TLC. From Uber, itself: https://get.uber.com/cl/nyc/. TLC also regulates the types of vehicles that must be driven and mandates commercial insurance.
There's atleast 15% wiggle room on each journey, seeing as Uber takes 20% off the top. Aside from their expenses promoting and competing with other 'ride sharing' services I don't see where that cash is going.
Buy anything from Amazon? Because they're infamous for treating their non-engineer employees terribly, yet I and most people I know still buy from them because they're cheap and have great customer service.
I live in NYC. During an Uber ride, I was talking to a driver about Juno. Between my understanding of him and my recollection, some of this may be incorrect.
They've recruited a lot of the NYC Uber drivers. They've been paying them $25/week to keep the Juno app open while they're on duty, collecting information about driving habits, routes, etc. The drivers' relationships with Juno won't be as contractors, so Juno will have much more control over the drivers - such as having exclusivity agreements.
The idea seemed to be to bring on all the drivers as employees, destroy the population of (good) Uber drivers, and advertise the app. The plan is that everyone in NYC switches to Juno, since you won't be able to get an Uber in a timely way, and Uber's quality will be bad because it'll just be the "leftovers" of the driver talent pool.
That's what I remember getting out of the conversation, anyway.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadI already pick Lyft whenever I can just because I noticed in the past drivers with Lyft were happier and some mentioned they were treated better by Lyft than when they were with Uber.
Did you try targeted or scoped Google searches? (EDIT: disregard second paragraph, thats A-level googling)
[0] https://www.gojuno.com/
I'm probably just weird. At least the general population probably has no such associations with primitive email services.
Trademarks exist to prevent confusion between similar products. Juno, the free dial-up and e-mail provider and Juno the taxi/transportation(?) company are very different.
Juno brings back lots of memories for me as well. I remember having a very hard time convincing everyone it was 'free'.
At the time, we didn't have local dial-up numbers so I used it very extensively. Standard Internet access was very expensive (and I was a young teenager so my parents were paying for it) so I subscribed to dozens of mailing lists and read them all off-line, dialing up to Juno just to send and receive. Most of my "downloading" in those days was facilitated by Juno and "ftp by e-mail".
For me it does not.
I use Uber here in Austin because it is significantly cheaper that Lyft. I hear people say that their drivers tell them that Lyft treats them better. Apparently that's not so much better that they stop driving for Uber. I've actually never had a driver make a comment to me in either direction about Uber. And I've had many drivers who drive for both companies. They have told me, on the few times that I've asked, that the reason they do it is to increase their likelihood of getting a fare.
When I think about it more it really seems like drivers for these services are all getting a raw deal just based on the wear and tear on their vehicles and so small differences in business practices don't really count for much to me.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
Edit: And the exploitation I was referring to was of the taxi drivers under the current system, not myself.
Government regulation exists to protect people. Whether that's labor regulations, fire code, zoning ordinances, etc, its to ensure the health and well being of citizens.
Now, you'll argue that always isn't the case, and I'll agree with you. Incentives with taxi regulation went sideways, hence the medallion system. But that doesn't mean regulation is wrong, that means that apathetic, disinterested stakeholders are the problem. Just as we've made the problem by not caring enough to fix it, we can care enough to work towards fixing it. The number of vehicles for transport in a metro can be regulated using an unbiased algorithm. The wages of drivers can be determined by labor regulations. These are not hard technical problems to solve. They're political problems to be solved.
Should we throw out the medallion system? Yes. Should Uber get to stampede all over transport regulations? No. There should be a middle ground.
People say someone should be able to accept a job no matter what the pay is, as long as they're willing. No one is willing when they're an economic captive. It costs a minimum amount of money (dependent on locale) to have shelter, food, and clothing. This is what government regulation is for (see: minimum wage, employee/contractor classification, etc), to ensure that people can support themselves on the work they can obtain. If they can't support themselves on what a job pays, the job pays too little and the business relying on that undermarket labor rate is unsustainable (see: Walmart educating its workers on relying on social benefits, thereby using the government as a subsidy).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York
This is going to negatively impact driver supply (making wait times higher, especially in the outer boroughs) and increase the cost of the service vs Uber.
> Juno’s drivers will provide better service because they’re happier, Marco said.
The only 'service' I want from a taxi driver is to show up, follow the GPS, and not double-swipe my credit card or claim the machine isn't working. Uber already has basically perfect service.
Unless they have some secret innovation I'm not seeing this is going to be a massive failure.
All professional drivers, including Uber drivers, already need TLC licensing, as do their vehicles.
Maybe NYC specifically is different, I don't know.
Seems like a number pulled from nowhere.
I don't shop at Walmart though, because of their poor track record treating their employees well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Launch
They've recruited a lot of the NYC Uber drivers. They've been paying them $25/week to keep the Juno app open while they're on duty, collecting information about driving habits, routes, etc. The drivers' relationships with Juno won't be as contractors, so Juno will have much more control over the drivers - such as having exclusivity agreements.
The idea seemed to be to bring on all the drivers as employees, destroy the population of (good) Uber drivers, and advertise the app. The plan is that everyone in NYC switches to Juno, since you won't be able to get an Uber in a timely way, and Uber's quality will be bad because it'll just be the "leftovers" of the driver talent pool.
That's what I remember getting out of the conversation, anyway.