> George Galloway, who is now a leftwing mayoral candidate, came and addressed the room. “What does Uber give you except grief?” he asked. “Because we know what you give Uber, which are profits that are beyond the dreams of avarice.” When Galloway left, I followed him out. Parked close around the hall, there were Toyota Priuses and Mercedes E Classes, their private hire stickers showing in their rear windscreens. I opened my app. The screen showed empty streets where those cars should have been. But I didn’t have to worry. A vehicle came into view. My Uber was two minutes away.
Good point, this could very well be a submarine advertisement. If it doesn't exist, there should be a handy curated website that lists and analyzes submarine advertisements from big name newspapers/blogs/editorials, something like what snopes does for urban legends.
Claim -> Headline / Apparent Story
Whats true -> Headline related information
Whats false -> The hidden agenda ( disinformation, ad for CompanyX, repackaged press release )
Most people I know tried uber and moved back to more reliable black cabs and minicabs in London.
Uber often seems to have 'ghost cars' on the map - never seem to be real or reachable - maybe trying to inflate the perception of availability of cars?
The large number of drivers who refuse dogs, especially guide dogs for registered blind people is appalling.
The London transport regulator wanted to bring uber under reasonable regulation, uber bugged their users to go and annoy the regulator to back off.
Well a very large percentage of Londoners aren't permitted to have contact with dogs so I think you should reconsider what you're trying to subliminally say.
Black cabs can be truly vile, with horribly racist drivers and nasty attitudes. And I certainly wouldn't say minicabs are any more reliable than black cabs unless you're paying 2x the price of a black cab, and then your UberLuxe is probably just as reliable.
Just a data point: this is not my experience, nor that of my many London Uber-using friends. We exclusively find it prompt, reliable, and drivers are courteous to the point that some offer to play the passenger's choice of music, give them lollies, etc.
An Uber-XL will happily carry a bicycle or large amounts of luggage. And I've not once experienced an Uber driver refusing to take me anywhere. "South of the river? Not at this time of night guv". Pffff.
Black cabs are now campaigning and many rally behind the slogan "the safest ride with the greatest guide" (from memory). This betrays how fundamentally they have failed to understand the trouble they're in.
Safety: Uber purport to address this with registrations and reviews. (This may be fallible, but no more than black cab registration).
"The greatest guide"?? Puh-lease. Nobody but nobody wants their cabby to be a guide, nor to offer their opinions on anything. Perhaps a tiny minority of tourists may feign interest for a few minutes. Perhaps.
Unfortunately for black cab drivers, it seems that the current generation have sat cosily on the monopoly they inherited, and they've been caught napping.
None of this is intended as an anti-black cab rant, I simply think they're failing to deal with the primary issue: the times they are a-changing.
Well, passengers who are booking a tour expect a tour. So... I don't think this compares to the average cab passenger in e.g. London. But I take your point, and I was over-zealous in my previous comment.
Interesting. Apparently, during the 'euphemisms' the public bus service was often disrupted by terrorism or bomb threats, so sharing rides in black taxis became common in Belfast as an alternative.
It seems I've underestimated the quality of taxi tours, and over-stated my position.
Black-cab taxi tours of London are apparently very high quality [0] although I'm uncertain of how much in-demand they are.
I was envisaging the passengers who book a cab to travel from A to B, not explicit tour bookings. I find it odd that cabbies are rallying behind the "safest ride with the greatest guide" slogan when Uber appear to do a reasonable job regarding background investigations [1], and the "greatest guide" is only required for a minority (I presume) of bookings.
To me, it feels that black-cabs have had a monopoly on being able to pick up passengers and charge high fares. They're now being undercut by Uber, and they're fighting back by emphasising their current business model. Surely their business is suffering precisely because their operating model has failed to predict and adapt to change?
The black cabs are under more stringent regulation than minicabs or uber - they are the safer ride. Not sure what's too hard to understand about that.
As they say: once you've been surge priced (by uber), you never go back (to uber)
None of this is intended as an anti-uber rant, I simply think they're failing to deal with the primary issue: regulations and real service are not just for breakfast.
Although I have to say the regulation is no guarantee.
I actually had to catch a cab from Earl's Court to Kew Gardens because District Line had issues. I got in and told the driver, an elderly man, my destination of Victoria Gate, Kew Gardens. First red flag, he wasn't sure where that was. Second red flag, he pulls out a paper map book, like the kind I haven't seen for 10 years. Third red flag he doesn't even know which lane to exit the roundabout to go towards Kew.
I proceeded to watch on my smartphone how he went completely the wrong way and added 20 minutes to the trip getting stuck in heavy traffic. I'm well familiar with The Knowledge, and I can tell you without a doubt, someone lent this old codger his black cab. Whatever idiot cabbie did that did far more damage to the cause of the traditional black cabs than anything Uber could ever do.
The difference being instant feedback. The low ratings one would garner by doing this with Uber would probably lead to the irresponsible driver getting booted, where with a traditional cab, the complaint process is significantly more involved.
Yes because with Uber you know what you're getting. I'm not sure if you're familiar with London black cabs, but as far as I know they are the most expensive taxis in the world, and they justify the expense by citing their training, knowledge and expertise. Short of that all you're getting is a tight turning radius (admittedly quite useful in London).
I guess the "primary issue" differs depending on one's perspective. The black-cab drivers are highly concerned about loss of business, and personally I think they're addressing this concern in the wrong way. I guess time will tell.
No doubt that black-cab regulation is stringent, although I'm unconvinced that they're the safer ride. I have no way of determining if my black-cab driver has a history of unpleasant behaviour. Uber's rating system gives me some hint toward that -- although of course it is less than perfect.
Regarding price-surging... surely we've all been there, and yet still gone back to Uber another time?
One thing Uber drivers are terrible for: driving while watching the sat-nav instead of watching the road. I do wonder if this contributes to increased accidents, and if black-cabs are less prone to collisions.
> "It's real time analytics and the cars you see on the app are the cars driving around London,"
> "If we know it's going to be busy we can tell our drivers, but that doesn't affect when people open their app. There might be a ten second delay from their GPS, but it's not that you open up the app and there are three cars around you, and they're not there. That's definitely not correct." (emphasis mine)
I've found Uber to be really good in London. Black cabs cost way more, and in any case are far less likely to available to hail outside of very central areas.
> The large number of drivers who refuse dogs, especially guide dogs for registered blind people is appalling.
It's a really bad idea for them to do that unless they have a medical exemption (which they can get for dog allergies).
Disability rights activists are vigorous, and would happily book rides with their guide dogs hoping to get denied service so they can then go to court. It's an easy win for them.
> We also hear from Jade Sharp, who complained to Transport For London when a number of Uber drivers refused to take her and her guide dog. Five of them have been successfully prosecuted and fined.
(I have no idea if this BBC Radio 4 programme about visual impairment is available outside the UK. Sorry.)
You make it sound like the problem is 'litigious people with disability', rather than 'providing a service to the general public but discriminating against certain members'.
I thought he made it sound as if 'litigious people with disability' was the solution to 'providing a service to the general public but discriminating against certain members'.
London has definitely not been conquered by Uber. YMMV, but I've had nothing but bad experiences in London (multiple driver cancellations, slow pickup times, etc.) especially compared with Paris and many cities in the US.
100% incorrect. Uber has definitely won over most Londoners it is a complete game changer for the following reasons irrespective of your minimal bad experiences.
I've spent several thousand pounds via work on Uber. This has resulted in 2-3 bad trips (which round out to 0.02%).
- Quick pick up times
- Usually responsive and helpful drivers (no complaining)
- Helpful carrying heavy items (almost 100% of the time)
- Cheap fees
- Bill splitting is easy no friction
- UberPool does make me slightly nervous
The service works and is default for myself and 100s of business users, personally it works well too esp for date night.
In comparison, London Black Cab drivers are rude, racist, crass, willing to rip you off and take advantage of you. They do not have their cars auditing a lot of the time, refusal to take cash is unacceptable in this day and age and should be in place in ALL taxis. There is no excuse for this.
Sorry, I'm not sure I get your last point: are you saying the black cab drivers selectively take cash, or don't as a whole? I've never paid for an Uber with cash, so I'm struggling ti understand the argument you're making, because seemingly Uber wouldn't take cash either...
My experience a couple years ago, is that the cab driver WOULD NOT accept anything but cash. In fact he went as far as to say most do not, and I was stuck driving around looking for an ATM on my way to Heathrow Express.
Fair enough, but again, YMMV. Agreed that black cabs in London are even more awful, but its much easier to find a ride, which is the core idea. When Uber in London provides the same level of service as it does in Dallas, NYC or Paris... then it will have taken over. Right now it's just competing.
I just walked past a long row of diesel cabs, sitting with engines idling, waiting for fares at Canary Wharf. They sit there all day pumping out noxious fumes. I'd much rather see the efficiently-allocated modern hybrid vehicles of Uber.
I refuse to use a black cab in London on principle. Their drivers fight against regulations limiting the maximum age of their cars, so filthy, worn-out diesel engines from 15 years ago are still polluting the city.
Cabs actually have more stringent MOT tests than private cars do and have them more often. I'm not sure where your idea of 'filthy worn-out' engines comes from.
I understand that diesel engines and particulate emissions are a big problem in London at the moment but cabs are hardly going to be the worst offenders here.
I understand that they are. And the cars (and engines) are much older than would be preferable because updating the regulations to mandate newer vehicles gets a lot of push back. The vehicles are privately owned, the drivers do not want to fork out for a new one. Black cabs are much more expensive than prius because of the limited number of approved models and manufacturers.
Source: friends who work air quality policy for tfl/city hall
Why in the world would a "low emission zone" require a specific age instead of a specific amount of emissions?
Even if we assumed that every engine put out the exact legal max from when it was built, that wouldn't exactly line up with age, and that's a terrible assumption to begin with.
In fact this policy actively discourages making an engine that's efficient enough to meet regulations 20 years down the line. Total waste of money.
If I understand it correctly, it is like that directly. Cars have to have a certain environmental standard for the zone.
Taxis/hire cars are exempted, so the only thing limiting their emissions is the fact that newer cars have been build to meet stricter standards. Black cabs are allowed to be older than other hire cars, so they were build to weaker standards. The age limit does not exist primarily for environmental reasons, but because standards increase it has the side effect of limiting how bad taxis are.
Its really not. Uber isn't actually a new idea in london, we've had app bookable minicabs for a long time, through addison lee(and others).
Now, Addison Lee are almost as odious to their staff as Uber are. However the genius of AL is the finance agreement between the drivers and the company. The company lease you a car, and you have the option to work when ever you want. But you have to get booking through their master system. and it only costs you 25% of each fair. Plus the £300 a week rental of the branded vehicle.
This means that the have 100% control of their employees, and if a driver under performs, they are still liable for rental of the Addison Lee branded car.
As a business model its awesome. As a moral proposition its pretty shitty. Drivers are contractors, liable for inflated costs and because they have no employment rights are forced to work round the clock to break even.
Uber just goes one step further cutting overheads and offloading risk onto the user instead. Car not road worthy? just 1-star it! got raped by the driver? just 1-star it! got kicked off because your disabled? just 1-star it (but don't do it too often, remember in uber's Randian vision, its your fault for being weak and holding back the strong.)
Fortunately the minicab rules are quite comprehensive in london: you need to have a clean record, ID, and a road worthy car. Anything less and its finesville and jail for you.
I was on a job last month that involved a lot of cabs sitting around waiting for people. According to the producers dealing with them the drivers would ring like crazy because for idle time the drivers don't get paid... but Addison Lee still charges you for it. Absolute scumbags.
I'm surprised, with their reputation, AL are able to get enough staff.
35 years ago I did some motorbike dispatch for them for my summer job. So many fake deductions, charges to take jobs via them, and discrepancies at the end of the week. Not forgetting rental of the compulsory branding. Same for all the couriers. I left for a smaller firm after a couple of weeks, and for broadly similar amount of work, took home roughly double.
They have had a shit reputation for decades, yet seem to go from strength to strength.
I'm surprised it doesn't mention the referral system. Pretty much every Londoner I know in their early twenties who uses Uber was given an initial £10/20 (can't remember exactly how much) to spend if they referred a friend. I remember thinking at the time how much money this must cost but it clearly worked, everyone who had it was looking to give their uber code away to someone new so you could travel in luxury for free.
What I found interesting about this is how they created a system where taxis can become cheaper and drivers can earn more at the same time as their idle time is reduced.
Also, at the same time, it is very illustrative for how humans (in this case, drivers) really don't matter very much in such systems. As the one guy says, "Uber don’t see drivers as humans". In that way, it looks they are just one step away from driverless cars.
What Uber means by "liquidity" is lots of drivers competing to be available to Uber. Not lots of apps competing for drivers.
Incidentally, the screen Uber shows at startup with many vehicles near your current location has nothing to do with actual vehicle positions. That's just a screen saver.[1]
What I find interesting is the sheer size of the taxi industry (Uber included) given the costs involved. I'm guessing it's some sort of socioeconomic group thing. Hardly anyone I know takes taxis of any kind in London.
For personal use, they're just so astonishingly expensive that it's difficult to justify them. As far as I can remember I've used Uber once, to get home after missing the last public transport, and I had to really consider whether it was worth just finding something to do for a few hours until the 5am train.
I live <1h from Central London via train. The fare for that is ~3GBP off peak or 5GBP peak. An Uber costs an order of magnitude more (~30-40GBP).
It would be an extremely notable expense in my budget - probably the largest single item.
I think I'd have to have a home paid off and a fairly high salary before a taxi became anything other than a frivolous luxury, to be honest.
(Business use is excepted here. I've used taxis plenty in my professional life. Uber as a platform doesn't seem focused on business travel, though.)
I'd bet typical users live closer to the city center. I've been using uber and lyft a lot in Chicago, Austin, and Denver recently, and my average cost per ride is probably around $12.
My gf and I live 15-20 minutes from central London by scooter, or 45-60 minutes by public transport. We'd take an Uber home from a restaurant in preference to public transport almost every time if it's on the same side of the city to our home.
Given that a meal for two will typically be in the £80 to £200 range for us, the Uber itself is not an enormous sum.
Together we earn over six figures GBP. It may be an earnings level thing too.
67 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadSubmarine advertising strikes again?
Claim -> Headline / Apparent Story
Whats true -> Headline related information
Whats false -> The hidden agenda ( disinformation, ad for CompanyX, repackaged press release )
The large number of drivers who refuse dogs, especially guide dogs for registered blind people is appalling.
The London transport regulator wanted to bring uber under reasonable regulation, uber bugged their users to go and annoy the regulator to back off.
An Uber-XL will happily carry a bicycle or large amounts of luggage. And I've not once experienced an Uber driver refusing to take me anywhere. "South of the river? Not at this time of night guv". Pffff.
Black cabs are now campaigning and many rally behind the slogan "the safest ride with the greatest guide" (from memory). This betrays how fundamentally they have failed to understand the trouble they're in.
Safety: Uber purport to address this with registrations and reviews. (This may be fallible, but no more than black cab registration).
"The greatest guide"?? Puh-lease. Nobody but nobody wants their cabby to be a guide, nor to offer their opinions on anything. Perhaps a tiny minority of tourists may feign interest for a few minutes. Perhaps.
Unfortunately for black cab drivers, it seems that the current generation have sat cosily on the monopoly they inherited, and they've been caught napping.
None of this is intended as an anti-black cab rant, I simply think they're failing to deal with the primary issue: the times they are a-changing.
Edit: typo.
That's not just wrong, but unimaginative.
Black-cab taxi tours of London are apparently very high quality [0] although I'm uncertain of how much in-demand they are.
I was envisaging the passengers who book a cab to travel from A to B, not explicit tour bookings. I find it odd that cabbies are rallying behind the "safest ride with the greatest guide" slogan when Uber appear to do a reasonable job regarding background investigations [1], and the "greatest guide" is only required for a minority (I presume) of bookings.
To me, it feels that black-cabs have had a monopoly on being able to pick up passengers and charge high fares. They're now being undercut by Uber, and they're fighting back by emphasising their current business model. Surely their business is suffering precisely because their operating model has failed to predict and adapt to change?
[0] https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186338-d188...
[1] See footnote in this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11608878/I-said-...
As they say: once you've been surge priced (by uber), you never go back (to uber)
None of this is intended as an anti-uber rant, I simply think they're failing to deal with the primary issue: regulations and real service are not just for breakfast.
I actually had to catch a cab from Earl's Court to Kew Gardens because District Line had issues. I got in and told the driver, an elderly man, my destination of Victoria Gate, Kew Gardens. First red flag, he wasn't sure where that was. Second red flag, he pulls out a paper map book, like the kind I haven't seen for 10 years. Third red flag he doesn't even know which lane to exit the roundabout to go towards Kew.
I proceeded to watch on my smartphone how he went completely the wrong way and added 20 minutes to the trip getting stuck in heavy traffic. I'm well familiar with The Knowledge, and I can tell you without a doubt, someone lent this old codger his black cab. Whatever idiot cabbie did that did far more damage to the cause of the traditional black cabs than anything Uber could ever do.
I guess the "primary issue" differs depending on one's perspective. The black-cab drivers are highly concerned about loss of business, and personally I think they're addressing this concern in the wrong way. I guess time will tell.
No doubt that black-cab regulation is stringent, although I'm unconvinced that they're the safer ride. I have no way of determining if my black-cab driver has a history of unpleasant behaviour. Uber's rating system gives me some hint toward that -- although of course it is less than perfect.
Regarding price-surging... surely we've all been there, and yet still gone back to Uber another time?
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/28/uber-cars-alw...
> "It's real time analytics and the cars you see on the app are the cars driving around London,"
> "If we know it's going to be busy we can tell our drivers, but that doesn't affect when people open their app. There might be a ten second delay from their GPS, but it's not that you open up the app and there are three cars around you, and they're not there. That's definitely not correct." (emphasis mine)
http://uberpeople.net/threads/ghost-cars.12091/
Worth noting that ubers in London are all licensed minicabs, it's not like some American cities where they may not be insured for commercial use.
It's a really bad idea for them to do that unless they have a medical exemption (which they can get for dog allergies).
Disability rights activists are vigorous, and would happily book rides with their guide dogs hoping to get denied service so they can then go to court. It's an easy win for them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lhl
> We also hear from Jade Sharp, who complained to Transport For London when a number of Uber drivers refused to take her and her guide dog. Five of them have been successfully prosecuted and fined.
(I have no idea if this BBC Radio 4 programme about visual impairment is available outside the UK. Sorry.)
I've spent several thousand pounds via work on Uber. This has resulted in 2-3 bad trips (which round out to 0.02%).
- Quick pick up times - Usually responsive and helpful drivers (no complaining) - Helpful carrying heavy items (almost 100% of the time) - Cheap fees - Bill splitting is easy no friction - UberPool does make me slightly nervous
The service works and is default for myself and 100s of business users, personally it works well too esp for date night.
In comparison, London Black Cab drivers are rude, racist, crass, willing to rip you off and take advantage of you. They do not have their cars auditing a lot of the time, refusal to take cash is unacceptable in this day and age and should be in place in ALL taxis. There is no excuse for this.
Anyway, by October this year they will all take cards. [1]
[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2016/februa...
Taxis aren't dying nearly fast enough in London
I refuse to use a black cab in London on principle. Their drivers fight against regulations limiting the maximum age of their cars, so filthy, worn-out diesel engines from 15 years ago are still polluting the city.
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/black-cab-dr...
I understand that diesel engines and particulate emissions are a big problem in London at the moment but cabs are hardly going to be the worst offenders here.
A lot of public buses are now hybrid.
Buses, lorries and other commercial vehicles must comply with the "Low Emission Zone" or pay a hefty charge. Taxis are exempted from this.
All public buses are something like 6 years old or younger, but for taxis it's 15 years.
For other taxis the limit is 10 years: http://www.pcoworld.com/pco-vehicles/what-is-the-age-limit-a...
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/spread_of_ages_of_lon...
Even if we assumed that every engine put out the exact legal max from when it was built, that wouldn't exactly line up with age, and that's a terrible assumption to begin with.
In fact this policy actively discourages making an engine that's efficient enough to meet regulations 20 years down the line. Total waste of money.
Taxis/hire cars are exempted, so the only thing limiting their emissions is the fact that newer cars have been build to meet stricter standards. Black cabs are allowed to be older than other hire cars, so they were build to weaker standards. The age limit does not exist primarily for environmental reasons, but because standards increase it has the side effect of limiting how bad taxis are.
Its really not. Uber isn't actually a new idea in london, we've had app bookable minicabs for a long time, through addison lee(and others).
Now, Addison Lee are almost as odious to their staff as Uber are. However the genius of AL is the finance agreement between the drivers and the company. The company lease you a car, and you have the option to work when ever you want. But you have to get booking through their master system. and it only costs you 25% of each fair. Plus the £300 a week rental of the branded vehicle.
This means that the have 100% control of their employees, and if a driver under performs, they are still liable for rental of the Addison Lee branded car.
As a business model its awesome. As a moral proposition its pretty shitty. Drivers are contractors, liable for inflated costs and because they have no employment rights are forced to work round the clock to break even.
Uber just goes one step further cutting overheads and offloading risk onto the user instead. Car not road worthy? just 1-star it! got raped by the driver? just 1-star it! got kicked off because your disabled? just 1-star it (but don't do it too often, remember in uber's Randian vision, its your fault for being weak and holding back the strong.)
Fortunately the minicab rules are quite comprehensive in london: you need to have a clean record, ID, and a road worthy car. Anything less and its finesville and jail for you.
35 years ago I did some motorbike dispatch for them for my summer job. So many fake deductions, charges to take jobs via them, and discrepancies at the end of the week. Not forgetting rental of the compulsory branding. Same for all the couriers. I left for a smaller firm after a couple of weeks, and for broadly similar amount of work, took home roughly double.
They have had a shit reputation for decades, yet seem to go from strength to strength.
Also, at the same time, it is very illustrative for how humans (in this case, drivers) really don't matter very much in such systems. As the one guy says, "Uber don’t see drivers as humans". In that way, it looks they are just one step away from driverless cars.
That step, of course, is actually inventing a working driverless car.
Coincidentally, I am the same number of steps away from writing the great American novel.
Incidentally, the screen Uber shows at startup with many vehicles near your current location has nothing to do with actual vehicle positions. That's just a screen saver.[1]
[1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/ubers-phantom-cabs
For personal use, they're just so astonishingly expensive that it's difficult to justify them. As far as I can remember I've used Uber once, to get home after missing the last public transport, and I had to really consider whether it was worth just finding something to do for a few hours until the 5am train.
I live <1h from Central London via train. The fare for that is ~3GBP off peak or 5GBP peak. An Uber costs an order of magnitude more (~30-40GBP).
It would be an extremely notable expense in my budget - probably the largest single item.
I think I'd have to have a home paid off and a fairly high salary before a taxi became anything other than a frivolous luxury, to be honest.
(Business use is excepted here. I've used taxis plenty in my professional life. Uber as a platform doesn't seem focused on business travel, though.)
I used to live in Zone1/2, and had 24 hour bus routes. So still ~an order of magnitude - 10GBP vs 1.50.
I'd forgotten about sharing with friends. Taxis certainly work out well there. Maybe that's it?
It's probably simply that I hate spending money! :)
Given that a meal for two will typically be in the £80 to £200 range for us, the Uber itself is not an enormous sum.
Together we earn over six figures GBP. It may be an earnings level thing too.