Keep in mind that Colombia can reapply the fine with arbitrary periodicity for continued non-compliance.
As a one time fine it isn't much, but it isn't chump change either, and it will make the company increasingly unattractive to investors/contractors/employees.
This is where economies of scale can start to bite you in the arse. Yeah, the world is your oyster. But when you have the entire world treating you as a target, things can pile up real fast.
> The country has not specifically regulated transport services like Uber, but has said it will suspend for 25 years the licenses of drivers caught working for the platform.
> The fine from the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce says Uber urges employees not to give information to regulators and to block access to company computers.
Call me crazy, but I wonder if they were trying to get a list of drivers, for the purposes of pulling licenses.
Probably just as easy to have a team in Colombia (edit: typo corrected) request Uber rides and have regulators pull licenses on the spot of whomever shows up.
They did that in Madison WI when Uber first showed up. The police would call an Uber, complete a trip, and issue them a citation when the trip was complete.
Amazing, Uber urges employees to not comply with regulators? Wow what an attitude. Hope they get their asses handed to them and that the house of cards that is Uber comes crashing down spectacularly, and soon.
Uber has been an deliberately criminal organization from day one. Many of their executives should be in prison, but they have suffered no meaningful consequences. Nothing will change.
Some of the regulations needed to be broken. Cab companies provided bad service and corrupted local governments to give them monopolies. Breaking that has been a good thing but Uber/Lyft/etc have in many cases gone too far.
"In 2017, it was reported that Kalanick had knowledge of sexual harassment allegations at Uber and did nothing. In the same week, he asked his direct report, Uber's SVP of Engineering Amit Singhal, to resign after a month for failing to disclose a sexual harassment claim during Singhal's 15 years as VP of Google Search"
"In March 2017, Uber VP of Business, Emil Michael contacted Kalanick's ex-girlfriend in an attempt to silence her into hiding an HR complaint."
for those outside Colombia: there are periodic taxi strikes, some severe and lasting for hours (blocking important highways that everyone uses etc.), so for those wondering about the small fine or whatever, it could just be to placate taxi drivers in order reduce the frequency of striking across the country
> The country has not specifically regulated transport services like Uber, but has said it will suspend for 25 years the licenses of drivers caught working for the platform.
I really wish things defaulted to "legal if not specifically prohibited", not "illegal unless specifically allowed" like this implies. (probably just a case of overly broad taxi legislation, though)
I feel like this is still how it works. If something is unregulated, you can do what you want. It's just that we've added so many regulations for everything that pretty much nothing is allowed anymore without going through some kind of approval process.
If used effectively, basic tort law could cover this sort of thing. Where you really need detailed regulations is if you want to permit someone to pollute in a limited way without getting sued.
Unless we lived in an omniscient surveillance state that automatically notified property owners, basic tort law really couldn't address this effectively because the benefits of dumping easily exceed the risk adjusted costs simply because the costs of detecting and suing for illegal dumping on a property owner by property owner basis are far too great.[1] Indeed, the more toxic the waste the more the situation favors dumpers.
[1] To be clear, that's not a comment on pricey lawyers and slow courts, but regards fundamental structural limitations to such a legal system.
But to be fair doing such a thing is invariably already illegal under basic rules of property and tort, it's just that the penalties aren't very much. Though even with steep statutory penalties and even criminal penalties it still happens--people still dump toxic waste into the deep woods everywhere. But I would presume that the steeper penalties are somewhat effective at the margins.
> But to be fair doing such a thing is invariably already illegal under basic rules of property and tort, it's just that the penalties aren't very much.
It would also be a nightmare to have to go through the court system for every infraction.
That's an argument for regulation reform, but not necessarily reduction - whatever overstepping occurred, there was an initial need for regulation that still needs to be met.
> there was an initial need for regulation that still needs to be met
not necessarily. we have kneejerk reactions to statistically anomalous events all the time. Some things happen so infrequently that the regulation does far more harm than good. People have a desire to do something, anything, but never question if something should be done in the first place and establishing rational criteria to determine if they shouldn't act at all.
It's probably much more nuanced than that. Let's take the example of someone in country X using email that's run from the US - this doesn't per se mean that the email company is illegally operating in country X. It could be the users - but I don't think we'll settle it over a forum back and forth.
What does seem clear to me though is that Colombia is being disproportionate and possibly somewhat arbitrary & capricious in their response. What sort of country tries to ban people for 25 years! This is the bad parenting brand of legislation ("oh, you ignored my exaggerated threat. Damn"). And I'm not saying this out of support for Uber (can't stand them, which is what makes these kinds of stand offs a good spectacle)
you are introducing (perhaps deliberately straw manning, perhaps not) an example that has an extremely low overhead (low bandwidth over a network) instead of focusing on the presented example, which is:
- Uber adds traffic to already choked up/bad infrastructure
- Uber does not pay their employees benefits etc. because of their "partnership" so this leads to poorer health outcomes which cost the state $ later on
- Uber "voluntarily" pays VAT etc. (only after taxis pushed for this) but almost certainly not commensurate with their income
so yes, the company is dumping their enormous externalities without much regard for the country at hand, and it's not useful to insert a tech-focused example into the situation.
God I hope never. And I say this as a business owner. Businesses should be required to register as legal entities and carry the right insurances, and be held accountable through the legal system.
Although most people will read this and think, oh more shenanigans from UBER, the reality is (and as a Colombian I know), that the government has failed for years to regulate this industry, which is regarded by all consumers as incredibly positive, and continuously has fought against this platforms in an effort to keep the taxi mafia content.
Yet, taxis in Colombia are incredibly dangerous. As a passenger you are exposed to express kidnappings, drivers that are aggressive, adultered fares systems and drive unsafely in cars that don't meet any security guidelines (a large number of passengers have died on rear-collisions given that the most common Bogota taxi has no rear-reinforcement). For decades the taxi mafia's have provided an unsafe & horrible service, when Uber & other platforms arrived, users flocked, yet by means of aggressive protests where they pretty much block the city, the taxi's have forced some parts of the government to try to curve Uber.
Uber however has fought to continue providing the service that the consumers demand, and has otherwise tried to complied with every law. This fine comes from the industry of commerce regulators, who have tried to convince the technology ministry to shut Uber down, with them refusing. I hope Uber continues to operate in Colombia and use their legal means to fight this regulators who are not operating from a consumer benefit standpoint, but rather a political fight to protect a mafia that needs to be dismantled.
The one thing that I found positive about Colombian taxis is that they are very cheap. In this regard, I don't see how Uber could compete.
On the other hand, the cars are falling to bits and the drivers are rather aggressive (although it seemed to me that drivers were careless in general).
I would pay a premium for the feeling of increased safety. If Uber had better cars and drivers it would be worth it for some people to pay the higher price as the stress of a bad driver at the wheel is horrible. The constant feeling of "will this next corner be my death?" No thank you.
>Yet, taxis in Colombia are incredibly dangerous...drive unsafely in cars that don't meet any security guidelines (a large number of passengers have died on rear-collisions given that the most common Bogota taxi has no rear-reinforcement).
This doesn't follow for me. Most Uber drivers drive their own cars, no? That means the cars are the same as are sold in the country, which given the regulated taxi companies are using supposedly less safe version of fleet vehicles sounds a lot to me like a country specific problem with lax regulations on fleet vehicle specifications.
Unless Uber is also making available U.S. market/road legal cars available to drivers in Colombia too.
I don't know squat about the regulatory framework in Colombia though. So I could be totally wrong based on the flawed assumption on how extensive this "taxi mafia's" regulatory capture purportedly is.
The thing with Uber is the reputation system. It makes it much more profitable for the driver behave well. Traditional taxi system doesn't have that. In a big city, you can scam customers all day long and be pretty sure that you won't meet those people again.
No. To be an Uber driver you are required to have a better car than what is (practically) required to drive a taxi: newer, clean, etc. Plus the reputation system makes it more difficult to not comply.
I never use Uber in my country of residence but it was a boon in Colombia (and other countries where taxis have a questionable reputation).
One correction though: Based on what I’ve read, express kidnappings might have happened more often in the past but hardly anymore today. It’s more likely to be robbed at gunpoint from guys on a motorbike, and they like to target taxis (although other cars as well).
It's anecdotal however, this doesn't correlate to my experience(s) there at all. I lived in Colombia from 2013-2015, and return various times per year. For what it's worth, I am not hispanic, and very much look like someone from the US
I've taken yellow taxis in Colombia (in all the major cities) more times than I can count(both by myself and with others) and have never once felt in any danger, nor been ripped off (which has happened to me in other countries I have visited)
Of course there are news reports about taxi rides gone wrong, but in my experience 99.9% of yellow taxi drivers in Colombia are honest people just trying to do their job.
More than happy to answer questions about living in Colombia if anyone's interested.
Did you live in the well-off area too. I live in a country with the same problem but tourists are highly unlikely to see it. The abuse from Taxis is usually in popular/poor neighborhoods.
Can you back your second paragraph up with recent numbers?
I have taken a lot of yellow taxis all across the country, but mostly in Bogotá, Medellin and Cali over the last couple of years (about 2-3 rides per week) and have yet to have a single bad experience. The handful of Uber rides I had in the time weren't better or worse, besides being in better cars.
When I was in Colombia every time I took an Uber the driver asked me to sit in the front seat. I thought it was a bit odd but figured it was a local thing. It wasn’t until my way to the airport that my last Uber driver told me the app was illegal in the country so they ask passengers to sit up front to look like they’re just driving a friend.
It really ticked me off that Uber let me open the app and order a car, knowing full well I would be breaking the law, and gave me no warning or indication of the risk I would be taking whatsoever. As a young woman with only the most basic of Spanish skills traveling alone, breaking Colombian law isn’t a risk I would have been willing to take.
Same thing in Chile. Some drivers even make sure all the passengers agree on a story to tell the cops if they stop you.
Unlike Colombia, it's not dangerous for passengers -- at least the law-breaking aspect isn't. What's dangerous is how everyone drives. Also, it's a gamble whether you'll get a normal, sane driver, or someone weird or downright crazy. But that's not limited to Uber, you can get crazy cabbies too.
I think the worst experience I had there -- before Uber, this was a taxi driver -- was a guy who: 1) was speeding so much, regardless of potholes, I thought my teeth would fall out; 2) stopped to take a piss in the middle of the ride, without pausing the meter; 3) ended up confessing he wasn't sure where my address was, so I asked him to let me off a few blocks from my place.
Is there a moral to this story? Not really, I just thought I would share something funny ;)
Hmm; not sure about legality aspect, but in many places where Uber is perfectly legal and common, the drivers have nevertheless asked me to sit in front due to fear of violent reaction by Taxi drivers.
In the city I'm currently in, Taxi drivers and unions have used various means to create political pressure - from peaceful protests; to aggressive protests; to attacking Uber drivers; to attacking their offices (they also apply the same tactics between each other when a different taxi company wins an airport license, etc.
(Oh, the city is Ottawa, the capital of Canada).
Note as well, Uber was "illegal", in the sense that there's no framework or license under which it operates, pretty much everywhere it started, and in many popular places still is. It entrenches, and then fights to become legal. You probably used Uber "illegally" (as in, operating outside of framework of existing law and regulation framework) before, without being so explicitly told or aware.
(and while this is not a message likely to be received well, and I genuinely mean it with best of intents - if you are a person with limited local language skills or awareness traveling alone, and if you are not willing to take risks, this is a good lesson to do research before landing. Much of the world is NOT equally tourist friendly, and nowhere is Ignorance of Law a permissible defense :( )
Similar experience here. It wasn't as much as a problem in Bogotá as it was in the more touristy Cartagena or Medellín.
Cartagena was the worst with Ubers. I hailed an Uber in a touristy area, and immediately my driver messaged me (in Spanish of course) to get in the front seat, and if anyone asked, he's my friend. Once the Uber arrived, a taxista saw me get in the Uber and started yelling "es un Uber!" and my driver looked over at me and yelled at me to hurry up, before speeding away.
That seems like a pretty clear violation of local laws. I'm not saying I'm in support of the law (quite the opposite, actually, let the competition rise, even if it's something I dislike e.g. Uber) but it's kind of scummy to just let users take the heat. It should be easy enough for them to block the app via geolocation or at least issue warnings when you open it in Colombia.
I don't believe there are laws against taking it in Colombia. The law seems to be against driving one and the consequence for the driver is getting the car confiscated and having to pay a fine and losing their license if caught multiple times. Uber is liable for providing the platform for this unauthorized service.
Uber isn't the only black market ride-hailing app that's been competing at scale in Colombia either. There's also Didi Chuxing and some others. However, I don't understand how the legal department in a company like Uber permits such a brazen disregard of local laws. Yes, this is a case of regulatory capture and there is hardly any subtlety in the way the Transportation Minister has worked to maintain a monopoly on legal taxi services for Taxis Libres, but I don't understand how you just ignore the fact that your service in entire countries is illegal when you are a large multinational publicly traded company.
US tech firms are often happy to ignore local laws because they kinda have the backing of the US government, and they also have the option of just withdrawing from the country.
For example, most US firms abroad give their receptionists a button to press when a police raid is happening. Pressing the button triggers all computers to lock and credentials of all local employees to be disabled, and someone from the US is needed to unlock them. The whole thing is to prevent local police raids getting anything except whatever legal decides they can have.
You aren't breaking any law by sitting in an Uber, since it isn't your responsibility to make sure that they are following regulations. At worst the company will get fined or the driver will get their license suspended.
I've always wondered in situations like this: Is this a fine uber will actually pay? Does the US have any treaties with Colombia which put teeth in this fine inside US jurisdiction? Or would they pay it simply out of a desire to, possibly, one day, operate legally in the country and not want to start out on the wrong foot?
And more specifically, the three people who were fined directly; are they really going to get out their checkbooks (or would Uber just cover it)?
I've always wondered this; you hear about these multi-billion dollar fines Google/Facebook get from the EU, and obviously they want to continue doing legal business there, plus the EU is a great friend of the US, so they pay them. But with smaller countries that are, traditionally, not on a great political footing with the first world, what do businesses do? Especially in this case where they are operating illegally anyway? Pay up? Throw the letter in the trash and laugh over an $800 bottle of bourbon like a supervillain?
83 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadNo this isn’t going to hurt Uber but it’s not like there’s a lot of rook to go higher.
As a one time fine it isn't much, but it isn't chump change either, and it will make the company increasingly unattractive to investors/contractors/employees.
This is where economies of scale can start to bite you in the arse. Yeah, the world is your oyster. But when you have the entire world treating you as a target, things can pile up real fast.
> The fine from the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce says Uber urges employees not to give information to regulators and to block access to company computers.
Call me crazy, but I wonder if they were trying to get a list of drivers, for the purposes of pulling licenses.
Then box the Uber car and call the police.
They all hide under the cover of "disruption" when there were ways to do all this without breaking the law and flaunting regulators.
"In March 2017, Uber VP of Business, Emil Michael contacted Kalanick's ex-girlfriend in an attempt to silence her into hiding an HR complaint."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Kalanick#Criticism_of_K...
I really wish things defaulted to "legal if not specifically prohibited", not "illegal unless specifically allowed" like this implies. (probably just a case of overly broad taxi legislation, though)
Unless we lived in an omniscient surveillance state that automatically notified property owners, basic tort law really couldn't address this effectively because the benefits of dumping easily exceed the risk adjusted costs simply because the costs of detecting and suing for illegal dumping on a property owner by property owner basis are far too great.[1] Indeed, the more toxic the waste the more the situation favors dumpers.
[1] To be clear, that's not a comment on pricey lawyers and slow courts, but regards fundamental structural limitations to such a legal system.
But to be fair doing such a thing is invariably already illegal under basic rules of property and tort, it's just that the penalties aren't very much. Though even with steep statutory penalties and even criminal penalties it still happens--people still dump toxic waste into the deep woods everywhere. But I would presume that the steeper penalties are somewhat effective at the margins.
It would also be a nightmare to have to go through the court system for every infraction.
not necessarily. we have kneejerk reactions to statistically anomalous events all the time. Some things happen so infrequently that the regulation does far more harm than good. People have a desire to do something, anything, but never question if something should be done in the first place and establishing rational criteria to determine if they shouldn't act at all.
Uber isn't a registered company in Colombia, which means it's operating illegally.
What does seem clear to me though is that Colombia is being disproportionate and possibly somewhat arbitrary & capricious in their response. What sort of country tries to ban people for 25 years! This is the bad parenting brand of legislation ("oh, you ignored my exaggerated threat. Damn"). And I'm not saying this out of support for Uber (can't stand them, which is what makes these kinds of stand offs a good spectacle)
- Uber adds traffic to already choked up/bad infrastructure
- Uber does not pay their employees benefits etc. because of their "partnership" so this leads to poorer health outcomes which cost the state $ later on
- Uber "voluntarily" pays VAT etc. (only after taxis pushed for this) but almost certainly not commensurate with their income
so yes, the company is dumping their enormous externalities without much regard for the country at hand, and it's not useful to insert a tech-focused example into the situation.
Yeah, I look forward to new forms of pollution just being dumped everywhere, new weapons that are automatically allowed.
Yet, taxis in Colombia are incredibly dangerous. As a passenger you are exposed to express kidnappings, drivers that are aggressive, adultered fares systems and drive unsafely in cars that don't meet any security guidelines (a large number of passengers have died on rear-collisions given that the most common Bogota taxi has no rear-reinforcement). For decades the taxi mafia's have provided an unsafe & horrible service, when Uber & other platforms arrived, users flocked, yet by means of aggressive protests where they pretty much block the city, the taxi's have forced some parts of the government to try to curve Uber.
Uber however has fought to continue providing the service that the consumers demand, and has otherwise tried to complied with every law. This fine comes from the industry of commerce regulators, who have tried to convince the technology ministry to shut Uber down, with them refusing. I hope Uber continues to operate in Colombia and use their legal means to fight this regulators who are not operating from a consumer benefit standpoint, but rather a political fight to protect a mafia that needs to be dismantled.
On the other hand, the cars are falling to bits and the drivers are rather aggressive (although it seemed to me that drivers were careless in general).
This doesn't follow for me. Most Uber drivers drive their own cars, no? That means the cars are the same as are sold in the country, which given the regulated taxi companies are using supposedly less safe version of fleet vehicles sounds a lot to me like a country specific problem with lax regulations on fleet vehicle specifications.
Unless Uber is also making available U.S. market/road legal cars available to drivers in Colombia too.
I don't know squat about the regulatory framework in Colombia though. So I could be totally wrong based on the flawed assumption on how extensive this "taxi mafia's" regulatory capture purportedly is.
One correction though: Based on what I’ve read, express kidnappings might have happened more often in the past but hardly anymore today. It’s more likely to be robbed at gunpoint from guys on a motorbike, and they like to target taxis (although other cars as well).
It's anecdotal however, this doesn't correlate to my experience(s) there at all. I lived in Colombia from 2013-2015, and return various times per year. For what it's worth, I am not hispanic, and very much look like someone from the US
I've taken yellow taxis in Colombia (in all the major cities) more times than I can count(both by myself and with others) and have never once felt in any danger, nor been ripped off (which has happened to me in other countries I have visited)
Of course there are news reports about taxi rides gone wrong, but in my experience 99.9% of yellow taxi drivers in Colombia are honest people just trying to do their job.
More than happy to answer questions about living in Colombia if anyone's interested.
I have taken a lot of yellow taxis all across the country, but mostly in Bogotá, Medellin and Cali over the last couple of years (about 2-3 rides per week) and have yet to have a single bad experience. The handful of Uber rides I had in the time weren't better or worse, besides being in better cars.
Those numbers are so specific that it seems like they're the actual fines. At that point why even omit the third one?
It really ticked me off that Uber let me open the app and order a car, knowing full well I would be breaking the law, and gave me no warning or indication of the risk I would be taking whatsoever. As a young woman with only the most basic of Spanish skills traveling alone, breaking Colombian law isn’t a risk I would have been willing to take.
Unlike Colombia, it's not dangerous for passengers -- at least the law-breaking aspect isn't. What's dangerous is how everyone drives. Also, it's a gamble whether you'll get a normal, sane driver, or someone weird or downright crazy. But that's not limited to Uber, you can get crazy cabbies too.
I think the worst experience I had there -- before Uber, this was a taxi driver -- was a guy who: 1) was speeding so much, regardless of potholes, I thought my teeth would fall out; 2) stopped to take a piss in the middle of the ride, without pausing the meter; 3) ended up confessing he wasn't sure where my address was, so I asked him to let me off a few blocks from my place.
Is there a moral to this story? Not really, I just thought I would share something funny ;)
In the city I'm currently in, Taxi drivers and unions have used various means to create political pressure - from peaceful protests; to aggressive protests; to attacking Uber drivers; to attacking their offices (they also apply the same tactics between each other when a different taxi company wins an airport license, etc.
(Oh, the city is Ottawa, the capital of Canada).
Note as well, Uber was "illegal", in the sense that there's no framework or license under which it operates, pretty much everywhere it started, and in many popular places still is. It entrenches, and then fights to become legal. You probably used Uber "illegally" (as in, operating outside of framework of existing law and regulation framework) before, without being so explicitly told or aware.
(and while this is not a message likely to be received well, and I genuinely mean it with best of intents - if you are a person with limited local language skills or awareness traveling alone, and if you are not willing to take risks, this is a good lesson to do research before landing. Much of the world is NOT equally tourist friendly, and nowhere is Ignorance of Law a permissible defense :( )
Cartagena was the worst with Ubers. I hailed an Uber in a touristy area, and immediately my driver messaged me (in Spanish of course) to get in the front seat, and if anyone asked, he's my friend. Once the Uber arrived, a taxista saw me get in the Uber and started yelling "es un Uber!" and my driver looked over at me and yelled at me to hurry up, before speeding away.
Uber isn't the only black market ride-hailing app that's been competing at scale in Colombia either. There's also Didi Chuxing and some others. However, I don't understand how the legal department in a company like Uber permits such a brazen disregard of local laws. Yes, this is a case of regulatory capture and there is hardly any subtlety in the way the Transportation Minister has worked to maintain a monopoly on legal taxi services for Taxis Libres, but I don't understand how you just ignore the fact that your service in entire countries is illegal when you are a large multinational publicly traded company.
For example, most US firms abroad give their receptionists a button to press when a police raid is happening. Pressing the button triggers all computers to lock and credentials of all local employees to be disabled, and someone from the US is needed to unlock them. The whole thing is to prevent local police raids getting anything except whatever legal decides they can have.
And more specifically, the three people who were fined directly; are they really going to get out their checkbooks (or would Uber just cover it)?
I've always wondered this; you hear about these multi-billion dollar fines Google/Facebook get from the EU, and obviously they want to continue doing legal business there, plus the EU is a great friend of the US, so they pay them. But with smaller countries that are, traditionally, not on a great political footing with the first world, what do businesses do? Especially in this case where they are operating illegally anyway? Pay up? Throw the letter in the trash and laugh over an $800 bottle of bourbon like a supervillain?