I am not exactly sure what the lesson is here. It's just another negative piece about the impersonal and cutthroat business practices of Uber. Yet in spite of all the negative press the company is valued at $40 billion and continues to grow. In the presence of alternatives like Lyft and even just regular cabs which are almost always cheaper than Uber why do people continue to use Uber?
Because the market is so inefficient and taxis are so terrible that a company somewhat more efficient and somewhat less terrible can make lots of money and have only one real competitor.
If a market is ripe for disruption, we shouldn't believe that the first company that comes along is efficient and running well. Quite the opposite, since it has so much room not to be and still be successful.
I think that we have a case of 'silent majority' at work (of which I'm a part of).
Chattering classes may yap all day about how Uber is bad - while millions of customers are extremely happy with the service they receive.
However our level of motivation is starkly different. I am happy using the service - and don't really care enough to write letters / articles defending them. Journalists / taxi lobbyists are vastly more motivated to push a different narrative.
I find the taxi business to be impersonal and cutthroat. They under pay their drivers, they offer the least service for the most money, and they will often rip you off if you let them. My mother-in-law got taken for a ride because she's a gullible old woman who didn't know that two miles was two miles, between her pick-up and our house, and this cabbie took her in circles and charged her way higher than he should have.
If it were Uber, he'd get one star and a complaint and probably would never get any more riders.
But since it's Yellow Cab, he just pockets the money and laughs all the way to the bank.
Yeah, there's plenty of need for competition in this overly regulated racket of a business.
I wish airplanes were as cheap as cars, and then maybe we could have an Air Uber as well, to give the airline racket a run for their money!
Except that Lyft apparently doesn't have a listed phone number either. I guess i don't see how that's a downside. It sounds like most of the calls were from people who wanted to book a car in advance. It might not make sense for either company to have a phone number and pay someone to answer it all day just to answer the occasional call from someone who doesn't know how the service works.
Because taxis don't have a well-working reputation system to encourage good service and weed out the bad cabbies, and because I very much enjoy the convenience of hailing a car with a couple quick taps in an app.
