[HN Gopher] Uber and Lyft surge pricing drives SF customers back...
___________________________________________________________________
Uber and Lyft surge pricing drives SF customers back to taxis
Author : edward
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-07-09 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfexaminer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfexaminer.com)
| grayhatter wrote:
| Or, they're like me and still pissed about Prop 22.
|
| Anyone fancy starting a delivery startup? I would absolutely pay
| a premium to anyone that can deliver groceries while alleviating
| the feeling of being complicit in the abuse of employees that I
| currently get from Instacart.
|
| Uber; for people suffering from morality.
| grayhatter wrote:
| And to preempt the inevitable; I'm not opposed to prop 22
| itself. It's a position that's not completely devoid of reason.
| My aggravation with all of them is the shear amount of money
| they all spent lobbying for it. I received a half dozen phone
| calls or texts from people introducing themselves dishonestly.
| Only for them to go on to misrepresent the reality of prop 22.
| Which I could forgive if not for the clause preventing anyone
| from trying to alter, correct, or modify the laws they paid to
| enact.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Funny I'm back to using taxis in Orlando. Had way too many
| terrible drivers on Lyft and Uber that I'm not sure we're even
| legally driving. My faith in both companies "inspecting" cars
| completely lost. Plus they have a bad problem over there of
| people hiring other people to drive for them.
| vkou wrote:
| > Plus they have a bad problem over there of people hiring
| other people to drive for them.
|
| Since the drivers are just contractors, as Uber insists, it
| stands to reason that they should be able to subcontract. :)
| rehitman wrote:
| Am I only one who is against regulation? Seems that in few of
| these big cities we are back to where we were 10 years ago. I
| remember when I was student in Toronto, taxi cab was so expensive
| that taking one was completely out of reach for student. If you
| miss a bus at night, sometimes it was better to wait until next
| morning or just walk. At the same time you would see lines of
| taxis in the Front street ideal and not working because prices
| were so much higher that what people could pay. Combination of
| price fixing, super expensive taxi license, different insurance
| that legally drivers had to buy made it completely impossible to
| move a taxi with lower price. I think at the end both drivers and
| customers are hurt by this.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Is there any evidence that this is due to regulation and not
| just market forces coupled with a finite pool of burnable vc
| funding?
| BB212 wrote:
| I'm a bit confused.
|
| The number quoted in the article said there are only 500 taxi's
| in SF right now? That seems super low and not significant - since
| all the estimates I can find for SF ubers in the area are in the
| tens of thousands.
|
| I'm sure once more people will become drivers if surge continues
| - and people will be looking for work again
| filereaper wrote:
| Uber bet the house on self-driving cars, that's what was supposed
| to make all of this sustainable.
|
| Seems all these efforts have failed, and I'd be curious how many
| short positions are out there against them.
|
| I've been at the receiving end of these Uber & Lyft shortages.
| Can't get a ridershare below $80 at SFO after 9pm even if you've
| pre-scheduled one. The drivers also keep cancelling in an attempt
| to pump rates higher. Its incredibly frustrating.
|
| I've pretty much given up and now rent a car when I would have
| taken an Uber when I'm out of town.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I see Cruise cars all the time in SF - it definitely does _not_
| feel like all of the self-driving efforts have failed.
| filereaper wrote:
| Great, when do Cruise and all the others _actually_ come out
| of R &D and solve the issues faced by me and others on this
| thread.
|
| Otherwise you're beating a dead horse.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Others in this thread? Beating a dead horse? Am I missing
| something? I'm the only comment in response to yours, which
| is a top level comment. I see no other conversation on the
| topic.
|
| Anyway, my point is that self driving is clearly not in a
| "well, it didn't work" state - it's ongoing, and seems to
| be making good progress. I have no timeline for you.
| psanford wrote:
| I have to image the loss of uberpool/lyft line has had a major
| impact on both the overall supply of available cars and also the
| perception of a larger increase in how much a ride costs.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I'm sure it's reduced supply, but prices are much higher. I've
| never used pool/line and I've still got sticker shock.
|
| I think the bigger issues are that most drivers found new jobs
| given demand was so low for so long.
|
| And unemployment payments are still pretty high in many states.
| You probably lose money driving an Uber if you qualify for
| unemployment insurance right.
| sschueller wrote:
| So ultimately we gained nothing other than now having worse
| worker protections than before [1] and better regular taxis. We
| could have reached the same result by just overhauling how taxies
| worked without exploiting the ones that already have barely
| anything and making a few rich.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQzw8MVlQlo
| aeyes wrote:
| > overhauling how taxies work
|
| Why would taxi services invest if there is no competition which
| makes them provide a better service?
|
| Not everything is price. It would be interesting to see the
| outcome if ridesharing apps would exactly match the price of
| taxis.
| someelephant wrote:
| You must live in a place that already had good taxi services.
| There's no comparison in the level of service between Uber and
| every taxi service I ever took outside of those in Japan /
| Korea. The popularity of Uber given the horrific regulated taxi
| services made banning Uber politically dangerous in many
| cities.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| > We could have reached the same result by just overhauling how
| taxies worked without exploiting the ones that already have
| barely anything and making a few rich.
|
| "overhauling how taxis worked" is doing _a lot_ of work in that
| sentence. I have a hard time seeing how that would 've ever
| happened in the absence of something like a Lyft or Uber.
| That's an extraordinarily difficult task.
| randyrand wrote:
| This period of more expensive ubers has been only a few months.
|
| Uber and Lyft have been operating for 10ish years.
|
| Cherry picking.
| jfengel wrote:
| Yes. But unfortunately, the taxi companies didn't realize this
| until it was much, much too late. They got their lunches eaten
| by tech companies who liked to move fast and break things, such
| as decades of worker protections, well supplied with money and
| not overburdened with ethics.
|
| There is a parallel universe where some tech worker came along
| and created apps and sold them to the taxi companies. That
| would have led to much better taxi service -- though still a
| monopolist keeping the number of cabs small to protect their
| own profits.
| kelnos wrote:
| This is a good outcome! Uber and Lyft have dragged taxi companies
| into the 21st century, with apps like Flywheel making the process
| of getting a traditional taxi not the horrifying experience it
| used to be (call a dispatcher, get told 20 minutes, wait an hour,
| cab never shows).
|
| I frankly don't care what service takes me home. I just want it
| to be safe, reliable, clean, and reasonably priced, and I want
| the driver to be accountable for any issues. If a taxi now fits
| that bill, great. Competition and choice are _good_ things.
| Traster wrote:
| I'm not sure. I think if we look at the net of what's happened:
| Uber execs and investors made (m/b)illions, taxi drivers got
| absolutley hosed - most now essentially are just extracting
| against the equity in their cars, and riders have got a
| marginally more reliable service.
|
| So to put this in terms - the rich got much richer, and the
| middle class benefitted by exploiting the working class. That's
| doesn't seem like a good outcome to me (not least because the
| billionaires that benefit literally spunk their profits into
| outer space befroe thinking about paying tax).
| messe wrote:
| Competition working as expected then? Especially now that labour
| laws are starting to catch up to Uber and Lyft.
| yoavm wrote:
| > Especially now that labour laws are starting to catch up to
| Uber and Lyft
|
| So perhaps it's not just competition, and we should give some
| credit to the regulation too.
| messe wrote:
| > So perhaps it's not just competition, and we should give
| some credit to the regulation too.
|
| Or we could accept that "competition" doesn't just have to
| occur within a free market, and that a regulated market can
| be efficient while also accounting for externalities that a
| free market cannot.
|
| EDIT: to clarify, I am agreeing with you overall. I didn't
| mean my tone to come across as agressive, which re-reading
| it, I feel it does.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, it's just competition. The cabs were already regulated.
| endisneigh wrote:
| They're referring to Uber and Lyft, most likely.
| mrgordon wrote:
| You missed the point. The other person was saying that now
| Uber and Lyft are more regulated so they have little
| advantage over taxis now.
| [deleted]
| xur17 wrote:
| I ran into this recently on a flight that arrived much later than
| it was scheduled. The airport was busy from several flights
| arriving at once, and uber / lyft surge prices were insane. It
| was too late for a bus, so I wandered over to the taxi stand. No
| one was working there, but a few minutes later a few cards
| started showing up, and I ended up getting in one.
|
| What was weird is that all of the "taxis" were regular cars with
| magnetic "taxi" labels on them, and at the end of the ride, my
| driver charged me on a square terminal, with no option / chance
| to tip. I honestly don't know if it was just some enterprising
| person that showed up at the airport, or what the heck happened.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I recently had a similar experience in Richmond, VA. Normal
| pricing is $35 for uber/lyft and $78 for a taxi to my house
| from the airport. With the surge pricing, they wanted over $100
| with a 10-20 minute wait for pickup, so I just took a taxi and
| avoided waiting.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| This is happening in NYC too. I almost always use yellow cabs
| from JFK->Manhattan/BK because they are considerably cheaper. If
| I can hail a yellow cab anywhere, I would prefer it to Uber/Lyft.
| standardUser wrote:
| I was a longtime SF resident and remember very well how truly
| awful the taxi service was in SF before the rideshare apps. You'd
| call a cranky operator to request a taxi and an hour or two later
| one _might_ show up. Hail a taxi downtown (if you can find one)
| and ask to go to the Richmond district only to have the driver
| tell you to get out of the car because they don 't want to go
| that far. And of course the credit card machines were always
| "broken" so you had to pay with cash.
|
| Now I'm in NY and I use taxis almost as often as rideshares. The
| Curb app makes it easy to find a taxi and the prices are almost
| always lower. But half the time I can't get a taxi through the
| app at all and have to wander the streets or use Lyft/Uber.
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| > The Curb app makes it easy to find a taxi and the prices are
| almost always lower.
|
| I used to work at Curb years and years ago (and its predecessor
| TaxiMagic). It's always fun to still hear someone uses it and
| makes me wonder if any code I wrote could still be running
| somewhere for it.
| cptskippy wrote:
| More than likely yes.
|
| My first programming job was at an insurance broker where
| 15-20 years ago I wrote a maybe 20 line VB exe to transfer a
| file to our systems that was invoked by a comparative rater.
|
| It was still out there being distributed to client PCs for
| over a decade.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > Now I'm in NY and I use taxis almost as often as rideshares.
|
| That's because New York is corrupt and artificially limits both
| ride shares and taxis. But they're heavily biased towards taxis
| and their outrageous medallion system.
|
| Taxi's have definitely been forced to improve thanks to
| competition from Uber/Lyft. But don't be fooled into thinking
| scarcity and high price of ride share in NYC is a naturally
| occurring phenomena.
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| > That's because New York is corrupt and artificially limits
| both ride shares and taxis.
|
| It is both desirable and definitely within the purview of
| government to control the number of vehicles on the road.
| Congestion/traffic is a perfect example of an externality. Go
| to a megacity in a developing country like Delhi and
| experience traffic that causes what would be a 20 minute trip
| with 0 traffic to become a 4 hour trip in traffic.
|
| Given the traffic/congestion externality, taxing/charging
| vehicles to enter downtowns, creating a cap on the number of
| taxis via medallions, etc are all the economically optimal
| solutions according to economics.
|
| We want to substitute individual vehicle transport to mass
| transit wherein there is a dramatically reduced externality
| (e.g. adding a person to a subway train or a bus only has an
| effect if that train hits capacity -- in contrast to adding
| an additional vehicle to the road).
|
| Ideally, the pricing model for ridesharing and taxis should
| be dynamic but account for the congestion impacts (i.e.
| internalize the traffic externality). The fixed pricing of
| taxis doesn't do this (though medallions partly do from a
| more traditional cap and trade scheme) and the surge pricing
| of Uber and Lyft is only to clear their internal market and
| not to resolve the traffic impacts of all those additional
| vehicles on the road. As such, there have been numerous peer
| reviewed papers that have demonstrated that traffic is
| actually increased by ridesharing due to a substitution away
| from mass transit.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Probably the key is to move to a Fastpass system now that
| the technology is more feasible where congestion impacts
| are actually what gets priced into the convenience of
| personal transit in a big city.
| Black101 wrote:
| > I was a longtime SF resident and remember very well how truly
| awful the taxi service was in SF before the rideshare apps.
|
| this is because of the legal bribes paid to the government...
| aka lobbying. The free market would have solved that. What Uber
| did was illegal in many places, yet the Gov. let them do it
| (maybe they were scared of repercussions).
| slownews45 wrote:
| I actually started using Uber when it was Uber Black only
| (might have had a different name) for that exact reason. if you
| worked or lived in a rough part of town, you COULD NOT get cab
| service - period. So I happily paid far MORE than cab service
| to get there or back. The uber I used was all TCP drivers only
| so was expensive.
|
| My female roommate once had to walk from the marina to edge of
| outer mission to get home late at night because on weekends you
| could not get cabs and/or they wouldn't take you places that
| they didn't like. It was that or stay at some ultra sketch guys
| house or hang in a park till buses started again.
|
| Just ridiculous - they wouldn't even do weekend only medallions
| to lighten load - so some commission was def. bought by the
| taxi cartel type folks.
|
| Was so glad when uber came along. you could get rid of your
| car, no if (or if not) you'd be picked up etc.
|
| And yes - the "broken" CC machine - the Taxi commission was
| busy making sure there were too few medallions and no gypsy
| cabs, but did diddly squat to enforce any other rules (ie,
| discrimination in pickups, CC machines working, lost property
| handling). The statistical chance that every other business
| seems to be able to operate CC machine, and these guys, in a
| regulated and licensed business could not, was just ridiculous.
|
| Corrupt through and through.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| >I actually started using Uber when it was Uber Black only
|
| Think it was UberCab.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Yeah, you are right - check these out!
|
| https://thenextweb.com/news/ubers-first-ever-blog-posts-
| are-...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How did anyone get around if you had to wait two hours for a
| car?
| matwood wrote:
| In smaller cities, getting a cab was a huge issue prior to
| Uber/Lyft. When I was younger and went out to bars a lot, my
| friends and I had the personal number of a local cab driver
| because it was often the only way to find a ride home at the
| end of the night.
| svachalek wrote:
| I don't live in SF, but I live in the area. I used to always
| feel trapped in SF; parking is hard to find and very
| expensive, car break-ins are common, buses are full of
| homeless and never on time, subway stations are rare and in
| awkward places, taxis need to be summoned by phone unless
| you're in a few really popular spots (even most tourist
| hotspots don't see taxis passing by on a regular basis) and
| like they say, good luck actually seeing a taxi show up after
| you call.
|
| Yeah everybody remembers the worst situations and not the
| average, but Uber totally changed the game. Little electric
| scooters are also pretty amazing there, since it's so
| compact.
| mathattack wrote:
| You drive yourself since you can't assume they will be there.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Had multiple experiences back in the day of walking miles at
| night to get home while trying to get a cab, on a Friday or
| Saturday it was very difficult.
| jamiequint wrote:
| Often times you didn't. I missed at least one flight waiting
| for taxis that never arrived. Had to wait 30m and take a bus
| then walk in the rain a few times, etc.
| allforJesse wrote:
| And if you lived in a busy area, and the cab actually
| showed, sometimes someone on the street would just take it
| and the drivers clearly didn't care.
| ceph_ wrote:
| You walked to a busy street and hailed one. I remember trying
| to phone in a cab from Nob Hill pre-lyft, they said one would
| be there in 45 min and we should be waiting outside because
| they will not call you.
|
| Also when uber first implemented the uber-taxi option before
| uber-x, I tried it and would regularly have multiple cabs
| cancel en-route to me because they just picked up a closer
| fare.
| telesilla wrote:
| The combo now of some cities such as Barcelona making an Uber-
| style taxi app is working great, where the city declined to
| allow Uber but built their own. Some of them combine bike and
| motorcycle sharing in the apps. For me, this has been a huge
| gain for which I'm thankful for the tech revolution started by
| Uber. Also, in some dangerous cities it's now safer given the
| ride is fully tracked.
| hooloovoo_zoo wrote:
| Interestingly all my worst Uber experiences are in SF. Drivers
| abandoning rides and peeling out in front of me, parking on the
| wrong side of the street for pickup etc. I generally try to
| make Uber drivers' lives as easy as possible too, requesting
| pickups in spots where they can park, being ready to go, etc.,
| so it's not like I was being a difficult passenger.
| neom wrote:
| I've also had the worst experiences with uber in SF. I
| usually stay with a buddy in Oakland and I don't come to SF
| enough to feel totally comfortable with transit. More than 5
| times I've had someone come, and then immediately kick me out
| because they don't want to "go across the bridge"(?) and one
| guy picked me up, and then dropped me off at a transit
| station and told me to take the train the rest of the way....
| O.o
| Grimm1 wrote:
| My experience in NYC over the last decade has been the opposite
| where drivers were doing things like pissing in a bottle while
| I was in the car with them, or similar to you having the meter
| broken, which starts miraculously working when I tell them I
| guess I have to call this number here and report it.
|
| I won't use anything but rideshare apps because they seem to
| have higher standards for the cars and the drivers.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I spent the first 20+ years of my life in NYC, taking cabs
| near-constantly, and I never experienced anything like that.
| Very, very rarely there'd be a "broken meter".
|
| It's possible things have gotten worse, I haven't lived there
| in 6 years, and that was basically pre-uber there. But yeah,
| can't reconcile my (likely thousands of) rides with that.
|
| edit: BTW, with the broken meter (the one time I recall this
| happening), I just told the guy I knew how much it cost every
| day - 7 bucks including tip - and that that's what I'd pay.
| He agreed, he took me where I was going, and I paid. Easy. I
| know some people will get out of the cab, I kinda remember
| that once when I was really young and my mother was like
| 'nah' and we got in another cab.
| tqi wrote:
| One thing to keep in mind is that these experiences are not
| randomly distributed. If the drivers assessed you as
| someone who they thought was likely to complain or know the
| rules, they probably wouldn't attempt to scam you.
| okareaman wrote:
| I quit driving Uber and Lyft during the pandemic. I had a high
| rating from passengers. I could be coaxed back into driving, but
| they don't seem to care that I quit. They've not reached out to
| me, much less offered incentives. It seems weird to me that the
| press is filled with stories about how they can't find drivers.
| It seems like something else is going on, like maybe they are not
| interested in ride share anymore.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I wonder if you've opted out of promotional emails from them in
| the past? Do you still have the app installed on the same phone
| you used as a driver?
|
| As a consumer I get push notifications and emails from them
| every week if I haven't ordered food in a while with new deals,
| etc. I would strongly suspect they're doing the same thing for
| drivers these past couple months and maybe they just don't have
| a way to reach you. If they aren't even doing that it would be
| truly bizarre, there are billions of dollars on the line and
| it's their entire business.
| okareaman wrote:
| We used to communicate by email, which hasn't changed and is
| still valid. They have reems of personal data about me
| including my bank routing number, my phone number, my
| driver's license, etc... I got one email from Lyft offering a
| $200 bonus for 10 rides in a day, but nothing from Uber. $200
| for 10 rides is not exactly incentive to get off my retired
| butt and do some driving again. I'm now looking at python
| freelancing for a little extra cash.
|
| Edit: I logged into my Uber driver app. Nothing beyond the
| usual promos (bonuses for driving in San Francisco.) Nothing
| like, "Hey, we noticed you haven't been driving. We want you
| back! How can we help you get started again?"
| roflulz wrote:
| my uber driver told me she was offered $100 bonus after
| giving just 3 rides if she started driving again...
| yupper32 wrote:
| Outside of NYC, every taxi experience has been an absolute
| nightmare. Scams, CC machines never working, unreliable, sketchy,
| going a longer route to rack up the meter. Sometimes they'd just
| never show up when you called one and you'd just be stuck.
|
| That's why I went to Uber/Lyft. Not just because of pricing
| (though that was a bonus).
|
| NYC taxi service has always been great though. And there are
| enough that like 70% of the time (in Manhattan at least) I can
| just walk to the street, put my hand up, and have a ride in a
| minute or two. CC machine always works, etc.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Uber/Lyft was also a breeze of fresh air for non-white riders.
|
| Not being refused rides (after waiting the usual half hour for
| the taxi to show up) and not seeing the driver speed away when
| hailing from the curb was a great experience.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yeah, Uber/Lyft could succeed even if they charged more.
| Outside of the small town cab services (mostly due to poor
| mapping, where local knowledge has more value), they are far
| better than the competition.
| olliej wrote:
| yeah the bizarre reliability of CC machines not working in SF
| taxis was amazing. Almost like it was by choice rather than
| accident.
| digianarchist wrote:
| I went to Vietnam a couple of years ago. Ho Chi Minh city had
| Uber. Getting around was a breeze.
|
| In Hanoi, Uber didn't work. We had a taxi with a fiddled meter.
| They tried to charge me $40 US for a 2km journey.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Hanoi is at the top of my list of places where tourists are
| treated as walking dollar signs.
|
| Coming off a bus/train, you get swamped by drivers and you
| absolutely must know exactly where you're going and how to
| get there or you will be taken wherever the driver is being
| paid to take you.
|
| Cartagena is a close second.
|
| Interestingly, outside of major ports of call, Hanoi was
| lovely, some of the best food I've eaten anywhere and
| $10/night for a beautiful room. You get a lot of ding for
| your dong as long as you know how to miss the scams.
| zippergz wrote:
| Exactly. Even though the uber/lyft experience is not always
| perfect, it is almost always much better than taxis, and I will
| pay a premium for it. The people who only care about price can
| have the cabs, and the discount airlines while they're at it.
| bentlegen wrote:
| In Dublin I called a cab company to reserve a taxi the night
| before a flight, and explicitly asked for a cab with a working
| credit card machine, which they assured me would happen.
|
| The next morning the cab arrives on time - great - I get in and
| we drive to the airport, at which point the driver reveals that
| their credit card machine is conveniently "broken". The driver
| insists I leave my luggage in the cab as collateral while I go
| inside the airport to find a cash machine. This ends up taking
| about 15 minutes, I have to pay $5 in ATM fees, I'm anxious the
| entire time he's going to leave with my luggage, etc.
|
| Yeah, I don't mind paying more.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| In the usa at least, and in many states the cab companies are
| required to allow you to pay with a card. I've not dealt with
| this scam in a while but will tell them tough luck and
| they're not getting paid and proceed to get out. They usually
| change their mind quickly.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| The scam hits a bit differently when you have $500 of
| luggage in the trunk. I've also done the "No working credit
| card reader? Sucks for you then" and walked away. But never
| when there's luggage locked in their trunk.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Every article like this, there are comments like yours. Yet,
| I've taken a taxi many times, and nearly every time it was:
| call #, request taxi, "okay, 15 minutes", 15 minutes later taxi
| arrives, we drive to destination, pay by CC.
|
| I've had a problem exactly once: I caught a taxi at the airport
| in Denver, CO, and like most airports, the pricing plan from
| the airport is different than to the airport (which is priced
| like a normal ride). Upon arrival at the destination, the
| cabbie didn't want to honor that agreement -- "how would I make
| money if I charged that much?" -- which, had I not been in
| shock from hearing about the stupidest remark I'd ever heard, I
| should have really told him exactly how he should make money.
|
| But that was once, out of probably dozens of experiences. I've
| had far more trouble with, say, ... airlines.
|
| I've taken Lyft/Uber too, and honestly, it just isn't much
| different? The wait is about the same (relative to location,
| that is, less in crowded city centers). The difference is the
| ordering: with Lyft/Uber it is by app instead of by call.
| Slightly nicer, admittedly (can drop the pin, no need to
| understand often poor quality audio) but both apps absolutely
| murder cell batteries.
| reedciccio wrote:
| Uber is the same app anywhere in the world. Lyft is the same
| all over the US. You don't have to memorize or discover
| different ways to call a cab in all the places you're
| traveling to. That's the main advantage I see.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Well since articles more often have comments like mine, maybe
| you're in the minority of locations that have a decent taxi
| service?
|
| Last time I took a taxi, it was on the East coast and it took
| an hour for someone to show up. I called 3 times to the
| dispatch and each time they said 10min. Then the car showed
| up and they said the CC machine was broken and I had to pay
| in cash. I didn't have cash. Then suddenly the CC machine was
| fine and I finally was able to get my ride.
| graeme wrote:
| I was kicked out of a taxi once in Montreal when the driver
| heard I was going to the airport. Fortunately he did so by a
| cab stand so I got another quickly but it was jarring.
|
| Had cab machines have "broken" electronic payment terminals
| more times than I can count.
|
| There is on local taxi company that's always excellent, Atlas
| Taxi. But other than them had real lousy experiences in the
| pre uber days. And very hard to get an invoice for tax
| purposes even if you paid by card.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Eh, NYC taxi service definitely hasn't always been great.
| During my one visit in 2003, cabbies refused to go anywhere but
| Manhattan or the airport. And in Manhattan, it was impossible
| to get a cab.
|
| I'm glad to hear it has improved. Almost as glad as I am that
| rideshare exists now.
| yupper32 wrote:
| I don't know NYC in 2003, but that was nearly 2 decades ago
| at this point. A lot has changed in 18 years.
|
| Hell, 2003 was the first time the subway systems stopped
| taking coins.
| rmah wrote:
| I lived in NYC in the 1990's and early 2000's too... and,
| IMO, taxi service was fine to great in NYC. Hold up youhr
| hand and 9 times out of 10, you had a cab within 5 minutes or
| less. It was better than any other city I travelled to,
| perhaps with the exception of London.
| ggregoire wrote:
| I paid $100 for a Uber from Manhattan to JFK the other day, I was
| absolutely shocked. A taxi is $50. I read on internet it was the
| same prices, I guess the information I found was outdated.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Uber was trying to charge me something like $50 (before tip, of
| course) for a ride from the airport to a nearby hotel. It was
| about 2:15 AM and it said my arrival time would be around 4:30
| AM. I found a cab waiting outside and made it there in about 10
| minutes for $25.
|
| This was in Vegas last weekend, for reference.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| I just opened flywheel in downtown Seattle, no cars available.
| Unfortunate. At least Uber/Lyft are operational.
|
| This seems a symptom of the massive drop in demand causing a lot
| of drivers to leave the system. Hopefully this will self-adjust
| over a period of time, because I admit right now its pretty
| ridiculous the prices in Seattle. It is 1.5-2x more for
| essentially any ride, and surges are even more ridiculous.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| I've seen this even locally in Denver. Pre-pandemic I could get a
| ride to a destination a mile or two away for $8-$12. Now those
| trips recently have cost me anywhere from $20-$35 if I elected to
| take them.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-09 23:01 UTC)