Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

I don't usually use Uber —we live in a place where it just doesn't exist— but I've been exposed to it a couple of times this last weekend. It's private hire but worse.

A family member booked. A driver committed. The wait got shorter. Then it got longer. And longer. And then our trip was cancelled without reason. Another was booked. Same gig. We had no opportunity to 1-star those drivers for being dicks. The third arrived but we didn't get the fabled offer of foot massages, nor were we plied with snacks or drinks. It was just a cab ride with the awkward "You've been great passengers, I'll rate you five stars!" exchange at the end. "Err, thanks mate?"

The return trip was pretty similar. It's 1am. Want to go home. One dropped. It's getting really cold now. Second arrives. Again, an entirely standard private hire experience with the added convenience of being asked to rate at the other end.

But this lack of recompense for crappy initial service isn't good. If a real private hire did that, you'd use another company and would never use that one again. You'd tell friends and family not to use it. You'd be able to complain to the council about the company. With Uber, you just huddle up and hope the next is better.

This is by far one of the more benign complaints you hear about (versus deliberately slow routes to push the top end of the range, or surge pricing) but it absolutely undermines the purported convenience factor. Being able to talk to a manned rank in actual contact with their drivers is so much better in practice.

Did you use Uber pool?

It sounds like you had a bad experience. Almost everyone I know uses Uber regularly and almost every experience is positive. If it's 3am sometimes it takes longer, if you just got out of a bar and there's 50 other people next to you trying to get an uber you might have to walk a bit, if you're in a remote place sometimes they cancel. It's annoying. But mostly I can have a taxi outside my house in 3 minutes. I know exactly when they'll get there and there's no cash needed.

It's a hugely better process than the old phone-a-number and hope minicabs and taxi services. That would take 15 minutes minimum, often much longer, and you had no idea when it would arrive.

I agree it's better than the old way although the

>A driver committed. The wait got shorter. Then it got longer. And longer. And then our trip was cancelled without reason

has happened to me a lot too. I wish they would fix that some how. I'm not sure what it's about. You'd think the drivers would either come get you or not rather than say they are coming and then flake.

I think they get penalized if they cancel, so they try to get passengers to cancel of they can help it.

Not sure what their penalities are, though.

I've had to be aggressive with drivers sometimes to get them to cancel to avoid charging me.

This is particularly common around airport trips for me. Not sure why.

Similar to the Airbnb tales recently on HN we forgive them these bad experiences. Where in the past we would never use the companies again if we had bad experiences now we just discount them "oh, but it's worth it and its so useful now regardless of the minor pain", "most of the time it Just Works", "you had a bad experience with an individual but the service as a whole is great"

I think it's partly because of the ease of use - usability, partly because of brand investment and loyaly, but with Uber and Airbnb, there are no direct competitors that have the same user experience. That people are willing to put up with hosts cancelling their uber stays or swapping them for something dodgy and that people are willing to put up with bad Uber experiences speaks volumes. I also think it might be because when things go wrong, we users will blame the driver not the company, we will blame the airbnb host, not the company.

> Being able to talk to a manned rank in actual contact with their drivers is so much better in practice.

The counterpoint seems obvious here. That’s more expensive. Even more than hypothetical unsubsidized Uber. There’s lots of valid complaints against Uber. These feel like the lowest priority ones available. Uber is about cheap prices and secondly low interaction costs.

Is HN really the place to conflate a single digit amount of personal anecdotes into a reason why someone should not use an app?

What year was this? Where was this? This comment is worth absolutely nothing without specifics, and even then its a tiny data point which cannot offer any real perspective on the current news about Uber in London.

I know this is just "whataboutism". But the exact same comments are being made against mini-cab/black cabs all over this thread.

"I rode a black cab once before Uber and it was awful."

I'll trust the research from TFL rather than random anecdotes from either side, thanks.

What are you on about? Even if both "sides" use anecdotes how does that in any way justify you conflating them with the overall business?

Same can be said about the tfl note. Uber is basically a franchise company, locations rarely have strong interactions with eachother. Not to mention the reaction from tfl is in the end minor. Uber doesn't even need to stop operations.

I said it was "this weekend" and the complaint, that two drivers, one after another can ditch you at the eleventh hour and you get no compensation, no indication of what happened, no ability to rate that driver for letting you down.

Those issues are all systemic. They apply to Uber everywhere today just as much as they did six days ago when this happened.