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

> putting people at risk

Given that this is the only part of your comment that remotely reaches "bad for the customer" [1], can you elaborate on this? I've heard scattered reports of safety concerns but they never seem to add up to much, and I've never seen anyone try to do an apples-to-apples comparison to taxis. There's obviously inherent danger in large numbers of people getting into strangers' cars, and the question is whether Uber is less safe than taxis.

[1] I mean directly, not via "bad for everyone"

>, can you elaborate on this?

Not the person you were replying to but sexual harassment or just creepiness is a common one here in Indianapolis. This year alone:

- one friend had an Uber driver offer her perfume when she took an Uber home which creeped her out

- A co-worker driving Uber on the side had a couple invite her into their home offering her use of their hot tub and telling her that she could borrow clothes or just wear her underwear

- Another female friend had a driver offer her "complimentary earnings".

- Two female friends getting a ride to a bridal bar crawl were repeatedly asked for their phone numbers to 'meet up later tonight'

And I don't think this is abnormal either, a little searching on reddit/facebook/twitter and you can find report after report of such activity on the various ride platforms.

Pretty much everyone I know will not use ride share any more for being responsible while out drinking or when needing a ride to the airport and have gone back to using cabs or friends/family.

I've only used them myself a few times, all last summer when I was in San Francisco for less than 48 hours and none of them left me feeling "yay this is a great service"

- The guy that picked me up at SFO apparently didn't speak a word of English and just kept smile and nodding when I tried to ask him questions. It was Pride weekend and a road between us and my hotel (the Proper) was closed for the parade and he kept trying to find a way around and looking at me panicked, eventually I cancelled the ride and got out to try and find my own way.

- The guy that picked me up to take me to OpenAI had some sort of Alex Jones-esque talk radio on that was talking about 'government sanctioned false flag events' that left me wondering about the mental well being of the driver, he never said one word to me the entire time. No hi, no are you my guy, no we are here, no get the hell out of my car. Nothing. Worse, the dude had total Travis Bickle vibes WITHOUT the radio/podcast. He dropped me off on the wrong side of the street and at the end of the block.

- My first ride from there to YC's San Francisco office was hijacked by someone else. Got in my ride and the app reflected me in the car being charged, I cancelled the ride after a minute while trying to find any sort of way to notify the app or driver I wasn't in the vehicle. Had to request another and wait several minutes, this guy seemed alright, said hi to me, then proceeded to drive like he just stole the car while cutting off a couple of buses/trolleys on the way back to the Proper while letting off strings of 'mother f* this, hole that, can you believe this guy" and had three phones on his dash with some app open that was apparently telling him if he should take a Lyft or Uber fair right then (IIRC it was actually a company from a YC batch, I looked it up on my phone because I thought it was a neat concept). He also was on the wrong side of the street and and said "is his good" after he'd already put the car in park with traffic behind him.

- The guy that took me from the Proper to SFO again, apparently did not speak or understand English, I believe was muttering at traffic in Russian or Serbian, was extremely impatient in traffic getting out of the city with a lot of hard accelerations and abrupt stops trying to get one car advantages by weaving in and out of the lanes. Also had 2 phones on the dash and a dedicated GPS unit and accepted a Lyft ride with me still in the car on an Uber ride as he was maybe 1/4 of a mile from the terminal, jumped out of the car and had the trunk open before I was out and was shoving my suitcase at me and immediately walked up to his apparent next customer to get theirs.

- I think had another ride back to the YC SF offices to meet with another person a little later and the woman that picked me up kept turning around to talk to me face to face while driving, told me how she was raising her son 'free range' and asked if I was in town for Pride. I informed her no and told her about the entirely naked man I'd seen walking down the street with only sandals and a bag [1] at which point she went on to explain that her and her child's father took him to the parade the day before to expose him to as much of the 'exposed male form' as possible because she thinks 5 is old enough for a child to start learning about sexual freedom, again while looking back over her shoulder at me regularly.

- The guy that took me back to the Proper had been (or perhaps a passenger), at some recent point, vaping THC containing vape in his car as there was both a fruity and a immediately recognizable skunky aroma in the car

Prior to this I'd only ever been in one other Uber ride, all of a mile here in Indy that a co-worker and I took just to get out of the rain that we'd been in all day so we could try and figure out where to eat now that an outdoor concert was over and that guy too didn't say as much as boo to us.

Now, I'm a 6'1 330lb male strength athlete and I generally found the rides to be questionable at best. Combine that with my female friends consistently having creepy drivers ('complimentary earrings'!) and I'm honestly surprised at how many people seem to swear by such services.

[1] censored photo here about 1/4 of the way down the page https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2019/3/4/21ad-after...

Anecdata: information or evidence that is based on personal experience or observation rather than systematic research or analysis.

wow, not sure if you just had a lot of bad luck or what... I downloaded both Uber and Lyft, signed up for them just to check them out, but not in this area... but useful if I ever traveled somewhere. Which at some point I'd like to be able to go on a solo trip a year. I heard bad things about Uber though in the news, but not sure how much it differs since i'm sure Taxi drivers do bad things too... but I think since Uber is the new upstart, it's easy to pick on them more.

I have heard of not speaking English too, was watching a cruise vlog someone did from Miami, she commented on that fact. Probably awkward, but I guess if you want to be a world traveler got to figure out the language barrier.

Checked out your blog post. Also interesting about pride, very popular there so not surprised it's mess. "move along, KEEP MOVING", surprised the police didn't want to help with directions, but probably a huge crowd? so trying to control the crowd maybe? hmm. I know there's reports that the police in SF don't even investigate car break ins anymore either, so not sure what their job is anymore. Needles and poop part I hear a lot about sadly though. It seems like the entire west coast is going down hill. In Seattle the local news station KOMO did a special called "Seattle is dying". Also not sure if people running around Naked is normal, but maybe doing it just because of pride? Kinda surprised they tolerate that, I think if I started running around nude here I'd be arrested and probably sent for a mental evaluation.

I used to want to go out west because of tech, but I've woken up a lot more about the realities. The housing costs, high crime, high taxes. I kinda change my mind a bunch of where I want to live though, I think working remotely being a digital nomad would be nice or retire early if got lucky from creating something successful... So much to explore around the US and world. Want to do a bit of cruising and international travel, RV around the US, plus I feel like RVing would be cheaper than exploring the globe so more long term. And it's basically a home on wheels. There's parts out west though I think would be nice to vacation, but not a place to live. Like you see Seattle on TV growing up on TV shows and movies so be nice to sightsee. Same with some of the places in California.

Spend summers exploring more north, spend winters in the sunbelt. But if that dream doesn't happen yet, my other goal is to go somewhere warmer and nicer like FL or TX. But it seems like Austin is growing, and starting to have some of the same problems as SF... Austin is warmer too than here but still some days it gets cold it looks. Tech is growing in Miami too. Orlando would be another spot, plus could get an annual pass to Disney! Some people are happy if they get to go once in their life, imagine being able to go almost every day! Some people with passes living near by will just go only for dinner and maybe ride one ride or two. One of my goals with the RV dream is to spend probably at least a month in Orlando during the winters, but there's other spots in FL to explore. Galveston, TX and Quartzsite, AZ are some other winter destinations that seem popular.

You came to SF and are now enjoying life post-Uber. You have no idea how bad taxis were before Uber. You would never have gotten a cab pre-Uber.

I once waited 1.5 hrs for a cab to pick me up from a hotel. The idea you would just hop in a taxi and travel places was impossible pre-Uber. If you were downtown, you might be able to flag a taxi but once you arrived at your destination you wouldn’t be able to flag a taxi down depending on where you were. So you would have to call a cab and hope they would show up. At 3X the price.

This is part of the equation that you don’t get. Empty cabs would pass people on the streets because they would pick and choose rides to the airport because those were the most lucrative.

Safety was impossible. Now with Uber safety is better than it ever has been, you just don’t realize it because you don’t know what the taxi stays on safety were before.

If you don’t like the service, give them 1 star and complain. That’s how it works.

>And I don't think this is abnormal either, a little searching on reddit/facebook/twitter and you can find report after report of such activity on the various ride platforms.

>but probably a huge crowd?

The crowd was INSANE. It was effectively crotch to butt for a block or more in some spots with no movement at times and the collective body heat actually making it difficult to breathe on the street that had the barricades, then you'd duck down a street going the opposite direction and it was much more sane. I landed I guess as the parade was starting, by the time I actually got to my room the last few floats were passing by outside it.

Just apically bad timing/bad planning on the assistant that booked my room and flight (to be fare when she asked how my trip was when she saw me before one of my meetings she admitted she hadn't even thought about the parade and apologized for not looking at the parade route and wher the hotel was.

If my plane had landed an hour later I imagine things would have been quite different as far as getting directions on how to get around the barricades (under the street as it happened to be).

>Also not sure if people running around Naked is normal, but maybe doing it just because of pride?

So my boss back here in Indy actually recognized the guy (on description alone, before showing the photo) from when they lived there for a few years before transferring back to our office. I guess it's just his thing and based on research when I returned apparently San Francisco allows public nudity via permit for events.

Not gonna lie, the naked guy made the whole trip. I followed him for several minutes just watching people's reactions and that woman in the photo, catching her looking down at his crotch and that expression was completely an accident, I wasn't even paying attention to the crowd.

This, and worse.

Using a taxi cab in Berkeley before Lyft was a worse nightmare. It's a long story, but Berkeley has a "medallion" system ( because, um, they were afraid of a crush of taxis? ), and one business bought them all, but then went over the limit of something like 3 employees and thus would have to pay benefits. Since they were cheap, they didn't want to pay benefits ( sound familiar? ), and created lots of small sham "taxi companies". Each had a different phone number and dispatch, with the same poor cars and drivers, and the numbers were always busy. The only way to get a taxi was to get somehow to the taxi rank at Berkeley Bart, anything else, forget it. Forget living 5 miles from the train up in the hills or needing a ride to the airport, you simply couldn't do it.

San Francisco was about as bad. Locals realized ( eventually ) that the only way to get a taxi was to head to one of the major hotels and present yourself as a guest to the doorman. If you didn't live within walking distance of a downtown hotel, you weren't ever going to get a taxi. Dispatchers ( there were only two real companies, Veterans and Luxor ) would simply refuse to service non-business addresses, and if you asked a bar or restaurant to call on behalf, they would simply reject outright half the time.

When I read that people were "made uncomfortable by a comment", I agree the system could and should be better, but what happened in the bay area is we moved from an entirely non-functional system where taxi rides simply can't be had, to a system with some problems but people can get rides. The story above about getting rides and the complaints about being dropped off on the wrong side, um, yeah.

I would say about 10% of the rides I take by Lyft are less than optimal. I wish the app allowed me to select preferences: fast driving over chit-chat, don't bother with my luggage I got it, drop me off somewhere close instead of being precise, because we all have different opinions.

I've had my fair share of bad rides, one where a guy was nodding off and I thought we were going to die, a couple where the "meter" was turned on early or off late. The most recent ride I took wasn't great, the guy kept calling me and his location didn't budge for 5 minutes --- I don't answer anymore, they're trying to figure out where you're going and if they don't like it they cancel the ride. That particular guy picked me up from the wrong bay at the airport ("oh, my app didn't show me", yeah right ) as well, but drove me home quickly and correctly otherwise.

I had this same discussion with a driver in Munich last week, and I argued there are places where the old taxi system works great, and those places aren't at risk for replacement. Germany is one of them, and there's no point in using Lyft there. Japan is another. Some of london is fine, the rest, you have to know the minicab number to call. I was in a London cab a few days ago, it was great --- and they're electric! Manhattan isn't bad, but you get some crazy apples.

You could invent a better system. It's pretty easy. The primary customer issue is hailing and tracking. If you built a hailing and tracking app, and the municipal law simply says "anyone offering rides can do it how they want, but they must ALSO offer rides through the municipal app" with a well defined REST API, and created a bidding-like system to allow prices to fluctuate, _and_ gave the municipality the ability to operate that app instead of a contractor agreement where a for-profit company owns the monopoly part of the transit infrastructure.... that works.

Unfortunately, that would require someone to build such an app and offer it to municipalities without the 1000x investor payoff that is required by investors. And it would require a municipality to operate a 7/24 web service, or contract it out, which we haven't seen municipalities be able to do.

Wow, so many typos in that. I was trying to hammer out a reply so I could get out the door and it shows.

This is an unusually ignorant argument. You never hear about the great rides or uneventful rides. There are millions of rides a day. So even if you came across 1000 negative posts, which may look like a lot to you and your “research”, it still would still only be 0.01% of rides for that day, not taking into account the time delta of those posts.