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

After living for years in London, it’s hard to compare Ubers with black cabs.

In the centre of town during the day black cabs are often ubiquitous, immediately available, and skilled at getting you the hell out of dodge. Something for which I’m happy to pay a premium.

Anywhere else they can be capricious and scarce. After 11pm this is the case with in fact almost all black cabs anywhere in the city, when a very different type of driver — “borrowing” their license from a friend, card machine with a “sorry not working” post it taped to it, no chat — starts working the night shift. Usually these are more often likely to be rental drivers — during the day it’s owner drivers. The difference between the two classes of driver is, if you will, day and night.

By contrast, the semi robotic Uber will always come, eventually. They’ll drive past you. Go the wrong way to pick you up. Stop on the wrong side of the road and wait for you to cross because they don’t have a tight turning circle. Go the wrong way on your journey. It’s a fact of life that while not all black cab drivers meet the highest professional standards, it’s much rarer to find a good Uber driver.

SF and the Bay Area — I mention them as the root source of Uber’s app and product culture — certainly aren’t a cakewalk to drive around but it’s not a patch on London’s warrens. You can absolutely see that in the navigation skills of those using the big map apps to get around, and those who did The Knowledge. My subjective viewpoint isn’t some romantic notion based on the old ways or traditions either: everyone I know in London has pretty much the same experience.

If it's indeed so hard to find a good Uber driver, you'd expect them to be driven out of the market by customers themselves.

And if they compensate for that by eg. lower price, then how is it different from any other market. You want premium quality, you pay extra - you're fine with compromising on it, you go for the cheaper option.

>If it's indeed so hard to find a good Uber driver, you'd expect them to be driven out of the market by customers themselves.

I doubt that there are many Uber drivers that do it long term. Eventually at some point they have to realize that they're making peanuts (if not operating at a loss) after they factor in routine AND long-term maintenance costs of their vehicle. Or they simply get 'real' jobs and were using Uber between jobs or to supplement income temporarily.

The people I know that have personally done driving for these services has done it in addition to full-time work, largely hoping to earn decent extra money from tips.

To be honest I’d feel pretty shitty about leaving a bad review for a driver. It would feel like leaving a bad review for your DHL guy: unless they are downright wreckless, I see them as poor souls in bad jobs, that try to squeeze them out.

It is human to not do a shit job perfectly all the time and I won’t make their day any shitier, just because they hurt my sensitive soul by not treating me like a member of the royal family.

I’d rather blame the systems that organize their days.

I give non-fives for cheating ( extending pickup or dropoff ), serious safety issues ( falling asleep and drifting out of lane ), and impersonating ( a different person than registered to drive ). The platform should be able to detect the first cheating problem, the other two are much harder and should have customer input.