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.

The market is skewed as Uber runs huge losses and is operating at a loss, that's how it's different to other markets.

Also, Uber are paying under the minimum wage in the UK, or at least the regional minimum living wage in London. Uber don't pay taxes in the UK like a London minicab company would, then they underpay their drivers and expect our welfare system to pick up the slack on their crummy wages.

Minimum wages should apply to gig type working like Uber/Deliveroo etc as much as it does to everyone else. This is the market failure.

Without a minimum wage, sick pay, materity/paternity leave pay, of course you can make the ride cheaper.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uber-verdic...

If Uber had to buy the vehicles, service them and pay full tax and fines it would be nearly as expensive as black cabs.

I take my fair share of Uber rides but I can see the next dot com bust happening now when this unprofitable business model all washes out. See also WeWork.