[mbca]

The quality of Uber drivers in San Francisco has dropped all the way to the point where I simply will not try to use Uber anywhere near downtown. They will accept the ride and the app will show they are "1 minute" away, however it will often take upwards of 15 minutes for them to reach me because they don't know their way around the city and are confused by all the one-way streets in downtown. I promise I"m not exaggerating, it really does take that long. I've stood there and watched them on the map spending 10-15 minutes driving very long distances away from me before finally turning in the right direction and painfully, slowly, starting to get closer. It's ridiculous.

If I'm in downtown or SOMA, I will use a taxi (either hailing or using Flywheel). It's usually a huge time saver (and there's no "surge" pricing either).

[goondabba]

That's more the Uber app's fault than the driver's. I've chatted with drivers about this; the app doesn't actually tell you where the pickup is, it just starts the navigation. It seems to be a security measure.

[billmalarky]

Probably so people can't poach uber riders with a competing service. You could easily accept riders, relay their location to your services drivers, then cancel the pickup in the Uber app right as your driver shows up.

Sounds like something Uber themselves would do come to think of it.

[jzwinck]

This might explain why the only time I used Uber the driver did not understand where to find me. I was outside near a fence opposite the expressway. He was told by the app to stop on the expressway and pick me up. This despite my entering the street address when booking. It wasted one person hour of time. The driver told me he can't make more than minimum wage with Uber, he just does it as a hobby.

[faet]

Some drivers near me will mark the trip 'complete' before dropping off their current passenger. This way they're already in the queue for the next passenger. Then it may take them 5-15min to finish dropping someone off then getting over to you.

[davnicwil]

I've had exactly the same experience in Bogota, Colombia.

There was a precise cliff-edge over which service levels dropped dramatically, and it came a few months ago when the lowest priced tier, which had nice, big modern cars with really professional drivers who knew the city, was replaced with a tier branded as 'uberX'.

The uberX experience, while still certainly usable, is a very obvious step down from the previous standard. To sum it up, it basically feels less like you're getting an on-demand professional driver/ taxi, and a lot more like you're just flagging a lift from some guy with a car.

The cars themselves are a big step down - much older, smaller, worn out interiors, sometimes even without seatbelts. On numerous occasions the drivers have been far from the professional driver standard. In general they get the job done but they sometimes don't know the roads very well, and I've run the full spectrum of issues like them taking forever to get to the pickup point, often driving past it and circling back round a one-way system etc, having to take ridiculous detours en route because they miss a turn, going via obviously gridlocked routes, asking me for directions along the way to the destination. All of the things you just don't expect to happen with a driver service but you might expect to happen if you asked a friend for a lift. It's not a guaranteed slick service like it previously was, at all.

I'm not sure what happened here but this, along with the Android app being fairly buggy and seeming to get worse over time (takes minutes to lock GPS coordinates, really kills my battery, sometimes completely freezes when you're tracking them coming to pick you up, gives you a locking error message when you've lost your data connection so you can't even see the map, or the license plate of the car, any more) has really downgraded my impression of uber from something which was all-round vastly better than taxis, to a something which is basically on the same level and that I'll just use when it's not that convenient to hail a taxi on the street. And I'm no big fan of taxis.

It's a shame, I used to rave about uber to anyone who'd listen, but if the level of service for the same cost continues to slide like this here and in other cities then I could see myself looking for and switching to competitors much more often where previously I had no real need or desire to.

[beambot]

Sounds like an opportunity for Uber to improve their software to include GPS navigation for fare pickup.

[finnh]

No joke. When my brother uses Uber on the south end of Mercer Island, it regularly shows the "closest" car as being in Seward Park - about 1/2 mile away across a lake. The bridge of course is far north, and pretty much every Uber in Seattle's downtown or centrally-located neighborhoods is significantly closer than the one Uber picks.

Seems like they are simply using as-the-crow-flies distance, which is kinda crazy.

[xenihn]

They are, you can easily verify by estimating pickup times to a destination a mile out into the Pacific or Atlantic :)