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by SilasX
3803 days ago
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>Uber is competing on even ground. They've apparently designed a system that falls on the legal side of these medallion market protectionist schemes in most/many/a lot of locations. They're operating in the confines of municipal law. It seems like that's not true in London, even though it would be trivial to comply. There, (my understanding is) you get to obey fewer regulations if you're offering a pre-booking service, and that exception requires that people be able to make a request for "a car at 3pm". And IMHO, that's a pretty reasonable requirement; it's not saying customers have to specify a time, and it allows requests of the form "3pm or ASAP". It's also a feature many customers have asked for. But for some reason, Uber has this bizarre insistence on not allowing pre-booking: https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Uber-allow-customers-to-pre... |
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If Uber knows it needs a car at 3pm, it can push work availability notices to drivers near the pick-up location who may not at the moment be working. It would be a benefit to the driver to be able to have the guaranteed fare, and if the driver is late Uber can just give it to a different driver. Pre-booked cars can be priced differently for the driver or passenger to ensure the opportunities are attractive enough for the slight inconvenience of having to drive a bit more to pick up the passenger. And it's more convenient for the passenger to know a car will be there.
Pricing can still do its surge thing, or they could require a pre-booking fee or something.
I don't see how ^ would require a fundamental reengineering of the system.
(And, as a round-about way, I agree allowing pre-booking would be a reasonable requirement, if it's indeed an existing statue.)