I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. It's the first I've ever heard of a satisfied taxi customer in Boston but I'm glad to hear there's at least one!
It's not just me though. Dozens of friends, family members, classmates, and coworkers all described the same experiences I've had whenever the topic came up.
The average-case taxi ride in Boston is quite good.
Dozens of friends, family members, classmates, and coworkers of mine (not to mention the majority of users in this thread) have described the same experiences I've had as well. Guess we'll call it a wash?
No, we won't call it a wash because it's only people like those in this thread, who gravitate towards contrarian arguments every single time something about Uber comes up, who are saying such egregious and hyperbolic false criticisms of taxis.
Dozens of your connections did not say that 80% of the time the card reader is broken, or that they have never traveled in a single clean taxi ever in their lives. These are patently ridiculous ideas being passed off as if they are in some way accurate portrayals of taxi services when they are just cartoonish fictions meant to inflame and cast Uber in an unrealistically positive light.
As I've said repeatedly, none of what I am saying is in any way a criticism of Uber, nor is it a suggestion that anyone should not use Uber if they want to.
All I am saying is that taxi rides are overwhelmingly normal and most everyone already knows this and accepts it and happily uses taxis plenty of the time, even if they also use Uber too.
The people here are trying to make it seem like I'm saying that taxis are made out of gold and you get a free Swedish massage while you ride. Hardly! I'm claiming that most credit card readers are functional and most taxis are fairly modern and clean -- these are not controversial, and to disagree with them is solely a symptom of unrealistic bias, and in this thread anyway seemingly also irrational hatred, towards the taxi business.
So, I was going to just let this one go, I really was. But, you should know that stating opinion as if it were fact with regard to one's truthfulness, a la "Dozens of your connections did not say that..." is an incredibly rude thing to say.
You have no earthly idea who I am, who my friends are, and most certainly are not privy to the conversations we've had. While this may be painful to hear, you are not the sole bastion of truth when it comes to taxi experiences. I can not say, for certain, whether you are telling the truth when you say you've had these conversations with your friends and family. To suggest that you're lying about this is absurd though - and I won't do it - because I don't know you, or your friends, and am certainly not privy to any conversations you've had on the matter either. I believe you when you say this.
Do not discount others viewpoints and pretend that you have a priori knowledge on a subject. It diminishes you.
The experience of 80% of credit card readers being defective is so statistically anomalous that the only reasonable thing to do if someone claims it is to disbelieve them. Unless they have hard evidence, you are perfectly justified to say, you know what, that's just too absurdly far-fetched to give it credit. Same thing if someone says literally zero taxis they have ever used have been in clean condition. That's a many-standard-deviations-from-the-mean event and I don't believe it. The more likely hypothesis is that you're being hyperbolic out of frustration with my other points.
It may indeed be rude for me to directly point it out, but given the way others are treating me in the thread, I won't lose any sleep over it. I don't think I'm making cutting remarks, only remarks that are consistent with basic, universal experiences, not just of me, but everywhere.
Others seem to seek to take these basic, universal experiences and try to claim they aren't universal, and that instead their experiences of crazy statistical outlier events (e.g. zero clean taxis ever) somehow are the common and universal experiences, and that I am being presumptuous or rude for disbelieving that they actually experienced some exceedingly rare event that shouldn't be believed.
It's completely unreasonable to believe that saying 80% of card readers are broken and there are zero clean taxis deserves to be compared in the same breath as a claim like almost every time I rode in a taxi it was just a normal functioning car and nothing stood out as functionally broken or meaningfully substandard in quality.
The two things are not the same kind of claim, even categorically, no matter how much people in the thread don't like it.
"I'm trying to say that the connections whose informal opinions you cite as backup couldn't possibly have said something as extreme as what the other people of this thread are saying."
The mental gymnastics required to follow your train of thought are just astounding. You're argument here seems to be that the opinions of my friends and family can't possibly match with what other people, not even myself have said in a completely different part of this thread. I mean, I guess I agree? What a truly bizarre statement.
Can you please point out exactly where I said that 80% of card readers are broken? You keep stating this figure as coming from my mouth and are using it as an avenue to call me a liar.
The average-case taxi ride in Boston is quite good.