[jonathanjaeger]

Did you ever think that maybe drivers are flaking more now because Uber realizes as a company they eventually need to to make money, and therefore they need to cut how much drivers get, and now drivers are picky over what rides they take, and it has nothing to do with Travis?

[mdorazio]

I'm not sure if Uber is actually paying drivers significantly less or if drivers have simply wised up to the full costs of driving for a ride sharing company + the jobs market is better than it was a few years ago so there are fewer people who need to drive just to make ends meet.

I have personally noticed that overall average cost of Uber/Lyft for me has gone up over the last year or so unless there's a promo going on. It's now to the point where I think twice before hailing a ride instead of driving myself or looking for another option.

[kryogen1c]

> I have personally noticed that overall average cost of Uber/Lyft for me has gone up

I took a taxi last month for the first time in something like 6 years because uber was 15 minutes away and surging. The taxi was already there and cleaner than almost any uber ive ever taken - and cheaper than the surge.

[addicted]

I find that metered taxis are cheaper for about 80% of the trips I make. The exceptions are during periods of extremely high traffic where your Uber/Lyft Price is fixed, but the metered taxi price could really shoot up if you’re sitting in traffic too long.

Essentially, unless I’m traveling in rush hour, I’m always better off taking a metered cab, and it’s usually faster to boot.

[rhizome]

>need to to make money, and therefore they need to cut how much drivers get, and now drivers are picky over what rides they take,

Which is the same damn taxi dispatch problem that Uber was originally created to solve, so I guess now they can't use "we're different because internet!" to argue against regulations anymore.

[alejohausner]

Over on nakedcapitalism[1] there's an ongoing debunking of Uber's absurd claim that their technology can somehow improve on a commodity service like taking a taxi.

1. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/05/hubert-horan-will-th...

[CamperBob2]

And yet customers abandoned the taxi industry like it was radioactive, about five nanoseconds after the first flawed, dubiously-legal alternatives started to appear.

Only an industry that is doing almost everything wrong could have suffered the fate of the taxi industry.

[rhizome]

Customers abandoned the taxi industry because their dispatchers sucked, and drivers would refuse fares that begine or end in a location they personally preferred not to serve. This is "the dispatcher problem" I mentioned above.

[DuskStar]

To the people saying that Uber rides are heavily subsidized... What percentage would be "heavy"? Because I thought Uber's loses as a fraction of revenue were around 20%, which doesn't scream "heavily" to me

[acdha]

It’s around 50% — the main problem being that there’s no obvious way to make it significantly more cost efficient. Driver compensation is already hovering around minimum wage and there’s plenty of competition if they raise rates. If would be one thing if they were running at a loss in new markets / for new customers but trending profitable but as far as I can tell they’re banking on being able to starve the competition and jack up prices or getting self-driving cars at a price where they can afford the capital costs because they’re not paying the drivers.

[DuskStar]

$1.8 billion losses on $11.3 billion in revenue is nowhere close to 50%. (2018 numbers)

If you have different numbers, I'd love to hear them.

[lhorie]

> It’s around 50%

You sound sure. Where did you get this number?

[empath75]

It works out to billions of dollars a year in losses so yeah.

[dingo_bat]

A big factor in high adoption for Uber was the fact that each ride was highly subsidised by investor monies.

[grogenaut]

Price was rarely a concern. Uber always felt fair in pricing to competitive markets like Chicago where cabs are better than St Louis or Seattle.

Seattle was the worst. Cabs were super late and never knew the city and gouged you. Took a cab 12 miles at 3am in Seattle once and it was 97$ another time (like 2012) the guy couldn't find the place 3 times and was 2 hours late. Finally showed up when I talked him there and fucker had a gps but claimed he didn't need it.

Uber and lift show up on time have good dispatch and reasonable fares.

However in Portland I always used radio can cause it was clean and had good dispatch and fair prices.

I use cabs in SF all the time from the airport cause company pays and I don't have to deal with the cf that is getting a rideshare there. Just walk out and pay $50 to downtown. It's $15-20 over rideshare but no wait. And yay moral hazard.

Anyway I love flywheel and radio can (I think related companies) cause they do it as well as Lyft and have fair prices. Cabs shouldn't be like healthcare for pricing.

[malvosenior]

The software has also degraded significantly. It’s an all around lowering of quality.

[Nextgrid]

Their latest rebrand is also a disaster in my opinion. They went from a distinctive visual identity to a logo equivalent of someone pasting an Arial textbox in Paint on a black background.