[chrischen]

You’ve clearly never called a cab pre-Uber, or you worked as a dispatcher.

Worse of all not only does the cab company often decide to not show up, if you cancel (such as calling another cab company that does show up or take a bus instead) you get yelled at and cursed to hell for letting them know you are canceling.

Everyone in the system is just an average joe, probably being paid less than they deserve. But the system was terrible and broken.

[rvense]

> You’ve clearly never called a cab pre-Uber

There might be some variation with things like geography, here.

[chrischen]

Yes agreed. Some countries and cities had better taxi service than others. But one of beauties of early day Uber was that I was able to use the same app globally (in the US, Taiwan, and even Chiba) and it used my prexisting saved credit cards even! No fumbling for the local currency, registering a local payment method, or worrying if I am going to be scammed by the driver—just a consistent note global taxi hailing experience.