[UncleEntity]

> Ask actual individuals, take taxis yourself, ask people that try to be their own driver.

You know, I was a taxi driver in Phoenix when Uber/Lyft came to town and watched the fallout of their actions — absolutely nobody cares about that and every time I post about my firsthand experience in some Uber article I get downvoted to nothing.

The disconnect (and astroturfing) is phenomenal. I don’t think people would cheer on the Robber Barons 2.0 if they didn’t personally benefit through direct subsidies. The funny thing is rates are basically what they were before they destroyed the taxi industry with the exception that drivers get paid a lot less than before, once the daily (or weekly) lease was paid up on the cab the rest of the money went to the driver. On a good day you could have the car paid for in the first few hours and then it’s easy money. When I lived downtown I’d get up early and do 2, 3, 4 back-to-back airport trips ($15 airport special which usually paid $25ish) in an hour or so and have half the car paid off before the medical appointments started to come out. I also used to make two or three hundred on Friday and Saturday nights just working out a cab stand at one bar.

Then Uber/Lyft came along and started charging less than cost and all that went away. You basically had to figure out who had what medical appointment when and be sitting on that call to even think about paying for the cab let alone gas and maybe, if you had a good day, could get all fancy with some Carl’s Jr.

[stormbrew]

I don't know what it was like in Phoenix, but in the city I live in -- and frankly most cities I've visited in north america(1) -- price has never been a motivating factor in uber vs. taxis.

It's always been that taxis don't come when I need them. Sometimes they're fine if you're at a bar and a cab will come by for hailing because they know business will be there, but if you're carless and need to get somewhere at a particular time cabs have always been a nightmare.

I've called to get a cab to come pick me up and then waited 2 hours while dispatch couldn't find a cab to come because they were all too busy picking up opportunistic rides. I've never had an experience anything like that with uber or lyft.

I would -- and now that the money train has dried up for uber a bit, do -- pay as much for an uber as I did before for a cab, except now the uber actually comes. In my particular city most cab drivers also aren't union, and they pay to rent their cars for their shifts from the people who own the plates. Most of the protest of uber coming to town was from cab owners (some operators, but many not) who were using their license as a retirement plan.

I recognize that the drivers were put in a tough spot, and most of this isn't their fault, but things were deeply broken before, and they still are. But I think there's a lot of rose tinted glasses going on here, and people who needed cabs were often literally left out in the cold by the way things were.

(1) Pretty much the only city I've ever had good experiences with cabs is NYC.

[UncleEntity]

> I've called to get a cab to come pick me up and then waited 2 hours while dispatch couldn't find a cab to come…

Yeah, that happened a lot when it was busy because you don’t make any money chasing around stale calls where the people probably aren’t there. And there were big chunks of the Phoenix Valley that were off limits after the sun went down, doesn’t matter if you’re running an app and aren’t carrying around a few hundred in cash so there’s not as much incentive to avoid certain areas. I’d talk to new drivers who would make “all the money” working those areas at night and then they would just stop showing up to get a cab after not too long.

So, without surge pricing (which was illegal under Arizona law unless it was posted on the side of the cab in letters of a certain height) cab drivers go 100% mercenary when it gets busy and people get left out in the cold where they couldn’t get a cab for any (legal) price. It was a problem and on nights like New Year’s Eve we would get our revenge on the people we would profile as “non-tippers” because, well, that’s what they get.

I honestly don’t think anyone would have had much of a problem with Uber/Lyft if they didn’t undercut the existing cabbies by violating the law on things like commercial insurance (which was expensive), mandatory background/drug testing (which, ironically, the law didn’t say you had to pass) and certified meters (so the passengers didn’t get ripped off). That’s all it took to be a legal livery vehicle in Arizona and they would give the window stickers out to all sorts of shady characters who would (legally) rip off the tourists and drunks because they had their extremely high rates posted as was the law.

I remember having online debates in the early ‘00s with people claiming the evil capitalists would move into a market, put the competition out of business by charging less than the actual cost of whatever product they were selling and then once they had a de facto monopoly jack the prices up. I’d always say “show me one real example of this happening” (which they never could) and now that’s the business plan of all these Silicon Valley companies people applaud their actions. People who would boycott Walmart because they believe they engage in these tactics happily use the services of companies who unapologetically do. I just don’t understand…