[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…