[tomgp]

Taxi services in Germany pre-Uber weren't perfect but they weren't the disfunctional rackets you see in the States. Uber "succeded" in Europe by undercutting existing farily decent service providers with subsidised fares. Those subsidise seem to have dissapeared and at least in London Uber is now in my experience no cheaper and significantly less reliable that the older firms which have survived.

[creato]

I didn’t ride in cabs that much (US) but I never had the dysfunctional racket experiences described in this thread. They didn’t show up once, but that has happened with Uber too.

edit: And Uber charged me a fee to cancel the no-show ride and I had to call and argue with them to take the charge off.