[Gorbzel]

Lots of bantering about whether or not it's ethical / low. tl;dr: It probably is; Travis probably doesn't care.

Honestly, since all that really matters to Uber is $$ and being forced to deal with the law (and even then only barely), Gett should just sue them. It's clearly illegal (putting aside differences between NY/CA law) and it proves the point in a way they'll be forced to notice.

[eridius]

Is it actually illegal? That seems to be very much a question, not a matter of fact. It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business. They were trying to harvest driver phone #s (so they could later try to hire away the drivers; while ethically dubious, this part does not seem illegal). Furthermore, they paid cancellation fees to Gett for doing this. It does not seem clear-cut to me at all that you could label this as fraud, which I believe is the only way to claim this is illegal.

[doktrin]

> It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business.

That's certainly Uber's stance, but it's not "obvious" at all :

> [OP] "In some cases, Herman said the Uber employees waited until the cars had showed up to cancel the order. Uber said the orders were all canceled immediately."

Deliberately waiting until the last minute to cancel a ride would certainly indicate intent to disrupt. That Uber is denying having done this should not exactly come as a surprise.

[eridius]

> Deliberately waiting until the last minute to cancel a ride would certainly indicate intent to disrupt.

Sure, if they actually did that. At the moment this just seems to be Gett's word against Uber's, and since doing that would not in any way aid Uber's goal of harvesting phone numbers, I'm not inclined to believe Gett just on their word. The most benign explanation is that the drivers simply didn't check their phone to see that it was cancelled until they'd arrived at the address.

[doktrin]

> since doing that would not in any way aid Uber's goal of harvesting phone numbers

You're just making assumptions about Uber's goal.

It's Gett's word against Uber's, and the latter is the one who has admitted engaging in immoral and possibly fraudulent activity.

[diminoten]

Does intent matter all that much when seeking damages like this? The damages happened, and Uber admitted to being the cause of the damages. If the law weren't some complex beast (and we know it really is, so this could be false), all Gett would have to do is prove damages, and prove that Uber did it, and that'd be that.

[eridius]

Can Gett actually prove there were any damages at all? Not only was Uber paying cancellation fees, but unless Gett can prove that this caused at least one "real" Gett customer to not be able to book a ride, then it's hard to say that there actually were damages.

[diminoten]

I agree, that's the real question here, not, "Did Uber mean to hurt Gett?"