[antimagic]

I feel that every time this issue gets discussed, it needs to have some background information provided, because quite frankly, taxi drivers in France suck.

From my own personal experience, I have had the following incidents: 1) a taxi driver that took me the long way round from a train station to my home. Thinking I was a tourist, because of my accent, he basically tried to take me for a ride thinking I wouldn't notice. That lifted the bill by 50% compared to the usual price.

2) A taxi driver in Marseille that wouldn't finish the trip until I gave him my phone number. My choice was to either get out in the middle of one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Marseille and try and find another taxi, or hand over my phone number (which he verified by calling me on it before continuing) - I had to change my phone number after that one.

3) Countless occassions of having taxis refusing to take me as a customer because I wanted to go to a part of the city they didn't want to go to. One particular occassion struck me as bad - I had the car door open and one foot off the ground when he realised where I wanted to go and took off. Considering I was a lone 35-yr old woman at the time, dressed in a business suit, he obviously wasn't worrying about his safety.

4) I have a friend who actually works in the Boers (mentioned in the article). When I'm out with him, he won't let me get into a taxi until he's checked the guy's (most taxi drivers are men, and on the rare occassion I've had a female driver, they have been nothing but professional - make of that what you will) papers and flashed his badge to keep the driver on his best behaviour).

5) If I move my grievances out to people one removed from me (ie people I personally know), you can add in a guy getting physically hauled out of a taxi and beaten by the driver because the driver didn't want to go where he wanted, another guy getting hit by a taxi when walking across a pedestrian crossing, only to have the taxi driver get out of his vehicule, abuse and kick said friend for slowing him down, and then driving off, and a taxi that took off with a friend's luggage in the boot, which he never got back.

So yeah, I have about zero sympathy for French taxi drivers - the sooner they're run out of business, the better. Their latest behaviour has just confirmed for me that I won't ever be using one again if I can avoid it.

[andmarios]

In Greece we have a solution for this, as old as Uber but that works with the taxi drivers instead against them.

Taxibeat is an app you can use to call taxis from your smartphone. You may choose which taxi you want from the list of nearby drivers. For every driver you see his/her name, plates number, car, reviews, whether he permits pets, speaks foreign languages, has wifi, permits smoking, can help people with disabilities etc. Also you can pay with paypal or credit card.

When you take a ride, taxibeat's driver app essentially monitors the ride.

What's interesting is that since the taxi drivers that choose to work with taxibeat know what a smartphone is, know about reviews etc, they are in general very professional and I never had any issues with them, in contrast with the rest. Of course that they are accountable to a company that takes seriously its name, also helps.

The idea went so well that now we have a competitor too, taxiplon, which also works with phone calls.

[kubiiii]

I'll try next time I go to Greece, thanks for the tip. I was amazed at how cheap and easy to find taxi are in Greece. Add the evaluation on top of that (with the app you mention) : all problems solved without Uber's help. You need to put some pressure on taxis to get a correct service, either competition or evaluation (= competition with peers). Otherwise you end up with France's situation.

[xgbi]

This. I don't understand how the French Taxi lobbies cannot try and copy Uber's app for themselves. If I was a taxi I would LONG for a way to simplify the user's experience.

Uber's app is just the missing link. I don't understand how you still have to order a taxi with a phone call in 2015.

[palmer_eldritch]

They probably don't want to have to deal with customer reviews. For most drivers, user's experience is pretty low on their priority list.

[SlashmanX]

Ireland has something similar with Hailo. It's an absolute godsend.

[atmosx]

I used the service a couple of times to give my girlfriend a ride. I wanted to know car + driver and monitor the ride in real time. Other than a driver hitting on her - not aggressively though - the experience was smooth.

[andmarios]

I hope you gave him a bad rating. No matter the job, professionals should keep it professional.

In Greece it is very common for the driver to engage in small talk with his clients but there must be limits. Once I had an independent driver (not associated with any company) recounting —without me asking— his adventures as a client in the sex industry.

[imdsm]

This is my problem with taxi drivers all over the world. They are essentially anonymous. When you get in a taxi, you're betting on someone you've never met, have no ratings for, have no assurances.

I paid by card for a taxi journey back after a night out drinking here in the UK. The next day I discovered that he'd added more than 25% on as an admin fee, but by that time, there was no way of me easily tracking him down.

I'll be happy when all shuttle services are peer reviewed.

On a side note, why are the taxi drivers allowed to block access to an airport? If members of the public did this then surely there would be action to remove the people and their vehicles? What makes taxi drivers immune to this?

[mike-cardwell]

It's effective because they're inside vehicles. If the general public protested from inside vehicles, you'd get the same thing. Of course, numbers matter too.

[crdb]

That's spot on.

The best part: Uber is managing to address problems people have been wanting to address for decades but been unable to, as those strikes can be politically devastating.

I bet the government is privately patting themselves on the back that a nice, foreign entity is willing to take the heat and provide the hammers for taxi drivers to keep driving those nails deeper into their own coffins.

When a taxi driver gang is beating up an UberPOP driver or burning his car after turning it over, the average French citizen is seeing himself, an average dude just trying to sweeten his end of month by driving people around, and the commercial dispute becomes a crusade of the right of the common man versus a gang of uncontrollable bullies. Well played Uber, amazing PR.

[charlesray]

I live in Pittsburgh and the situation isn't much better. Taxi service effectively doesn't exist here. One newspaper wrote a "review" of sorts of Pittsburgh Yellow Cab and found that, for the most part, they wouldn't take you anywhere put the airport. The author would call them, ask for a ride to the airport, get a cab at his door immediately, then change his destination once he got in the car. They made him get out of the car every time.

Everyone I know who lived here before Uber/Lyft has a story about going out to the bars, calling a taxi, waiting two hours for it to come, and ending up walking two more hours home because the taxi never arrived. And I'm sure many more people have had the same experience and simple chosen to drive drunk. It's quite literally a publicly safety issue. Luckily Uber and Lyft came along two years ago and are now operating legally.

The #1 thing we've all learned from this debacle is that many, many cab companies are the scum of the earth. To be fair, though, some are still good. In Chicago, for example, you can hail a cab without even trying. You can go to the bathroom and find a cab waiting for you in the toilet. They are everywhere, they are reasonably priced, and they know the city a hell of a lot better than most Uber drivers. They continue to thrive because they are full time professionals who provide a better service than Uber and Lyft. That's a lesson the drivers in Paris and Pittsburgh need to learn.

[glogla]

> The #1 thing we've all learned from this debacle is that many, many cab companies are the scum of the earth.

Given the "god view" incident and the "let's follow journalists" incident, that's something that Uber didn't disrupt.

[themartorana]

Sounds like cabs need "body" cameras (interior cams that can't be turned off?) as much as cops do. It's an unbelievable shame, and a really terrible indictment of cab drivers' ability to do their job professionally.

I always thought the cabs in Philly were bad. Apparently they're decent, comparatively.

[gphil]

> I always thought the cabs in Philly were bad. Apparently they're decent, comparatively.

I also have a laundry list of complaints about Philly cabs, but I've never been anywhere where I felt the cabs were definitively better. Compared to some of the other things on this thread, my most consistent complaints are relatively minor (won't take credit cards, don't have the AC on, etc.) At least they are omnipresent, and never say no to my destination. Almost every time I call for an Uber an open cab rolls by first. If Uber shortened their cancellation window, I probably wouldn't even try to use it at all.

[charlesray]

>Sounds like cabs need "body" cameras (interior cams that can't be turned off?) as much as cops do.

That's what Paris needs, from the sound of it. Pittsburgh just needs competition, which we now have. The cabs haven't gotten any better, though. They still effectively don't exist, I almost never see one, and as far as I know they continue to almost exclusively serve the airport...probably because, until recently, Uber and Lyft weren't allowed to pick up riders from the airport. Maybe Yellow Cab will start improving their service now? But I doubt it.

[slowmotiony]

Exactly the same kind of experience as you would get in Poland. Fuck the taxi drivers.

[collyw]

Does Uber actually solve any of these problems?

[kristofferR]

Yes. The customers rate the drivers, so the bad ones are weeded out.

[rokhayakebe]

There is only one problem: anonymity. Yes, it does.

[tonyedgecombe]

Arguably it could make them worse, there is a reason taxi drivers are licensed in most developed countries.

[blfr]

Never had a bad experience with Uber. I heard they ruthlessly cut any driver with anything but good ratings.

[collyw]

Well drivers in Uber are generally paid less, so more incentive for them to make up for it in other ways.

[coldpie]

Whatever reason that is doesn't seem to be working :)