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embro | 9 years ago

Right now, even with surge, they seem to be a bit cheaper than the normal city taxi but I would bet that as soon as there will be no more competition they will raise the price AND still do price surge. In the end, we will pay more than we used to.

Uber seem to be always on the edge between aggressive profit and shady business.

EDIT: Don't think by my comment that I meant the taxis are better. I was just saying that right now, this is a great deal in most cities where Uber does offer their services but seeing how hungry they are for max profit, I doubt this will last and eventually we will realize that a broken system was replaced by another broken one.

discuss

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JumpCrisscross|9 years ago

Many years ago, when I shared my New York apartment with others, a relationship developed between me and my roommate. He is a Brown -educated architect/designer. I, at the time, was an entry-level analyst. From time to time, but at least a few times a week, I'd have to walk to the avenue with him to hail a cab. Because he was black.

I'm not wedded to Uber out of principle, but I'm staunchly against our taxi establishment for it.

pessimizer|9 years ago

I'm a black man who lives in Chicago, and rarely have trouble getting a cab, dodged by maybe 1 in 10. In an Uber world where the cab companies have been driven out of business, and captured city governments allow taxi services to regulate themselves (like Uber and Lyft are asking for), people who don't have smartphones might as well start walking now. Or they can call the fly by night unregulated services that will operate in their neighborhoods by phone, and have the equivalent of surge pricing 24h a day. Or hail unmarked gypsy cabs and maybe end up dead.

I've been black all over America, often not hardly middle-class, the [edit: taxi] situation is not that dire in the 21st century, and Uber are not civil rights workers - you still have to find one that will go where you live.

edit: Not that I don't believe that your neighborhood was particularly racist, but I'll put our Chicago racists against anyone else's racists. I think the largely immigrant workforce driving taxis (especially Nigerians) are more likely to pick me up out of affinity than one might think.

stephenr|9 years ago

You think uber of all companies would have stood up for equal rights back then? They don't even follow the law now, what makes you think they'd have done the right thing then?

sillysaurus3|9 years ago

For what it's worth, here are the prices of my last few uber rides:

  $4
  $4
  $2
  $2
  $2.50
  $1.75
  $2
  $2
  $3.75
These prices are so low that it would be more expensive to take public transit, let alone a taxi. The trips were pretty far, too.

It's obvious that this can't last, but it's pretty great for the moment.

EDIT: A few clarifications: These were in Chicago, and I haven't omitted any rides from this sample. Those really are the last 9 UberPool rides.

The reason it's so cheap is because Uber keeps carpet bombing my phone with 50% and 75% off promo deals. I don't know why. The two types of deals are "Your next 5 rides are 50% off" and "All rides between 4pm and 7pm are 75% off."

noobermin|9 years ago

Here are my last few uber rides

  $18.94
  $13.87
  $ 7.68
  $13.99
  $11.22
  $40.05
  $12.71
Some were far, some not, obviously. They are spread over a few months, obviously, given the price of a typical uber, I am not prone to using it often. It does still beat a taxi, though.

Just balancing out what seems to be a biased sample.

HappyTypist|9 years ago

You're part of an extremely limited test group aimed at calculating the price elasticity of Uber.

vadym909|9 years ago

They are just trying to get you hooked and habituated because once you get accustomed to it- they know you will be a life (or at least a very long term) customer.

spike021|9 years ago

Plus the $5 base fee, right?

So that's not nearly cheaper than taking public transit.

For example if I get an uber ride between my apartment and the train station, it's close to $2-3, but that's on top of the $5 base fee. So I could either pay $7-8, or I could pay $2 for the bus.

flashman|9 years ago

> The reason it's so cheap is because Uber keeps carpet bombing my phone with 50% and 75% off promo deals.

Does this affect how much the driver receives? E.g. do they receive a share of the full fee, or the discounted one?

lifeformed|9 years ago

What city?

baddox|9 years ago

Shhh, don't tell Uber/Lyft, but I would gladly pay more than taxi rates to use their service. In my view, price is hardly the primary advantage they have over taxis.

zyxley|9 years ago

For me, this starts with my complete distrust of metered taxi pricing in the first place. Literally every taxi ride I've ever had in the States had the driver take a longer route than they could have just gotten from Google, sometimes to the point of absurdity.

With Uber and Lyft, on the other hand, I know ahead of time what I'll be paying.

tyingq|9 years ago

>>Shhh, don't tell Uber/Lyft, but I would gladly pay more than taxi rates to use their service.

Pretty sure they are aware, and just waiting until they have enough market share to make good on that.

mahyarm|9 years ago

Taxis are a shady business pretty much world wide it feels like.

pkorzeniewski|9 years ago

It depends, for several years now I order taxis in my city from the same company and never had any problems - price is similar to Uber, ordering takes literally several seconds over the phone (call, tell the street, hang up) and drivers always take the shortest route (they usually know the city in and out, hardly ever using GPS). The only downside is that the cars are quite old, but always clean and a fun fact - a 20 years old Mercedes is more comfortable than a brand new Toyota :)

pandler|9 years ago

Uber was a godsend when I was in Kenya where metered taxis were out of the question and where taxi drivers were especially exhausting to haggle with. Even when I could possibly negotiate a cheaper price with a normal cab, I would usually call an Uber anyways just for the peace of mind.

That is, unless I sought the sheer thrill of tearing through the streets of Nairobi on the back of a motorcycle taxi.

nihonde|9 years ago

In Japan taxis are very pleasant, but expensive, and can be complicated.

I say pleasant because the drivers are usually super-polite, dressed in a neat uniform, quick to get out of the car to help you, keep their cars immaculate, etc.

I say complicated because Japan has an infernal resistance to using street names and marking addresses. If you can get your destination to appear on the "navi", you're OK. If not, you'll be doing a lot of "more towards the castle" and similar guesswork.

yummyfajitas|9 years ago

Just think how bad it might be if cities were to create regulations to keep out anyone besides Uber.

Then Uber might create a medallion system - artificially limiting the number of cars on the road - to maximize their profits [1]. Uber would also have no real incentive to monitor their driver's behavior - after all, it's not like they'll lose any business to Ola, Lyft or Meru. They might even engage in racist protectionism, like banning cab drivers from the wrong ethnic group [2]!

I sure hope no one ever gets this kind of monopoly on taxi cabs!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Meda...

[2] http://www.firstpost.com/india/dont-know-marathi-cant-drive-... (For those unfamiliar, Shiv Sena is basically the Donald Trump party of Maharashtra.)

HappyTypist|9 years ago

There's no reason Uber would create a medallion system. They'd just raise the commissions that drivers pay.

pfarnsworth|9 years ago

The company's stated goals are to compete against mass transit, so I doubt they would raise prices. And they would be making the exact same mistake that their predecessors did, which led them to get disrupted. I'm pretty sure Uber isn't that stupid to not realize if they started acting like taxi companies, they would pretty easily get disrupted the way they have been as well.

If they did all it would do is decrease demand, and would allow other competitors to make their ways into the ridesharing market. I think the CEO is smart enough to know that making a product that is great for customers with margins so low that it makes it really hard for new competitors to come up is a great business to be in.

AdamJacobMuller|9 years ago

Perhaps, especially if you mean that surge pricing will be above regular taxi pricing.

That said, I'm fine with that. I live in a suburban area and getting a (traditional) taxi is complicated and getting a car service is both complicated and expensive. Uber is simple and convenient and I'm fine with paying (some) premium for that.

Scoundreller|9 years ago

Uber says they don't surge the price because your battery is low. All that's happening here is users are less willing to wait out a surge when they're in danger of being without an Uber (and an inability to call a cab).

KKKKkkkk1|9 years ago

Why would there be no competition to Uber? Are they lobbying for traditional taxi companies to be banned from the market?

thesimon|9 years ago

But why should traditional taxis still drive for lower rates when they could earn more through Uber?

agumonkey|9 years ago

In Paris it will very rapidly outbid traditional Taxi companies. Uber hooks into the psychological side of in the now calculation, you only think about the base price not the end-to-end fee, by the time you're paying it's too late.

nickparker|9 years ago

The common complaint against Uber is that drivers barely make any money when you factor in minimum wage.

Their solution won't be increased prices, it'll be the end of drivers. I'd love to see someone actually run the cashflows, but the current prices seem to me about adequate for healthy profit on driverless vehicles. All this nonsense about paying drivers is just incredibly expensive market building.

developer2|9 years ago

>> The common complaint against Uber is that drivers barely make any money when you factor in minimum wage.

The question is whether drivers are making less than minimum wage. This is admittedly more difficult to calculate in an unbiased manner due to a lack of consensus as to whether gas, insurance, vehicle maintenance, etc. should be counted towards a driver's costs of operation.

My intuition says that it shouldn't matter. If a driver is willing to work for a very small margin of profit or even at a financial loss, it's their fault for taking a job that doesn't provide. If Uber doesn't pay, then don't work for Uber, it's as simple as that! Let the market decide; if people were to refuse working for pennies, then Uber would be forced to offer decent income or go out of business due to lack of drivers. And yet after having this initial opinion, the thought occurs... what if this was the norm for employment? Clearly we cannot operate as a society if every job paid like that. At some point, does regulation need to kick in to prevent such abuses from being the norm?

I don't know. It just makes no sense to me that anyone would be an Uber driver if it doesn't pay whatsoever. I can't decide who's more at fault - Uber, or the people offering themselves up as bait to a broken system.

savanaly|9 years ago

Why wouldn't a competitor undercut them if they did that?

newjersey|9 years ago

In my (possibly incorrect) understanding, the promise of uber to shareholders is the network effect. However, you're right. This elasticity only goes so far. If Uber is smart, they should work hard to keep prices (and profits) low as long as they can afford to do so.

jfoster|9 years ago

If Uber becomes what you imagine it will get replaced.

aaron695|9 years ago

Do you have any evidence of this other than normal HN parnoia?

Why would they. Their cut would not be a hell of a lot more with a price hike. Why kill off sales? Why open up to competitors?

They are in a numbers game. Not a high ticket game.

Can you give an example of another company that has done this?

McDonald's hasn't gone to $20 burgers.. why would Uber price hike?

jacalata|9 years ago

McDonald's hasn't, quoting the OP you responded to, 'cut off all competition'. Are you imagining that with no competition, McDonald's would still not raise prices?

rpgmaker|9 years ago

In my area 2.1x surge (plus base fare) is still cheaper than a normal -and notoriously shitty- taxi.