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Uber

DeaconCav06 said:
The last time I took a cab in DC the guy went absolutely ballistic when I cracked the window.
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Yeah we got into a cab a couple weeks ago and when we told him the destination (probably a ten minute drive) he told us "that's not the direction Im going - should charge you extra."

I was like....not the direction you're going? You're a fucking cab driver. You drive everywhere.
 
Dude, just keep posting, your profile gif is terrific.
 
Deacon923 said:
An interesting take on Uber and its ilk, which is that the whole thing is fueled by rising income inequality and depressed wages and wouldn't be possible without it. http://qz.com/312537/the-secret-to-the-uber-economy-is-wealth-inequality/
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I bet that article was originally written with a different example but used Uber instead for the headlines.

Replacing a ride with a nicer, cheaper ride or a much nicer, more expensive ride has little to do with wealth equality. Average Uber drivers make between $25-$30 an hour based on real-world interviews and not Uber's inflated pitch numbers. The article makes it sound like rich people are paying poor people a pittance to run their errands and compares it to Mumbai. If you're going to call people making a minimum of $40k/year with many making $80k+ the desperately impoverished I guess you could use any minimum wage entry level job as your example. I mean, all the wealthy people couldn't eat fast food if all the desperate poor folks weren't making it for them...
 
I drive for Uber on the side in Winston, so maybe I'm biased, but I really don't get all the complaints. First of all, the fares are really cheap. You can go anywhere in Winston pretty much for less than $12, and Winston actually has higher per mile rates than most major cities.

Yes, surge pricing is annoying as a rider and can get absurdly expensive. However it does achieve its goal of getting more drivers on the road, which in a market like Winston can be the difference between being able to get a ride and having literally no drivers available. There have been many times that I've gotten back on the road after I had quit for the day only because a surge was happening.

When I'm on the road, I use Uber as a rider all the time as it's usually cheaper and always better service than cabs. If there's an expensive surge then I find a cab, same as I would have before Uber existed.

Nobody forces anybody to use Uber, but in most situations, I think it's an extremely beneficial addition to the transportation scene. It seems like most of the complaints in the US come from people who live way out in the suburbs in a big city and are annoyed that they can't get an 20+ mile ride at a peak time for $30.

ETA: As far as a driver, I am not nearly as high on Uber as I am as a rider, but that's a subject for a different post
 
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MysteryMen said:
I drive for Uber on the side in Winston, so maybe I'm biased, but I really don't get all the complaints. First of all, the fares are really cheap. You can go anywhere in Winston pretty much for less than $12, and Winston actually has higher per mile rates than most major cities.

Yes, surge pricing is annoying as a rider and can get absurdly expensive. However it does achieve its goal of getting more drivers on the road, which in a market like Winston can be the difference between being able to get a ride and having literally no drivers available. There have been many times that I've gotten back on the road after I had quit for the day only because a surge was happening.

When I'm on the road, I use Uber as a rider all the time as it's usually cheaper and always better service than cabs. If there's an expensive surge then I find a cab, same as I would have before Uber existed.

Nobody forces anybody to use Uber, but in most situations, I think it's an extremely beneficial addition to the transportation scene. It seems like most of the complaints in the US come from people who live way out in the suburbs in a big city and are annoyed that they can't get an 20+ mile ride at a peak time for $30.

ETA: As far as a driver, I am not nearly as high on Uber as I am as a rider, but that's a subject for a different post
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Can't somebody find a reason to send in the government goons here?
 
Deacon923 said:
An interesting take on Uber and its ilk, which is that the whole thing is fueled by rising income inequality and depressed wages and wouldn't be possible without it. http://qz.com/312537/the-secret-to-the-uber-economy-is-wealth-inequality/
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That's certainly one view of things, but the author hasn't convinced me of the validity of his point. Uber disrupted a market in a major, major way. The article seems to completely ignore that aspect and the role that the disruption has played on Uber's success.
 
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Also, prices going up significantly of high demand has been a part of our country for a long time. Try getting a hotel for the Super Bowl, I bet it's at least 4x the normal rate. Or cruise during Spring Break vs. in October. Or a flight to Utah during ski season. The list goes on and on.
 
Deacon923 said:
An interesting take on Uber and its ilk, which is that the whole thing is fueled by rising income inequality and depressed wages and wouldn't be possible without it. http://qz.com/312537/the-secret-to-the-uber-economy-is-wealth-inequality/
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Interesting article but I think that the author is making the mistake of assuming that Uber drivers are less well-off, which may not be the case. A close example that I can think of is Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which is a service where you can pay people small sums ($.10 or so) to do small tasks like take surveys. I used it in business school for a project and thought that the sample might skew toward those with a lower income. In fact, an academic study found that most workers on the site were upper-middle class and just earning money on the side.

It is so sad to see that taxi companies are going to do everything in their power (sans improve service) to fight this.
 
MysteryMen said:
Also, prices going up significantly of high demand has been a part of our country for a long time. Try getting a hotel for the Super Bowl, I bet it's at least 4x the normal rate. Or cruise during Spring Break vs. in October. Or a flight to Utah during ski season. The list goes on and on.
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Sure but most those examples are pretty non-transparent prices in every case. An airline doesn't show you a base ticket price plus adjustments. Imagine a restaurant charging higher prices on regular menu prices on Friday nights than Tuesday. Not saying it's wrong to do that but you'd definitely expect pissed off customers.
 
Uber shows you that it's a surge period. You know it's costing more. On the big holidays I've gotten emails showing what the surged prices were going to be at what time on the morning of the holiday.
 
DeaconCav06 said:
Uber shows you that it's a surge period. You know it's costing more. On the big holidays I've gotten emails showing what the surged prices were going to be at what time on the morning of the holiday.
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Right. It's transparent. People know how and why their prices are going up. And they fucking hate it. And they'd hate it in other scenarios (airlines, hotels) if it worked the same way. The other industries hide the base price and nobody complains because it's less obvious that there's rationing based on price.
 
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So, if uber or lyft jack up their prices, people can still call a regular cab right? What is the problem here? If you don't want to pay the amount they are charging, then do something else. Good god.
 
wakelaw13 said:
So, if uber or lyft jack up their prices, people can still call a regular cab right? What is the problem here? If you don't want to pay the amount they are charging, then do something else. Good god.
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Pretty much this.
 
wakelaw13 said:
So, if uber or lyft jack up their prices, people can still call a regular cab right? What is the problem here? If you don't want to pay the amount they are charging, then do something else. Good god.
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Not to mention that if you aren't willing to pay the higher price during certain times, there's a good chance there's not a driver willing to come pick you up either.
 
Great thing about driving Wake students: they didn't think twice about paying $50 (granted it was split 4 ways) for a ride from near campus to BB&T Field during a 5x surge before the Clemson Thursday night game.

Depressing thing about driving Wake students: You would be surprised how many times I've been called during the middle of the day to give a DKE a ride from their house to the Pit
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
Sure but most those examples are pretty non-transparent prices in every case. An airline doesn't show you a base ticket price plus adjustments. Imagine a restaurant charging higher prices on regular menu prices on Friday nights than Tuesday. Not saying it's wrong to do that but you'd definitely expect pissed off customers.
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Tons of restaurants do this. Same dish has a lunch price and a dinner price. Monday night specials listed right next to the full price you're paying Friday. The best restaurant in this area - the Inn at Little Washington - charges different prices on different evenings despite no change in quality, it's just based on demand. Some beer places are starting to charge more for popular pours and less for others - tracked in real time on a big screen and prices adjust all night. People love it.

It just has to be up front and make sense to people.
 
wakelaw13 said:
So, if uber or lyft jack up their prices, people can still call a regular cab right? What is the problem here? If you don't want to pay the amount they are charging, then do something else. Good god.
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What's the problem here? This isn't Russia...is this Russia...this isn't Russia.
 
DCDeac said:
Tons of restaurants do this. Same dish has a lunch price and a dinner price. Monday night specials listed right next to the full price you're paying Friday. The best restaurant in this area - the Inn at Little Washington - charges different prices on different evenings despite no change in quality, it's just based on demand. Some beer places are starting to charge more for popular pours and less for others - tracked in real time on a big screen and prices adjust all night. People love it.

It just has to be up front and make sense to people.
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Tons? I think you mean a handful of really upscale places in DC and one bar on H St. I'll concede the point when Franklin barbecue doesn't have four hour lines.

I'm emphatically NOT saying surge pricing is bad. I think it's good, personally. And even if I didn't, it's Uber's right to run its pricing the way they see fit. But I don't think the dislike of it among some group of people is incomprehensible. They'd prefer a shortage of Uber cars and for ride availability to be rationed on luck or waiting instead of more supply and rationing based on willingness to pay. There are a lot of industries that generally work that way or hide the base price when they do have increases. The complainers are probably poorer than people with desk jobs who post on a WF message board.
 
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