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Comment by cheetos | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, why would you call an Uber to LGA? LGA has massive lines of taxis waiting to take you home. You'd easily get a cab in less than twenty minutes that is legally required to take you to your location.

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Not OP, I live in a different city, YMMV, etc

I hate taking taxis. Their CC machine is always "broken", they always try to take me in some funky route, cabs are always dirty, and there's no way for me to give feedback on crappy drivers. I don't know if the taxis at LGA have these same problems, but I'd rather wait 10 minutes for an Uber than get an immediate taxi

This was just a time thing. That and it was so cold my phone actually shut down before the 2nd Uber finally arrived.

I guess next time I could hedge my bets by ordering Uber and waiting in the taxi line at the same time.

Does anyone know if cancelling a supposedly en-route Uber could earns me a black mark? I probably would've cancelled the first ride after 15 minutes if I knew it wouldn't flag me

>it was so cold my phone actually shut down

how does that work? I've never heard of electronics shutting down due to cold. Well, at least not due to cold temperatures that a human can resist.

How do you know it was due to the cold? could it be that some water condensed inside the phone or something?

I'm genuinely curious since I've never heard this statement before.

Generally it's due to the battery.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/22/is-the-cold-weather...

https://www.google.com/search?q=cold+phone+shutdown

It was showing battery percentage in the 40s but then the screen suddenly went black. If I tried powering it back on it would only show me a diagram telling me to plug into USB.

Once I got out of the cold it came back to life, still showing 40 something percent battery.

Uhmm, very interesting. I'll need to read up on this.

Thanks for the other commenter for links as well.

Edit:

Btw... that must have been really cold whether!

I mentioned it to my friend and he said the same thing happened to him when snowboarding in CO over the weekend - could there be a market for heated phone cases?!

These were both iPhones, btw

> Their CC machine is always "broken"

If this ever happens to you, the answer is simple: tell them, "thanks for the free ride". If they don't tell you before the ride starts that the credit card machine is broken, you are not required to pay. (This applies both in New York and San Francisco).

Though for what it's worth, I'm not sure I've ever had that happen in NYC, in almost ten years of living here and taking cabs here. The only time that's ever happened to me is in the Bay Area (where the cabs really do deserve their bad reputation).

> If this ever happens to you, the answer is simple: tell them, "thanks for the free ride".

Done that on rides from JFK. Been threatened for a while. Like physically. Then suddenly the machine worked. Oh wonder.

The first time this happened to me, also JFK, I was half delirious after an intercontinental trip with long delays. The first time in the US. So back then I didn't feel like having a forceful confrontation with a cabbie I had a hard time understanding.

I think that's much less likely to happen to you if you live there. But it's usually pretty easy for a driver to recognize whether you're from NYC. Language, destination, asking outright...

EDIT: typo.

Possibly to save money using "UberPOOL" or whatever it's currently called. While regular uber ("UberX"?) is around the same or more than a yellow cab, UberPOOL is sometimes cheaper than a yellow cab

Previously I've waited in the taxi line, become impatient, ordered an Uber and it arrived before I got to the front of the line.

Obviously this only works if the Uber actually decides to show up!

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