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Comment by askyourmother | Hacker News Reader

Most people I know tried uber and moved back to more reliable black cabs and minicabs in London. Uber often seems to have 'ghost cars' on the map - never seem to be real or reachable - maybe trying to inflate the perception of availability of cars?

The large number of drivers who refuse dogs, especially guide dogs for registered blind people is appalling.

The London transport regulator wanted to bring uber under reasonable regulation, uber bugged their users to go and annoy the regulator to back off.

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Just a data point: this is not my experience, nor that of my many London Uber-using friends. We exclusively find it prompt, reliable, and drivers are courteous to the point that some offer to play the passenger's choice of music, give them lollies, etc.

An Uber-XL will happily carry a bicycle or large amounts of luggage. And I've not once experienced an Uber driver refusing to take me anywhere. "South of the river? Not at this time of night guv". Pffff.

Black cabs are now campaigning and many rally behind the slogan "the safest ride with the greatest guide" (from memory). This betrays how fundamentally they have failed to understand the trouble they're in.

Safety: Uber purport to address this with registrations and reviews. (This may be fallible, but no more than black cab registration).

"The greatest guide"?? Puh-lease. Nobody but nobody wants their cabby to be a guide, nor to offer their opinions on anything. Perhaps a tiny minority of tourists may feign interest for a few minutes. Perhaps.

Unfortunately for black cab drivers, it seems that the current generation have sat cosily on the monopoly they inherited, and they've been caught napping.

None of this is intended as an anti-black cab rant, I simply think they're failing to deal with the primary issue: the times they are a-changing.

Edit: typo.

> Nobody but nobody wants their cabby to be a guide

That's not just wrong, but unimaginative.

There are Taxi tours of Belfast where they show you around the sites. The guy we got made a pretty good tour guide.

Well, passengers who are booking a tour expect a tour. So... I don't think this compares to the average cab passenger in e.g. London. But I take your point, and I was over-zealous in my previous comment.

Interesting. Apparently, during the 'euphemisms' the public bus service was often disrupted by terrorism or bomb threats, so sharing rides in black taxis became common in Belfast as an alternative.

It seems I've underestimated the quality of taxi tours, and over-stated my position.

Black-cab taxi tours of London are apparently very high quality [0] although I'm uncertain of how much in-demand they are.

I was envisaging the passengers who book a cab to travel from A to B, not explicit tour bookings. I find it odd that cabbies are rallying behind the "safest ride with the greatest guide" slogan when Uber appear to do a reasonable job regarding background investigations [1], and the "greatest guide" is only required for a minority (I presume) of bookings.

To me, it feels that black-cabs have had a monopoly on being able to pick up passengers and charge high fares. They're now being undercut by Uber, and they're fighting back by emphasising their current business model. Surely their business is suffering precisely because their operating model has failed to predict and adapt to change?

[0] https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186338-d188...

[1] See footnote in this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11608878/I-said-...

The black cabs are under more stringent regulation than minicabs or uber - they are the safer ride. Not sure what's too hard to understand about that.

As they say: once you've been surge priced (by uber), you never go back (to uber)

None of this is intended as an anti-uber rant, I simply think they're failing to deal with the primary issue: regulations and real service are not just for breakfast.

Although I have to say the regulation is no guarantee.

I actually had to catch a cab from Earl's Court to Kew Gardens because District Line had issues. I got in and told the driver, an elderly man, my destination of Victoria Gate, Kew Gardens. First red flag, he wasn't sure where that was. Second red flag, he pulls out a paper map book, like the kind I haven't seen for 10 years. Third red flag he doesn't even know which lane to exit the roundabout to go towards Kew.

I proceeded to watch on my smartphone how he went completely the wrong way and added 20 minutes to the trip getting stuck in heavy traffic. I'm well familiar with The Knowledge, and I can tell you without a doubt, someone lent this old codger his black cab. Whatever idiot cabbie did that did far more damage to the cause of the traditional black cabs than anything Uber could ever do.

Whereas a friend borrowing his friends car and phone for uber would be an improvement?

Google Maps and a profile photo you can see on your phone without having to squint at the little image in the front of the black cab, I'd say yes.

The difference being instant feedback. The low ratings one would garner by doing this with Uber would probably lead to the irresponsible driver getting booted, where with a traditional cab, the complaint process is significantly more involved.

Yes because with Uber you know what you're getting. I'm not sure if you're familiar with London black cabs, but as far as I know they are the most expensive taxis in the world, and they justify the expense by citing their training, knowledge and expertise. Short of that all you're getting is a tight turning radius (admittedly quite useful in London).

Heh :) Fair enough.

I guess the "primary issue" differs depending on one's perspective. The black-cab drivers are highly concerned about loss of business, and personally I think they're addressing this concern in the wrong way. I guess time will tell.

No doubt that black-cab regulation is stringent, although I'm unconvinced that they're the safer ride. I have no way of determining if my black-cab driver has a history of unpleasant behaviour. Uber's rating system gives me some hint toward that -- although of course it is less than perfect.

Regarding price-surging... surely we've all been there, and yet still gone back to Uber another time?

One thing Uber drivers are terrible for: driving while watching the sat-nav instead of watching the road. I do wonder if this contributes to increased accidents, and if black-cabs are less prone to collisions.

Most people I know use it all the time, except if a black cab happens to be right there on the street.

Worth noting that ubers in London are all licensed minicabs, it's not like some American cities where they may not be insured for commercial use.

> The large number of drivers who refuse dogs, especially guide dogs for registered blind people is appalling.

It's a really bad idea for them to do that unless they have a medical exemption (which they can get for dog allergies).

Disability rights activists are vigorous, and would happily book rides with their guide dogs hoping to get denied service so they can then go to court. It's an easy win for them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lhl

> We also hear from Jade Sharp, who complained to Transport For London when a number of Uber drivers refused to take her and her guide dog. Five of them have been successfully prosecuted and fined.

(I have no idea if this BBC Radio 4 programme about visual impairment is available outside the UK. Sorry.)

You make it sound like the problem is 'litigious people with disability', rather than 'providing a service to the general public but discriminating against certain members'.

I thought he made it sound as if 'litigious people with disability' was the solution to 'providing a service to the general public but discriminating against certain members'.

Black cabs can be truly vile, with horribly racist drivers and nasty attitudes. And I certainly wouldn't say minicabs are any more reliable than black cabs unless you're paying 2x the price of a black cab, and then your UberLuxe is probably just as reliable.

I've found Uber to be really good in London. Black cabs cost way more, and in any case are far less likely to available to hail outside of very central areas.

Uber always shows fake cars on the map. To prevent fraud.

elaborate?

to "prevent" fraud.

In some places people will hail the Uber driver and bypass the app altogether.

Uber have denied this (July 15) - do you have any evidence?

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/28/uber-cars-alw...

> "It's real time analytics and the cars you see on the app are the cars driving around London,"

> "If we know it's going to be busy we can tell our drivers, but that doesn't affect when people open their app. There might be a ten second delay from their GPS, but it's not that you open up the app and there are three cars around you, and they're not there. That's definitely not correct." (emphasis mine)

Here is an (apparent) uber drivers forum that has the drivers themselves talking about the app having ghost cars

http://uberpeople.net/threads/ghost-cars.12091/

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