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Well, this is why we have anecdotes I suppose. I lived in Boston and Brookline for twelve years as well and find your claims equally laughable.

We quite frequently found ourselves in cabs with credit card readers, only to be told they didn't work when it came time to pay. I also simply gave up using cabs trying to get to Logan because while they would usually be on time, there were others when they simply wouldn't show up at all. Now you're under the gun to find a ride - not sure if they're late or just not coming.

All I can say is that while I believe you when you say these things (I have no reason to think you'd lie to make a point), I also think you've simply lived a very charmed life when it comes to taxi service in Massachusetts.

The fact is, the taxis in Boston had very little reason to improve their service prior to competition from Uber. Now they're being forced to adapt to survive.

Edit: spelling

Given that I easily rode in a hundred taxis all over Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, and Chestnut Hill, it would be extremely statistically unlikely that I just happened to get only the far above average good experiences each time.

The anecdote I described also matches the general experiences of all my friends and family as well, with occasional outliers (both good and bad), so I feel very confident in saying that an average case taxi ride anywhere in the Boston area involves a clean, modern taxi, polite driver, properly functioning credit card machine, a short wait (and no wait at all if you call the dispatcher ahead).

Yes, of course there is variance and sometimes people will have a worse experience. Those worse experiences are very rare, and the taxi services overall are very good the vast majority of the time.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. It's the first I've ever heard of a satisfied taxi customer in Boston but I'm glad to hear there's at least one!

It's not just me though. Dozens of friends, family members, classmates, and coworkers all described the same experiences I've had whenever the topic came up.

The average-case taxi ride in Boston is quite good.

Dozens of friends, family members, classmates, and coworkers of mine (not to mention the majority of users in this thread) have described the same experiences I've had as well. Guess we'll call it a wash?

No, we won't call it a wash because it's only people like those in this thread, who gravitate towards contrarian arguments every single time something about Uber comes up, who are saying such egregious and hyperbolic false criticisms of taxis.

Dozens of your connections did not say that 80% of the time the card reader is broken, or that they have never traveled in a single clean taxi ever in their lives. These are patently ridiculous ideas being passed off as if they are in some way accurate portrayals of taxi services when they are just cartoonish fictions meant to inflame and cast Uber in an unrealistically positive light.

As I've said repeatedly, none of what I am saying is in any way a criticism of Uber, nor is it a suggestion that anyone should not use Uber if they want to.

All I am saying is that taxi rides are overwhelmingly normal and most everyone already knows this and accepts it and happily uses taxis plenty of the time, even if they also use Uber too.

The people here are trying to make it seem like I'm saying that taxis are made out of gold and you get a free Swedish massage while you ride. Hardly! I'm claiming that most credit card readers are functional and most taxis are fairly modern and clean -- these are not controversial, and to disagree with them is solely a symptom of unrealistic bias, and in this thread anyway seemingly also irrational hatred, towards the taxi business.

So, I was going to just let this one go, I really was. But, you should know that stating opinion as if it were fact with regard to one's truthfulness, a la "Dozens of your connections did not say that..." is an incredibly rude thing to say.

You have no earthly idea who I am, who my friends are, and most certainly are not privy to the conversations we've had. While this may be painful to hear, you are not the sole bastion of truth when it comes to taxi experiences. I can not say, for certain, whether you are telling the truth when you say you've had these conversations with your friends and family. To suggest that you're lying about this is absurd though - and I won't do it - because I don't know you, or your friends, and am certainly not privy to any conversations you've had on the matter either. I believe you when you say this.

Do not discount others viewpoints and pretend that you have a priori knowledge on a subject. It diminishes you.

The experience of 80% of credit card readers being defective is so statistically anomalous that the only reasonable thing to do if someone claims it is to disbelieve them. Unless they have hard evidence, you are perfectly justified to say, you know what, that's just too absurdly far-fetched to give it credit. Same thing if someone says literally zero taxis they have ever used have been in clean condition. That's a many-standard-deviations-from-the-mean event and I don't believe it. The more likely hypothesis is that you're being hyperbolic out of frustration with my other points.

It may indeed be rude for me to directly point it out, but given the way others are treating me in the thread, I won't lose any sleep over it. I don't think I'm making cutting remarks, only remarks that are consistent with basic, universal experiences, not just of me, but everywhere.

Others seem to seek to take these basic, universal experiences and try to claim they aren't universal, and that instead their experiences of crazy statistical outlier events (e.g. zero clean taxis ever) somehow are the common and universal experiences, and that I am being presumptuous or rude for disbelieving that they actually experienced some exceedingly rare event that shouldn't be believed.

It's completely unreasonable to believe that saying 80% of card readers are broken and there are zero clean taxis deserves to be compared in the same breath as a claim like almost every time I rode in a taxi it was just a normal functioning car and nothing stood out as functionally broken or meaningfully substandard in quality.

The two things are not the same kind of claim, even categorically, no matter how much people in the thread don't like it.

Can you please point out exactly where I said that 80% of card readers are broken? You keep stating this figure as coming from my mouth and are using it as an avenue to call me a liar.

Please, go ahead, show me.

I did not claim that you said it, not at all, and that's a definite misrepresentation of what I'm talking about.

The comment in which it was said is here: < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12191938 >.

I am comparing whatever anecdotes (yours and others) that are supposedly backed up by lots of people you know, with this.

While the people you know might have had some bad experiences sometimes, I wouldn't believe they were anywhere near the claims going on in this thread.

If your connections reported occasional bad experiences with taxis, who would care? It couldn't possibly be relevant to a thread where the entire context of the thread is that people are saying that all Boston taxis are almost always awful and almost always have broken card readers, etc.

I'm not sure how to explain it. I'm trying to say that the connections whose informal opinions you cite as backup couldn't possibly have said something as extreme as what the other people of this thread are saying -- in which case whatever minor and totally expected occasional complaints your sources have had, they aren't relevant.

"I'm trying to say that the connections whose informal opinions you cite as backup couldn't possibly have said something as extreme as what the other people of this thread are saying."

The mental gymnastics required to follow your train of thought are just astounding. You're argument here seems to be that the opinions of my friends and family can't possibly match with what other people, not even myself have said in a completely different part of this thread. I mean, I guess I agree? What a truly bizarre statement.

"I'm not sure how to explain it."

On this point, we are in complete agreement.

You cited the opinions of connections to backup your general feeling that taxi service is bad.

Is it your opinion, or the consensus opinion of your connections, that 80% of the time the card reader is broken, or that the percentage of taxis which are clean is near 0 (or some other claim similar to these)?

If you're not making claims of that extremity, then whatever you are talking about isn't very related to what anyone else here has said, and depending on the specifics, I may even agree with you, but it wouldn't be relevant to a thread where the primary claim that started the disussion is that taxi service is overwhelmingly always unbelievably bad.

If you are making claims of that extremity, then I don't believe them, and feel that disbelieving them is simply a matter of the claims being too much of an outlier to deserve any serious plausibility.

Well, I still do believe you, because I don't make it a habit of calling a person a liar with no verifiable proof to the contrary.

Good luck with everything.

Just as a total aside, sometimes the 'reply' link doesn't appear beneath a comment, especially if it is new. If you click on the permalink for that comment (the time next to the commenter's username), it will take you to a page for just that comment, and will have a box for replying.

I only mention it because I believe you are replying to comments below, but by making replies to an earlier comment instead of the actual comment you are replying to -- and sometimes this is why.

I've definitely done that before, and thought perhaps it was a reply limit from HN or something (which can happen).

> I don't make it a habit of calling a person a liar with no verifiable proof to the contrary.

This is an unfair mischaracterization of what I've said.

If someone makes an extraordinary claim and has no evidence, you probably shouldn't just believe it. Choosing not to believe it based on a reasonable statistical premise (e.g. the failure rate of card readers is not high enough such that 80% of them are always broken) is perfectly valid, and is not impolite or rude. It's not at all the same thing as "calling them a liar." The burden of proof is on the party making extraordinary claims.

First off, I actually appreciate that - I always just assumed it was a nesting limit!

That aside, honest question, because I truly don't understand. You've said things like "I never once experienced a broken credit card machine" and "they were always early and helped me with my bags". I find these claims equally as fantastic as the claims that you seem to disregard from others (not myself) re: this 80% figure. I honestly, truly do not believe that every cab you ever called in 8 years was early. Moreso, I find it very difficult to believe that you believe that this is normal.

So, all this being said, why is it that you feel that your stance on that end of the spectrum is right, and others are wrong. Where is your evidence (not anecdotal), for passing the burden of proof for the extraordinary claims you're making?

Well the failure rate of the machines is super low, so experiencing nearly zero broken card machines would be about expected. The outcome of never experiencing a broken one certainly is rare, as you say, but it's nowhere near the astronomical claim made elsewhere of an 80% failure rate.

I'm not asking anyone to believe that zero card readers are broken. I'm only saying I never experienced a broken one, and never experiencing a broken one isn't that weird because the failure rate is low.

Someone saying that 80% of the time the reader is broken is making an extremely different type of claim, not really even comparable with my analogous claim of not ever experiencing a broken one. While my experience might also differ from average, it is orders of magnitude closer to average than someone happening to experience a broken one 80% of the time.

I'm not sure what to say about the bags comment. Every time I've ever gotten a cab to or from any airport anywhere, from Boston to Hong Kong, the driver helped me with bags if I had them. And all the other drivers helped all the other people in line too.

Maybe you're referring to the fact that I always experienced them coming early -- yes this could be highly variable. My anecdotes are probably no more valuable than others here on that point, mostly because nobody here extended the outrageously extreme claims they made (80% card reader failure, effectively zero clean taxis ever) into the topic of how late taxis are, though they might have (e.g. someone possibly saying another statistically unbelievable thing like 'taxis are always 30 minutes late' or '90% of the time they don't even show up' or something).

Keep in mind that being early only applied to taxis I scheduled from home to the airport. I never called ahead to arrange a taxi except when going to the airport, so those are the only ones which could have possibly been early or late.

The majority of cabs I ever took were cabs I just hailed on the street or at a taxi stand.

Clean, modern taxi, polite driver? In Boston, MA? You must be kidding, sir.

Before Uber, every cab I took was smelly, the cars were late 1970s models, sour drivers, etc.

Cabs have gotten a lot better, thanks to Uber.

No, I wasn't kidding. My cab experiences in Boston, going back to 2008, well before any Uber competition can apply, have always been good -- perfectly normal with no serious complaints. I'm not saying the cab drivers poured me a glass of champagne or something, just that they had clean, newer cars with functioning card readers, they were on time, and I didn't stand in very long lines except a few times at the airport.

It is very telling that when a person describes his taxis experiences in a super boring, uncontroversial and simple manner: i.e. that the taxis are just normal cars with credit card readers and you should expect a perfectly normal experience if you get in one -- then everyone here acts like I'm giving some kind of gushing, outrageous praise to taxis, and acts indignant that I don't describe taxis as basically the car Fred Flintstone drove but with killer bees inside.

It's crazy that people are so adamant to do social engineering for Uber that they won't even agree to entirely uncontroversial claims, like most taxis in Boston are clean or have functioning card readers -- things which are indisputably accurate.

I'm not saying you should dislike Uber. I'm not saying you should ride in a taxi. I'm not saying the taxi services are perfect. I'm not saying there are zero bad taxi experiences.

I'm only saying that most taxi experiences in Boston are perfectly uneventful, normal rides that completely meet the expectation of the riders, and don't suffer from the hyperbolic criticisms here.

>It's crazy that people are so adamant to do social engineering for Uber that they won't even agree to entirely uncontroversial claims, like most taxis in Boston are clean or have functioning card readers -- things which are indisputably accurate.

I'm from Boston. I took a ride from Brighton to Hynes. The cab driver goes through Storrow Dr and he skips the Kenmore exit to get to Hynes. I think he's going to take the Beacon Hill exit and he skips that too.

I asked him why he didn't take the exit and he said, "Oh I thought you wanted to go to the Prudential."

Prudential is the same place as Hynes. The taxi takes me all the way up Storrow to I-93 then to I-90 west finally taking the Copley exit back to Hynes.

My bill ended up $45 from Brighton to Hynes.

I have countless horror stories of cabs not picking me up because the distance was too short (South end to Fenway is too short), credit card machines "not working" so it's cash only, cabs not showing up at all or extremely late.

I even have a cab scam story in Baltimore which I commented about here on HN.

Uber has questionable ethics, but at least I don't have to deal with frustrations.

I've lived in New Englad over a decade so this is my anecdotal experience with Boston cab drivers.

I'm a big fan of Uber, but the secret to dealing with cabbies is to be firm and obstinate. Like any street business, they're going to take advantage when they smell weakness and fold when they sense strength. Credit card machine doesn't work? Okay, here's the address where you can send me the bill. Don't try to stop me from leaving the cab, it'll be a big mistake involving police and you getting arrested for false imprisonment. Another thing I've done to much success is negotiate the fare to the destination up front, which prevents problems at the other end. Always remember that possession is nine-tenths of the law and that as long as you're in possession of the money, you're in the position of power. And when you act as such, you'll get more respect from the cabbies to begin with.

Or I could just use Uber :)

That all sounds very unpleasant. I'd rather work with professionals.

I have never seen a clean taxi except once, and also 80% of drivers had broken machines and took me to ATMs instead. One guy even had his own square reader, which I thought was nifty. But the best part was discovering that our new home address was blacklisted by taxis due to previous occupants shenanigans. Thank god Uber came and smashed them into the ground.

More than one taxi is clean. Fewer than 80% of taxi card readers are broken. No one will believe your claim of being blacklisted unless you give proof, and taxi services have hardly been "smashed into the ground" by Uber. I continue to enjoy using taxis in every urban area I travel to, and look forward to the way taxis keep competition pressure high for Uber by adopting various changes to make their level of service indistinguishable in the new ways that customers have enjoyed using Uber.

No one will believe your claim of consistent reliable service without proof. The taxi industry has fucked its own reputation quite thoroughly.

No, the taxi services (in Boston, anyway, which qualifies all of my comments) have an average-to-good reputation. Uber tries to steer opinion against it, but since people have perfectly fine experiences with taxis most of the time, that doesn't work.

Also, there is no singular reputation that represents all taxi services. Your idea that all taxi services have a bad reputation only further makes your argument unbelievable. A mom & pop business operating a few taxis in a small suburb is way different than a highly regulated city taxi service competing for medallions. Taxis in some cities are always good, while in other cities they are always bad. Taxis in some countries aren't regulated well enough, making them unsafe, but then in others they are regulated and safe.

"The taxi industry" is (mostly) just a fiction that Uber enthusiasts make up. It certainly is when it comes to taxi service reputations, which vary locally.

Holy shit - I just read this entire thread. The taxis services in Boston "have an average-to-good reputation"? What planet are you living on? Yeah, most of the time it can be OK, but the fact that everyone who regularly takes cabs in Boston has some horror story, shows you just how bad the situation is (or was, rather, thanks to Uber).

By your own admission, you live(d) in Cambridge, which is not Boston! Completely different cab companies, rules, medallions, etc. I can't say shit about it up there. But in Boston, where I've lived for over a decade, it totally sucks! You are out of you god damn mind! Stop talking about things you don't know! As your mass amount of down votes show, you are talking out of your ass, so don't even bother.

As we say in Boston, get the fuck outta here with that shit, kid! Taxis are the WORST

> But some things you absolutely cannot say, at least about taxis in the Boston area, are that they are anything but clean, safe, reliable, punctual, and able to take your credit card.

Safe, sure, to the best of my knowledge. Clean? Nuh-uh. Punctual? Nuh-uh. Able to take my credit card? Maybe 50% of the time. "It's broken," and suddenly it's not broken when I shrug and get out of the car.

And with one exception (a dedicated airport service), every dispatcher I ever dealt with was at best a prick. The only time I use taxis now is departing Logan, where I have no choice because they banned Ubers.

If these are your experiences, then your experiences seem to be very different than the average case, especially the 50% non-functioning card reader experience.

While I'm sorry that you have had such bad experiences, since your experiences differ so much from what is common, I don't feel people should base their expectations on what you say.

Instead, you can be nearly certain that it will be a clean, modern taxi, with a functioning card reader, that arrives on time and doesn't require a long wait.

To be fair to Uber, you still can expect taxis to cost more and you still have to watch out for drivers who spot a sucker and take you the long way for a larger fare.

Taxis aren't perfect. But taxis also are not rusted out death traps of lateness with serial killers for drivers and credit card readers that make you sexually barren, as apparently the army of Uber social engineering commenters wants us to believe.

What everyone is telling you is that your experience is not the "average case"...

Ha. This was an odd thread to read, the averages just aren't averaging out.

Try living in Cape Town. Before Uber arrived here taxi drivers were straight up extortionists. I mean that in the literal sense. I used to have to pay anywhere for R100 to R150 minimum. Uber now averages about R50 - R60, and the experience is a pleasant one.

So with my other side of the world experiences in mind I can see how something similar might happen elsewhere, such as Boston.

My comments were only meant to apply to Boston. I fully agree that there can be some locations with consistently bad taxi service. Boston isn't such a place (nor are most cities in the US), but others could be.

No that's what knee-jerk Uber defenders are writing who refuse to grant taxis any credit for being good, useful services.

These responses aren't reporting average case experiences with level headed analysis.

They are just one-sidedly saying everything is bad about taxis, including "corruption" even, and how thankful they are Uber "disrupted" them, etc.

It all reads very much like paid social engineering by Uber. I'm sure that's not it, and they are just strong fans defending a company they like.

But the fact that it's all written just like social engineering spam us a good indication that it's not describing realistic, average-case experiences of most taxi users.

I'm not a fan--I use them because the alternatives are terrible. I use Uber, and I use Lyft, and I use Fasten the most (because they're still trying to establish market share and so the deals are great). But I use them primarily because Boston taxis are straight garbage that cannot be trusted to get you where you want to go on time and without hassles, and they want a price premium for the experience. This isn't the case in many other cities I've gone to (aside from the price premium part, which is universal in America), but it is in Boston.

But we're the "social engineering commenters" because we're rolling eyes at the idea that dealing with cabs is pleasant. We're shills. I don't think I've ever said this here, but: good grief, dude, get a grip, reality is slipping you.

Boston taxis have always done a good job in getting my friends, family, coworkers, and myself where we needed to go, on time, and without issue or hassle.

> But we're the "social engineering commenters" because we're rolling eyes at the idea that dealing with cabs is pleasant.

Yes! Rolling one's eyes at a plain and simple fact, like the simple fact that most taxi experiences are just normal, uneventful rides inside of cars, is derivative from Uber's attempts to social engineer against the culture of using taxis. I don't see why that would merit such a sardonic and rude reply from you.

I can't imagine why you're getting a sardonic and rude response. Maybe it's because insulting, silly, ad hominem nonsense that you're throwing at me?

Most taxi experiences I've had are strictly worse than the equivalent in any of the ride-sharing systems available in Boston. Strictly worse. They're more expensive, the supply is more variable, the drivers are at best a push, and events that cannot happen in Uber/Lyft/Fasten, the fucking around with credit cards and the end-around routes to pump the meter, can't happen. And you know what? I wish this weren't the case, because Uber is a bad company run by bad people. I'd rather use a cab because I don't want to give Uber money. But cabs are that much worse.

But that's "social engineering" commenting, sure, that's meriting backhanded accusations of shilling (and don't dissemble, that is exactly what you are doing even when you try to fig-leaf it). You want to talk shills while you're caping for the cab company? Look inward, brofessor, but it might hurt a little when you do.

I'm really at a loss as to seeing any reply to you that I've made that is insulting, silly, or ad hominem. In re-reading them all, I don't see that.

The claims made in the thread were that something like 80% of taxis in Boston have defective card readers, and that literally only a single taxi used was clean (the rest were not of acceptable cleanliness).

These are ridiculous, exceptional claims that should be completely disregarded without evidence. When I said so, adding that my experience has been that taxis are just perfectly normal cars with functional parts, everyone tries to take my head off for it.

I even freely admitted many of the benefits to Uber you already pointed out.

Nowhere did I ever claim that taxis are better than Uber, nor that anyone should avoid Uber, nor that they should use taxis. I even stopped to reiterate that several times.

I only said that the outrageous, over-the-top degree to which people were describing the poor condition and service of taxis, in Boston, was flat out wrong and hyperbolic. That's all! Even if taxis are clean and have functioning card readers (they are and they do), someone may still feel Uber, or whatever other service, is a better value. That's 100% consistent with everything I've said in this thread.

Yet your response is basically a straw man setting it up as if I claimed that taxis were superior to other ride sharing services, or that my claims about taxis just being pretty normal cars with working parts is somehow a claim of their superiority over Uber? I really don't know why you're inferring that into what I am saying, but it's not related.

> I'm really at a loss as to seeing any reply to you that I've made that is insulting, silly, or ad hominem

I say this with kindness: then you don't understand that you're doing it. That's ok... but you are.

> that's what knee-jerk Uber defenders are writing who refuse to grant taxis any credit for being good, useful services.

No, you're missing the point: they understand that it's a useful service. They are just pointing out that the service they provide is now being done better with Uber/Lyft/etc.

> These responses aren't reporting average case experiences with level headed analysis.

They really are. Just because you don't agree doesn't make it not true. You're basically going "I'm not crazy! It's *everyone else that's wrong!"

> It all reads very much like paid social engineering by Uber.

"I'm not crazy! It's a conspiracy I tell you! They're all shills!". Not helping, especially with the half-hearted hedge afterwards that you then back away from instantly with the next line...

Taxis suck, globally.

Except they really don't and are a great service in tons of places.