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Comment by leecarraher | Hacker News Reader

uber offers a better product than taxi services do. So if uber raised their rates to be comparable to a taxi services, i would still use uber because its a better experience. And because i learned that because they incentive it with overall lower rates.

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I would say the "better experience" argument is mostly true when you look at how payments are handled, but a taxi will pick you up and drop you off very much the same way as Uber does. A lot of cab companies have now implemented their own apps - so you can get a similar request-on-demand situation, only that you'll not be charged extra when demand goes up...

In the last city I lived pretty much all cab drivers were also Uber (black) drivers (or maybe it was the other way around). Regardless, pricing was very similar and often cheaper going with the regulated taxi rate.

>uber offers a better product than taxi services do.

Sometimes. I like not handling credit cards and cash. They're faster and more available in areas where taxi services are not great.

On the other hand, I had an Uber-X driver just today drive right past a clearly marked airport terminal entrance because his GPS didn't direct him there and "he hadn't been out to the airport in a while." It's unlikely that would happen with a cab.

Yes, but it's also not uncommon that cab drivers use their knowledge of the local streets in their advantage, which is a lot less likely when your average Uber driver relies on GPS navigation.

I particularly remember taking a cab in Las Vegas many years ago trying to get from one end of the strip to the other. I was an obvious tourist - so he took the "faster router" around the city - just to "realise" that the exit he was going to take was blocked due to construction work and he now had to do a huge detour.

That's fair. The GPS nav does tend to eliminate obviously scammy behavior which historically has been a significant issue with cabs. (Never personally had an issue in Vegas but have elsewhere.) But it also eliminates local knowledge optimization as well.

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