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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why Uber can't get their shit together. In the US they have competition from Lyft and I can almost understand why they have to push the boundaries. In London they have very little competition and therefore don't need to engage is controversial business practices. Personally I don't see what my alternative will be if their service ceases, they have that little competition.

Although I am kind of annoyed at the decision it's understandable. I hope with Kalanick out Uber will quickly become a better corporate citizen and get this license renewed.

NB: I'm aware of black cabs, Hailo, etc. but none of these are as convenient or cost effective as Uber. I can see the night tube getting a lot more use but I know quite a few people who don't like to take it after having more than a few drinks for safety reasons.

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To be honest, few people here in London bother with taxis. Public transport is very good, can be faster than sitting in traffic, and is cheaper. Most folks ordering taxis either don't know where they are going, missed the last train or are wealthy enough to not care about the cost. Uber literally made no impact on the quality if life to your average Londoner and won't be missed.

This seems rather subjective?

Anecdotally, many of my friends and colleagues use Uber frequently, especially at night.

Anecdotally, my friends do as well.

I used to take public transport but at the end of a night out, a cab is a lot nicer so long as it's within my price comfort point.

A black cab isn't really in that comfort zone for me.

Pre-uber I'd take the night bus, as I'm not paying £50 or £60 for a black cab from town to my home. Post uber that same journey is now less than £25 and well worth paying for to avoid the occasional horrors on the night bus.

I could not disagree more - often times, especially if travelling with multiple people it is far more convenient, comfortable and can even be more affordable than taking public transport. While I agree that London has great public transport, Uber has been a game changer for myself and many people I know.

>"While I agree that London has great public transport"

This must be a different London from the one I was in ten years ago.

No, same London as it was ten years ago. You just have no idea what you are talking about.

Lived here all my life, no idea what you mean, it's always been great, and even when it was run-down it was still better than nearly all other cities at the time.

Thats the problem. You never experienced anywhere better. I mean they only recently got an underground that operates past midnight. Barcelona has had that for years, its way cheaper than London, and no one here seems to think it is anything special.

What about London public transport do you think isn't great? Compared to anywhere else in the country, it's leaps and bounds ahead.

Why limit comparisons to the same country? Britain claims to be one of the richest most developed nations in the world.

Well—aside from the fact that London's public transport was pretty good ten years ago—it's not the same, no. There have been substantial improvements in the past 10 years, including the expansion of the Overground service, new rolling stock all over the place, capacity improvements, some 24-hour running at weekends, clawback of TfL Rail, system-wide contactless card support, improved bus services, the imminent arrival of Crossrail…

So yes, it's different.

It was shit then. I experienced it.

>> Uber literally made no impact on the quality if life to your average Londoner and won't be missed.

As a Londoner I dispute that claim. It's made a huge difference for a lot of people. Until the night tube's arrival last year getting home from late nights out was expensive, difficult, or impossible. It's quite useful when moving flat - something younger Londoners tend to do quite a lot. I had to go somewhere with some heavy equipment last week and if it weren't for Uber I would have spent a fortune on taxi's. When I was ill for several months which prevented me taking the tube I used Uber to get to/from work. It was expensive but affordable. Taxi's would have been too expensive and I would have been screwed.

Finally - I received half a dozen messages from friends within minutes of the news being announced. Looks like it will be missed.

When you say Taxi are you specifically referring to Black Cabs? Pre-booked radio Cabs are reasonably priced, perfect for moving (it's what people used before Uber and still use today) and for regular scheduled trips like going to work.

For late night trips, Uber was very handy for that short window of time before the night tube. It still has some use when you can fill the car and get the per-person price down but unless it's very late you'll just sit in traffic.

In conclusion, life will go on.

I read what many Londoners say about Uber like they never heard about Addison Lee cabs, which existed years before, offer a nice app, professional drivers and fixed tariffs. Last time I checked, tariffs were about 20% higher than Uber. But depending on congestion, could end up cheaper. Most of my friends were praising Uber, but I was warning them that their prices are unsustainable and slightly higher easy-to-hail cab services with apps have been for years on the market largely unnoticed by hipsters ;-)

AL charge a fortune for airport runs last I checked. Central London to LHR via uber-x is 30 quid or so.

But there are fast and frequent train services that cost less than that, so it doesn't make a huge difference whether or not Uber is an option for that route.

All of which are completely unsuited to use with luggage, and/or require you to first get to Paddington station.

So get the AL to Paddington then get on the Heathrow Express. The Heathrow Express has never been very crowded in my experience, and has at least as much room for luggage as a cab does.

I always thought AL required pre-booking. Can I get a car to my door/where ever I'm standing in 3-5 minutes?

Sure you can. Nearest car is shown on the map and in my experience there was always something very close. Just choose "NOW" and it'll get booked. Besides, comparing pre-booking, it's done properly with AL, because it sends you a confirmation right away after driver accepts. With Uber the system would simply "schedule" your booking for the time specified and then fire request up as usual. Which means you're at a mercy of nearby driver's acceptance. And you have a false expectations that the pre-booking is more timely assured.

Agree with the first part of your comment, as it relates to black cabs. Only wealthy or hapless Londoners use them. Otherwise they’re just a tourist attraction.

Strongly disagree with the latter part.

My impression was that Uber, through price and convenience, created significant demand for Private Hire travel in London where it didn’t previously exist.

> My impression was that Uber, through price and convenience, created significant demand for Private Hire travel in London where it didn’t previously exist.

That may or may not actually be positive.

Granted, although for consumers it’s rarely a bad thing to have more transport options.

Consider those who, in the absence of Uber, would rather drink drive home after a night out than pay the extortionate fares for a black cab.

I don’t mind a bit of extra traffic if a few more of those types are kept off the roads.

Is that really a problem in London, of all places? I've never been but it doesn't seem like driving to bars would even be a temptation.

I don’t think it’s necessarily something people plan, but it certainly happens, especially in the more car-centric outskirts.

Sure, if you live in Zone 2, or live near a tube station and are travelling radially.

If you live further out, getting home at night can be a multi-bus, multi-hour affair. And if you're not going in or out of zone 1, the odds of their being a convenient bus route is slim, and again, diminishes the further out you get.

Public transport isn't great - often cramped and with delays. It's expensive - if anything involves bus then tube then for two people Uber Pool is often cheaper. Uber is often faster, and it's widely used and supports a massive amount of employment.

Most people don't order taxis much daily true, but they do widely order Ubers because there's a massive price difference. And on nights out, taxis are often used because until recently we had no night tubes and now we only have a few lines and only on weekends.

I don't want to flame but this post is so wrong it makes me wonder if you're living in a different London.

uberX from East London to Heathrow is £45-60.

The equivalent adult single fair is £5.10 or £3.10 offpeak.

> this post is so wrong it makes me wonder if you're living in a different London.

My thoughts exactly

Yeah if you cherry pick a long journey that's possible to do in one go on the tube you can obviously find situations where public transport is cheaper. Most of the time it is. But there also exist journeys for which Uber is faster and cheaper, especially with two or more people, and especially at night.

Or journeys where Uber is marginally more expensive but people are willing to pay £1 for convenience.

I'm not sure what we're arguing about, the fact that it's 40k drivers and the everybody's phones just received several messages about it proves that there's demand.

Did you read the comment you replied to?

It specifically says that people who miss the last train get cabs. So yeah, you've not really disputed anything they said. You like to get Uber? That's nice for you. I just use my local minicab company as they're almost as cheap and way more reliable. The price difference is only massive if you're silly enough to ask a black cab to take you 20 miles. Otherwise it's not really that much, nevermind "massive".

Also, if you're spending lots on public transport, just get a damn travel card. Transport's only expensive for tourists buying each on every journey. Londoners know how to keep their costs down, which makes me wonder if you're a tourist or business traveller who doesn't actually live here.

I live here, on a pretty much average London income, from zones 1 to 3 and have for ten years. I cycle so I don't have a travel card. The general point of the post above was that London doesn't want/need Uber, which just isn't true. The point about us having a great public transport system also isn't true, Londoners infamously hate the tube. It didn't get to support 40k drivers from novelty value.

Basically I _am_ your average Londoner, by income etc, and Uber has made my life better. And it's not because I'm rich or stupid. The post I replied to was just too heavily biased against Uber to see the obvious utility for a lot of Londoners.

There's MyTaxi, Gett and Addison Lee has an app. I used to use Hailo before it became MyTaxi. It's certainly not as cost-effective but what I did like were the flat-rate rides you could get. They weren't black cabs, but more like Uber Luxes or Uber Execs and probably 20% cheaper than black cabs.

With Uber gone, I'm sure the market would provide something else.

And Kabbee which just unifies all car hires.

In London Uber was the cheapest for short drives < 15-20 min for pretty much everything beyond that the reverse bid system or Kabbee provided cheaper fares.

Thanks, I hadn't heard of that firm.

Looks like I might be needing it.

Correct me if I'm wrong here: MyTaxi and Gett are solely for black cabs? This makes them a lot more expensive than private hire. Their UX is also slightly behind Uber's offering.

Addison Lee are also overpriced, and are not a company I'm willing to support due to their director's comments about cyclists and public transport.

One service you haven't mentioned here is Green Tomato, which have a tolerable app, but seem to have so few cars on the road that the wait time for a car is often a lot higher than Uber. Potentially this could be an opportunity for them if Uber truly do disappear from London.

Addison Lee also tend to seemingly employ many drivers who drive as if they're doing their best to kill you, themselves, and any cyclists or unwary pedestrians around them. Worse still, this activity is actively encouraged by Addison Lee's own corporate policy

I don't know about now but Hailo (now MyTaxi) certainly used to do regular cars as well as black cabs. You could book them ahead of time and they were quite a good service.

In the early days they were a lot better than Uber, which was quite unreliable in London at the time. At the time I was working late on a startup and I could be there after the last tube had gone so I just expensed a cab home.

> Correct me if I'm wrong here: MyTaxi and Gett are solely for black cabs? This makes them a lot more expensive than private hire. Their UX is also slightly behind Uber's offering.

Gett IME charges less than the normal metered rates.

> none of these are as convenient or cost effective as Uber.

I disagree, and let me tell you why:

https://i.imgur.com/JITqdiP.png

I have blocked out the location of my home and the identity of my "driver", but this guy shouldn't be driving, let alone driving a passenger. I'm never riding Uber again.

> I can see the night tube getting a lot more use but I know quite a few people who don't like to take it after having more than a few drinks for safety reasons.

If you're too drunk to ride the drunk train/bus, there are cheap hotels all over London. Getting in a stranger's car who might not know how to drive (as I've noted), or worse (see below), is a terrible idea.

* http://nypost.com/2017/08/18/uber-driver-accused-of-raping-w...

* http://q13fox.com/2017/09/21/woman-accuses-uber-driver-of-ra...

* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4815554/Uber-driver-...

* https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4251165/uber-driver-caught-bra...

I am not 100% sure what I am looking at in that pic...

Does it show that he took a massive detour (presumably to extract more money from you)?

That's how I read it.

The guy took the wrong exit twice. It's less likely to be malicious than accidental. Uber will refund you your money but you lose the time. Either way, hardly an argument to get a hotel.

This has happened to me before. I wrote to Uber's support and they recalculated the correct route and refunded me the difference. Did you try that?

This sort of thing happens with black cabs outside airports from time to time but with Uber you at least have some sort of way of getting your money back.

Me too. Literally a one line complaint and a refund in a few hours.

And here too. And the Uber driver was actually carved up by a truck trying to get off the motorway and had to drive past the junction.

Try getting money out of a black cab.

I filed my complaint with Uber support while I was standing in line at airport security, and I had a refund before I got through the metal detector. It's also worth emphasizing that the rider only even knows about these shenanigans when there's a GPS map of the ride; if a normal taxi takes a circuitous route when it's dark or you're in an unfamiliar area, you just never find out.

Exactly that. Try to get a refund if a black cab rips you off. No chance for that.

But to be fair, this works for all app based cabs. If uber is replaced by some competitor, there's no reason for people to miss uber.

> I wrote to Uber's support and they recalculated the correct route and refunded me the difference. Did you try that?

Yes. I pressed the contact button and had to type in a great deal. I never saw any refund, but I don't care about the money: I want my time back, and the best I can do is simply not give Uber any more of my time.

> This sort of thing happens with black cabs outside airports from time to time

Addison Lee has been extremely reliable, and since it's fixed-fee the driver is motivated to get you home quickly.

1. Your example of a bad trip is extreme. It's clearly awful but out of probably close to 100 trips I've had one where the driver took a bad route (he ignored GPS and got stuck in rush hour traffic in a tunnel). I contacted Uber who gave me a full immediate refund.

>> there are cheap hotels all over London

2. I could get from Brixton to Mile End for £20 (£5 when split between passengers). Find me a hotel for that price.

Finally - my point was that Uber was the only cheap and convenient option. You have not provided an equal alternative. My point was never that Uber should keep their license. I agree with you there are huge issues and hopefully this will spur them to solve them.

Edit: Although the first issue you point out is not your fault in anyway I'm curious whether you were asleep or not during that trip? That's a massive detour in the wrong direction twice. You and the driver both have a map showing your current location and destination. It seems like an easy mistake to quickly notice and correct.

> I'm curious whether you were asleep or not during that trip?

No. I was not asleep.

> That's a massive detour in the wrong direction twice. You and the driver both have a map showing your current location and destination. It seems like an easy mistake to quickly notice and correct

And yet somehow he missed the A312/M4, he missed the A40, took his time turning around passing two exits and then took the A40 in the wrong (west) direction. Unbelievable in the evening with no traffic. Should have cost £20ish pounds.

I had to point out each of these, and I couldn't understand his english. He might have been too tired to drive, or he might have been incompetent. I don't really care, but I'm not getting in an Uber again.

I agree that's a terrible experience. But you could get a refund with 30 seconds effort in my experience (a lot easier than if this happened with a normal taxi as you have GPS to prove what happened). It also seems like an extreme outlier experience.

> If you're too drunk to ride the drunk train/bus, there are cheap hotels all over London

That may be but getting any at 11pm+ is impossible. I have tried a few times after missing my last train home... Always end up calling a friend to sleep on their couch or more likely office meeting room sofa...

I've had very good luck getting them in City: Most I've spent is something like £70 since they're not getting any better offer that late in the day.

Did you contact Uber about that trip? Their business ethics seem to be generally shitty, sure, but they should be very quick to refund especially in such a clear case.

Uber don't make contacting them easy, and even if I got one: A refund doesn't cut it. My time is valuable to me. If I wanted to take an hour to get home I would've taken the tube.

> If you're too drunk to ride the drunk train/bus, there are cheap hotels all over London.

Is this serious? You think that booking a hotel in London is a better choice than just getting a taxi home?

Where does the cost saving vs black cabs come from? Is it from drivers working for less mostly (I have seen example calculations that claim that)?

Then the fundamental innovation of Uber is not to make things more efficient but to eliminate labor laws, workers safe guards and unions.

In my books, your convenience is not really a good argument for getting rid of those.

I think you've missed my point. I agree with Uber losing their license. They need to be a better corporate citizen. I think they can do that and still offer a lot of benefits.

Unions aren't a good way to set prices. Wages in each industry shouldn't be set by how hard it is to unionize them and how well they capture regulators to ban competition. We need to find a better way.

Noone in London sheds a tear for black cab drivers, Uber just exposed the extent of their price fixing racket.

The innovation in making it much much faster and easier to hail a cab.

Last time I was in the UK I tried Gett, and at least for the few rides I used it for it worked perfectly fine. Even at 2am.

What's Lyft like here in London? I just downloaded it, much use?

AFAIK it isn't available in London.[1]

[1] https://www.lyft.com/cities

It's not available in the UK at all.

Lyft is US only

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