Uber’s Credit Card Is Bankrupting Restaurants | Hacker News Reader

Uber’s Credit Card Is Bankrupting Restaurants

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15 pointsjasonrhaas22 comments

Seems like a horrible submarine article. "Oh look! Uber did $Thing! Get in on it now or miss out like a loser!"

Like, honestly? This is it? Uber, the "behemoth" who failed to crush the taxi industry as promised, is now somehow going to "disrupt" not just the restaurant industry, but also the credit game? Let's not forget that they actually need to start making money. Are VCs going to subsidize peoples' credit purchases now, too? Why not have them subsidize my housing as well? Why stop at ride sharing and food?! Uber all the things, right? Shame that Uber forgets that it is not and never will be Amazon.

Gonna file this one under "total horseshit"

It's UBER savings! Get your life subsidized by VC money! Get it before it's gone!

I mean, if we can't extract money from people who are richer than God via taxation, I guess I support extracting it via their idiotic investments.

I don't know what planet you're living on where Uber is somehow out of the game and not completely destroying the demand for taxis.

I come from the planet where Uber is currently:

- Hemorrhaging cash like a hemophiliac taking blood thinners

- Embroiled in various legal battles

- Losing labor market share to Lyft

- Losing customer market share to Lyft

- Failing to push legislation to eliminate taxi medallion systems

You know, the planet where they've lost their Keanu Reeves (TK) along with billions of dollars. The planet where I and many others do not use Uber in favor of a Lyft or taxi. The planet where Uber created a failing business model and tried to put lipstick on the pig by evading laws and throwing cash at the dumpster fire. The one where they subsidize every single ride with VC cash while they hold out hope for Level 5 autonomous vehicles to replace their substandard workforce on a more-than-optimistic time frame. The planet where Uber is a black hole of delusional "manifest destiny" style Silicon Valley kool-aid.

Taxis aren't dead. They'll be around well after these fools are parted with their money.

I don't really think I'm going to convince you that maybe Uber is doing what they've planned on doing all along and in the grand scheme of things seem like they're doing it pretty well. It sort of seems like you have some stake against Uber to be so vehemently against it. Just because Uber doesn't have a 100% market share doesn't mean they're doing poorly.

I have no stake for or against Uber in any manner. I just call spades what they are.

> I don't really think I'm going to convince you that maybe Uber is doing what they've planned on doing all along

Conversely, I don't understand how you can argue I'm unconvinceable despite not providing anything to really be convinced by except vague allusions to some sort of secret plan that's working perfectly.

Color me extremely skeptical of this. Uber can't seem to get taxis right and now they're going to dominate an entirely separate business with established competitors? And the evidence for this is that they launched a credit card when they could have just bought the transaction data from some data provider and tried to de-anonymize it instead like other tech companies do. Something isn't adding up.

Content:

>Uber won’t be able to single-handedly kill the restaurant industry

Title:

>Uber's Credit Card is Bankrupting restaurants and it's all your fault

I am confused.

Bankrupting some restaurants != killing the restaurant industry.

Creating "ghost restaurants" != Bankrupting some restaurants

This article is mostly fluff and contradictions (and credit card advertising). However, it does alert to the predatory information collecting / hoarding and value of that information to the restaurant industry, however speculatively those alerts are

This part is also important:

"Uber publicly denied that they would receive an individual’s spending habits from the Uber card."

The article is pure speculation about Uber's aspirations with a lot of links to credit cards.

The word "bankrupt" is only present in the title :-\

Article headlines are almost never chosen by the writer. I assume a editor decided to punch it up with some clickbait.

I own a food service business - this entire article is a bunch of conjecture and on-its-face nonsense . The only space that Uber is even going to be able to potentially dominate is that of delivery food, which is already a deeply entrenched industry with a ton of local and national and international competition, and unlike the taxi industry there's not much in the way of pricing that can be knocked down. Places that specialize in delivery already have minimal storefronts and not much in the way of wait-staff. So while these phantom kitchens with strict delivery may cause a few smaller joints with poor advertising and middling food quality to go under, those businesses were likely not going to last all that long anyway. Even with Uber's driver network and the power of Data™, I don't foresee Bill's Speedy Chippy going under due to Uber undercutting them anytime soon when it's got an established customer base.

On top of all of this, Uber still loses money with its ride-sharing, so what makes people think that they're ever going to make a lasting dent in delivery food? The only actual information they're able to garner from a card is how much people are spending, where, and at what time. That's got its use, but it's not exactly revolutionary never-before-seen information.

There sure are lots of links to credit cards in this “article”...

This. Affiliate marketing payout for credit card signups is pretty significant.

So the whole article is about a future where Uber might be able to do the bankrupting but the title is about how it is doing it right now?

A classic clickbait.

Middle of the article:

>Edit: Uber publicly denied that they would receive an individual’s spending habits from the Uber card. However, that doesn’t discount their previous attempts to acquire this data and don’t prevent them from acquiring this data in the future from the card or other avenues.

Undermines the entire first part of the article...but don't let that discount it

Does anyone think this credit card could just be an ad for UberEATS?

> "Dining, including UberEATS"

I bet that subconscious thought could increase spending enough to pay for any given rewards.

Most everything in this article seems like a huge reach. I'm sure Uber wants to keep options open given the rough waters right now, but I doubt any of this is a real plan at this point.

How are they obtaining information about what dish you ate from a single row in a database that details the tax, tip and total? That, along with the restaurant name, is the ONLY information transmitted to the card company.

and it's all your fault

Thanks for the consumer bashing clickbait

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