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Here in Greece, we recently lost Uber. We're back to taxis. It's incredible how bad an experience those are after going back to them.

Cars that smell like cigarette (that's if the driver isn't outright smoking in your face), don't have AC, are old, dirty and with uncomfortable ripped-up seats.

Send your lower-quality drivers my way. I miss not wanting to vomit whenever I take a cab.

I was just in Thessaloniki and got to the airport in the middle of the taxi strike -- leaving lots of us with no other option but the public bus, which was actually not so bad, but next time I'll book a private car in advance.

On my way back I used the Beat app. It's got a slightly wonky UI and the street names are in Greek, which I'm too ignorant to read, but for getting from the apartment to the airport it was great. Taxi was clean, driver was polite, fare was reasonable.

I don't doubt there are bad taxis, just want to point out there are good ones too.

What about Beat? I heard it works different than Uber, you can actually choose your driver based on your desired characteristics (e.g. speaks English, has A/C, ...).

Beat is pretty much the best of both worlds for me. It doesn't have Uber's "let's flaunt all the laws because disruption" attitude, but it still has all the advantages, and every single driver I've booked with Beat has been fantastic. I'm never getting a taxi without using Beat these days.

Hm. I'll try it out... Thanks for the recommendation.

No problem, you'll love it. The best is that you can pay via credit card so you don't need to fuss with change at the end of the trip, you just get out of the taxi and that's it.

well, as a weekend uber driver that drives only when prices go up I have to tell you that those 7-8 dollar trips pay us only 3 dollars and some change. Driving 7-10 minutes to pick you up and then drive for 7-10 minutes to your destination is not worth it because that comes to $10 per hour minus gas and maintenance and depreciation. Drivers have to pay for lease/finance, maintenance, insurance and still pay rent on the apt and put food on the table. Expect the quality of service to go down, not up, if you you think $15 is too much for a trip to the mall.

That's a reasonable stance, but consider:

1. If the rider isn't sensitive about when they leave home, then they can happily wait until a driver who happens to have dropped someone off nearby is willing to take them for $7, because they don't need to drive more than 1 minute for the pickup.

2. Lease/finance, insurance, rent and food don't go up with the number of rides or distance. If a driver has the option to take someone right now, without driving far to pick them up, vs. waiting for a higher rate, then in some cases they'd maximise marginal profit by taking the 'low rate' ride.

  they can happily wait until a driver who happens to have dropped someone off nearby is willing to take them for $7

... But you can't know whether that will mean a 4-minute wait, or 40 minutes ... or forever.

Right, but in the situation described (going to the mall on the weekend), OP is willing to wait, and willing to walk if nothing available.

(Of course if Uber were to introduce some 'limit price' feature, there would have to be some time-out/expiry (set by the system or by the rider). It doesn't make sense for a driver to pick up a rider days, weeks or months after the request was made.)

That's why I always tip $5 on short trips.

Stop with this already. You are basically sending a letter to Uber, saying "hey, I think it's ok for you to pay drivers like crap, because I'm absolutely willing to subsidize them instead! Thanks!"

Uber doesn't really set prices. Supply and demand does.

By that logic, no one sets prices for anything - Coca-Cola doesn't set a price of a can of coke, the law of supply and demand does.

That's correct. Supply and demand does set the price of coke.

Sucks to be you.

$5 is much less to me than an uber driver.

I've got the same experience in Lisbon. When Uber showed up drivers were great, they could follow directions, they always asked about the radio and the AC, they never complained about the pick-up/drop-off places and didn't have inappropriate conversation, they spoke perfect Portuguese and/or English.

4 years later, we have drivers that can't follow basic directions, that don't speak either English or Portuguese, that leave the turn-by-turn voice on, default to the terrible EDM stations (they used to default to neutral, low-key radio stations) and worst of all, drive very dangerously.

As a cyclist, I cringe every time I see an Uber or Lyft sticker on a car now. These are amateur drivers doing a job that should require at least some professional training, and it shows: blocking bike lanes (and often traffic lanes too!), failing to look for cyclists when merging back into traffic (or turning right, etc.), not signalling turns half the time...

I've narrowly missed getting side-swiped more times than I can count, to the point where I'm seriously considering mounting a handlebar cam just to capture license plates.

So: if you're a Lyft or Uber driver, please please please please learn your obligations with respect to cyclists / pedestrians and associated infrastructure. (For instance: did you know that many jurisdictions have a mandatory minimum passing distance (usually 3ft / 1m), or that cyclists have "take the lane" rights in California? [1]) Otherwise, you shouldn't be on the road, and you definitely shouldn't be driving other people around for money.

[1] http://www.calbike.org/bicycling_in_california_sharing_the_r...

> blocking bike lanes (and often traffic lanes too!), failing to look for cyclists when merging back into traffic (or turning right, etc.), not signalling turns half the time...

As a fellow cyclist, I don't think you've described any qualities that are specific to uber or lyft drivers, you've effectively described about 90% of the drivers on the road.

Sadly, professional taxi drivers are often no better

Isn’t that what uber black car is? Pay for better service?

Depending on where you are, that is not an option unfortunately. It is odd, some days uber black is an option, some days we can only choose between uber x and the black suv option.

Customers should pay a premium for the driver to not park a block and a half from them at pickup?

If you're in a suburb that should never happen. If you are in the NYC area for example, the GPS just really struggles between all the buildings.

What's more frustrating is when you are on the other side of a busy street, you wave to the driver or even call them to let them know you're on the other side of the street, and they just sit there...

Why use GPS, just walk to an intersection so you know where you are, and set the needle there.

If driver comes on the other side of street, maybe cross the street.

A tiny bit of effort goes a long way...

At least in the pastUber didn't use the needle GPS coordinates, it picked the nearest street address from the pin. Fun times were had, when trying to get a pick-up from an outdoor event.

I broke my foot a year ago and spent three months on crutches. For a lot of that period, crossing the street or walking down the block was a meaningfully difficult task for me.

Whenever I called a rideshare, I very explicitly set the needle to exactly where I was. It's amazing how frequently I'd have a driver park across the street and a block away, and get angry when I didn't come to them.

Have had MAJOR issues with this internationally (specifically Hong Kong). Wait time fluctuated by 15 minutes at times! Almost caused us to miss our flight.

> If you are in the NYC area for example, the GPS just really struggles between all the buildings.

What phone are you using?

In a decade of living in Manhattan, I've never had any issue like this. The location services on my phone (Pixel 2 XL) and every Android phone I've ever used have been spot on.

Google and Apple do some tricks based on WiFi to fix GPS in dense urban areas. Raw gps is basically unusable in these areas.

Since you have to set a pickup pin explicitly, how does GPS matter at all, here?

Drivers sometimes go to where the live GPS signal tells them you are instead of the pin. Likewise the pin is sometimes required to be in dumb spots (like the airport) even when there's a much more convenient spot 100 feet down the street.

In my experience, the location I choose is often lost in translation between my Uber app and the driver's maps app. Sometimes the difference is egregious.

Uber is nuts for letting drivers use their own maps app.

Yeah no.

The Uber native maps app is almost invariably incorrect, at least here in Brooklyn. It does insane stuff like trying to put you on the BQE (interstate) to go like 800 yards or route you from Brooklyn to Brooklyn by transiting Manhattan and two bridges.

Until they figure out how to fix that they pretty much need to let drivers flip over to Waze or something.

Don't forget the best route for Uber is not necessarily the shortest or quickest.

I was careful not to say "third-party" maps app. They may have been making excuses for their own mistakes, but drivers have told me that sometimes the built-in Uber maps also get the wrong location.

I have no idea if that's true and have always been confused about whether the driver app even has maps built into it.

I had that problem a lot in South Africa. We'd set a pickup spot exactly where we want it, drivers told me the uber app shows them the last location I was at instead.

> Google and Apple do some tricks based on WiFi to fix GPS in dense urban areas. Raw gps is basically unusable in these areas.

Location Services doesn't just use raw GPS, no, but that's what most drivers (and passengers) are using.

In any case, for several years, I only used the device GPS (instead of the full location services), and I never had any issues like what OP is describing.

Uber has also put quite some effort into better location on Android:

https://eng.uber.com/rethinking-gps/

I don't think too many Uber drivers are running their gigs on GlobalSats dangling from Arduinos. They tend to have phones.

iPhones, model hasn't mattered. Flat Iron + GPS = location lottery for me anytime of the day.

> iPhones, model hasn't mattered. Flat Iron + GPS = location lottery for me anytime of the day.

That's unfortunate. As I said, every Android phone I had has been spot on everywhere in the city.

Same with me for my iPhone after a decade in the city (iPhone didn’t even have gps when I first got here). Wonder why they’re having such a problem?

For the first time in 11 years I'm thinking of switching off T-Mobile after relocating to Chicago. Much of my day is spent in the loop and despite their best claims buildings are a bane.

Can anyone recommend a carrier with better QOS here or is this just inherent to my new life in a giant city? I'll get over it and adapt, just keeping my options open.

The GP was referring to a problem with GPS, not their cellular connection. In any case, I haven't noticed any issues with T-mobile in San Francisco, so maybe T-mobile has some weaknesses unique to the Chicago area.

I'm fully aware but in the context of GPS reception on cellular devices--prompting me to ask what I thought was a tangential question. Apologies that this was such a severe faux pas to end up downvoted into the negatives.

Last time in Chi-town (2016) I had the best signal of the bunch with my TMO (others mostly on ATT/VZ).

Of course, over-subscription is a thing, so maybe things degraded?

Verizon, unfortunately. Though a lot of the issue isn't signal but bandwidth. There are just too many people. You'll have five bars and nothing will load. That's what caused me to leave T-Mobile.

In Chicago, ATT is one of the better ones. It works reliably in the loop as well. Just read the fine print carefully for those extra charges.

I have had the opposite anecdotal experience. Things have stayed the same or gotten better.

Where are located out of curiosity?

Mostly Toronto, plus some Santa Barbara lately.

Nice. I don't recall having a bad experience with ride sharing in Toronto :)

This has always been the Uber experience for me in the UK - drivers who cannot speak English, and when the road is closed for repairs(which google maps doesn't know about, because it seems incredibly poor in this country) they have no idea where to go and now suddenly it's up to you to tell them where to go. I've had maybe 1-2 good competent and friendly Uber drivers, but whenever possible I go with any local taxi company instead.

I've had the opposite. Lots of professional Uber drivers in London. They all pretty much use Waze and not Google Maps, which usually knows about road closures.

Once I had an Uber driver get me from manhattan to Williamsburg with no GPS and I was SHOCKED.

Probably a former cab driver...

I’ll settle for waiting 5 min extra for a driver that doesn’t have to stop for gas.

Do they stop the fare when this happens, and/or do you get out and end the ride?

No and no.

If the airport in question is Newark, I wouldn't make any assumptions about the driver. Circling around EWR and missing your exit is pretty easy to do in that airport. It's pretty confusing.

Maybe but if this is someone who drives people around for money I would expect more than some confused country mouse driving.

I have the reverse service expectations.

I want absolutely cheap but non-shared point-to-point rides.

Beyond some very minimal, basic safety and competency as a driver, I stop caring and just want it to be as cheap as possible.

If I could indicate that I’ll happily be paired with a low rating driver if it is cheaper, I would.

And it sounds like adding this functionality could satisfy both of our use cases too!

That mindset has made flying in the US the experience it is today.

You mean, something that even lower middle class people can afford?

Your comment rings sanctimonious to me.

While I agree that major airlines should do better in some areas, they are also just responding to consumer demand.

Should the people who cannot afford higher fares just exist in a lower caste where flying is not achievable? Those people for whom lower fares are the priority, you feel they just shouldn’t be able to attend a family member’s funeral or college graduation?

That is how things are in my extended family in the US. A spare couple hundred dollars for even a routine round-trip fair between major cities is still a very difficult stretch for them.

If grumpy people who can easily afford the flights are annoyed by the lack of frills and the cheapness, yet people who are less well off can possibly afford more flights, that seems like a positive overall for society to me.

The problem is that it's often hard to cleanly separate the cheap vs. comfortable use cases. It works reasonably well for intercity buses in the US which people mostly take because it's the lowest cost option and people with more money mostly don't take.

Unfortunately in the airline industry we've tended toward an overall race to the bottom which explicitly budget airlines and different classes of service only help to a limited degree to separate out people with different preferences.

I’m not sure I agree. With flights, wealthy people would just charter a private flight or travel on a luxury or boutique airline, apart from the traditional option of first-class.

What it sounds like you are saying is that there is a group of middle class or upper middle class people who won’t choose to spend the amounts required for the luxury option (the equivalent of not taking the bus), and yet feel grumpy that the slightly higher prices they would prefer to pay end up pricing almost all flights out of the market for other middle class or lower middle class travelers.

“Cleanly separate the cheap vs comfortable use cases” seems simple: airline economics just implies that the prices for the comfortable (“not taking the bus”) option are staggeringly high, and that so many customers strongly prefer the cheap (“just treat the airplane like it’s the subway”) option, that airlines must structure the offerings around that fact.

I don't wholly disagree with you. It's partly that the true service upgrades for flying--even if you just talk commercial--are priced at a completely different level from economy even though they maybe cost about 2x more per passenger.

That said, if you have Pre-check, airline status, airline club membership, maybe pay a bit more, etc. in practice you get a bit more legroom, early boarding, (usually) fairly fast security, etc. So, in that sense, there is a mild upgrade option relative to barebones cheapest tickets. (Depending on the airline.)

I would argue that your desired use case is a closer reality as it just requires adding a new option with lower score or similar. Increasing the quality is not as simple.