Taxi companies provided a horrible customer experience, routinely discriminated, and often defrauded their customers. I know because I suffered from it long before Uber ever existed.

I'm not trying to excuse Uber but taxi companies in some places also routinely broke the law by refusing to travel to certain areas, pick up some minority passengers, or accept credit cards. In theory they were accountable to local taxi commissions but in practice that was totally ineffective in forcing drivers to obey the law.

And, in addition, in many places taxi companies became a cartel: remember the TLC medallion madness where some crooks were reaping the cream of the crop.

It sounds like you've never been stranded late at night waiting hours for a cab that was "5 minutes away." I don't participate in the bar scene anymore. I don't benefit from the increased user experience of knowing exactly where your cab is, and if they cancel. Legal or not, I sure am glad those jackasses got their comeuppance.

It still perplexes me that people believe that Uber needed to convince anyone about Taxi mafia. The taxis in US are amazingly backwards -- for example, there were no online tracking, no pre-defined fares, and no online ordering.

I remember having to use "car services" just because the taxis were so unpleasant.

It actually wasn't Uber + Lyft (or their class better UXs) that convinced me. It was a taxi cab driver turned Uber + Lyft driver who looked at me incredulously when I asked him if Uber/Lyft was worth it.

"You bet ya!", he said, "I'm on vacation!" he said. He went on to talk about how the taxi cab industry was a dirty industry and uber/lyft reformed it.

Meanwhile one of my journalist friends declaims the "tyranny" of Uber/Lyft. It's not hyperbole its simply inaccurate.

> No, they weren't. Taxi companies operated legally. Uber routinely broke the law.

No, they didn't. At least, not in most US cities - I don't know how the laws work abroad. All a taxi medallion does is allow you to accept rides from people that hail you from the street. That's it. Limo companies and vans that you scheduled beforehand did not need medallions. There's functionally not much different from the service Uber provides and existing charter services, except for the fact that Uber used technology to make scheduling rides much faster.

The "Taxi Mafia" very much existed, though calling it a cartel is probably more accurate. Governments deliberately constrained the supply of taxis through medallions. Naturally, this resulted in inflated prices and poor service due to lack of competition. There's a reason why many people have little sympathy for the taxi industry's struggles to compete with ride sharing: taxis sucked.

From my experience, the credit card machine is always broken.

You carry no cash?

Even in the USA, that wasn’t true, let alone outside of the states. Taxi drivers don’t make back their investment (car/medallion rental) often, much more than an Uber driver who can use their own car and need no medallion at all. And...career as a taxi driver? There is a reason driving a cab is on the low wrung of new immigrant jobs, you can barely survive on it.

I guess they did have insurance (again, at least in the states), but so do Uber drivers.