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Comment by kuzehanka | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with Uber costing the same as a regular taxi. Riding in a taxi is a garbage experience compared to uber. Drivers making excuses not to take you after learning your destination, rude drivers, drivers who have no clue how to navigate, drivers who pretend the card machine is broken, or try to take you on winding routes to increase the fare.

Despite all the supposed downsides of ridesharing, it continues to be immensely more popular than the traditional taxi service even as the price gap closes. Because the traditional taxi service is a garbage rent seeking incumbent that needs to die for the good of all.

I catch cabs or ridesharing on a daily basis for work, and cabs are just fucking awful compared to ridesharing.

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It really depends on where you are. My favorite comparison (because I experienced both) is Germany vs South Africa.

In Germany, the cabs belong to the company and drivers are employees (not going in debt for medallions like in the US). The cars are usually in good shape Mercedes and the system is 2-tiered: Taxis and Funkmietwagen (callable cabs). Taxis are allowed to use taxi only roads, can wait for walk-by passengers, are more expensive and pay higher licensing fees. Both can't just tell you "No" without very good reason.

Funkmietwagen have to follow normal car rules, can only be called in advance, usually have slightly cheaper cars, but are cheaper.

Uber tried disregarding the laws in Germany, was told "No" and now is only active in some very few cities and only with their higher end service, operating as normal Funkmietwagen.

The only thing they accomplished was improving the app situation.

In South Africa, it's very different. Taxis cost 3-5 times what you pay for an Uber, are often old, shoddy cars and certainly like to decide not to pick someone up (which I think is technically illegal).

Uber is thriving and mostly seems like a safer and better solution there.

> Riding in a taxi is a garbage experience compared to uber. Drivers making excuses not to take you after learning your destination, rude drivers, drivers who have no clue how to navigate, drivers who pretend the card machine is broken, or try to take you on winding routes to increase the fare.

This may be true in some places, but where there is taxi competition this isn't true. You wouldn't ride with that taxi company again, and just pick another one (Where Uber might just be the other one as it's just another taxi company). I think it's a bad idea to try to argue whether Uber has a global market niche without looking at global circumstances. This varies in cities across the globe. The experiences in say London, Stockholm and Los Angeles are very different.

I'm in Bangkok right now and they have Grab. The Grab price is over-priced by 10-30% compared to what a metered taxi will cost.

But I'll take Grab anyway. The taxi experience is really garbage. It doesn't help that there is a language issue too.

I don't have to relinquish all my identity and GPS location to ride a Taxi though.

I always use fake data for services like Uber.

How do you use fake payment data?

Via Paypal. So unless Paypal sells them my real data, I'm covered. I do the same with mytaxi which is quite popular in Europe.

This. Cabs that are not part of Uber, they just wont agree to take you. I still dont know these drivers rationale behind denying the ride. I understand its their prerogative to refuse a ride, but they do it so often which makes me wonder, how are they making money by refusing rides again and again.

In my country, a taxi driver is legally required to drive you to your destination unless it exceeds reasonable distances (around 50km, which far above what anyone would use a taxi for here). Drivers with broken cashier machines or taxameters aren't allowed to take passengers, especially a broken taxameter might mean that passenger will pay a very much reduced fare. Most of them have GPS, and if they don't they can be liable for excess distance travelled.

Most taxi services here have excellent apps themselves and are cheaper than what Uber offered while they were allowed to operate (they are not just a glorified taxi service since non-taxi drivers aren't allowed on their service).

In my country, the driver is also legally required to drive you to your destination. It doesn't stop them from making random excuses like 'oh sorry my gps is broken'. That is an actual excuse I got from not one but two cab drivers in a row when travelling between offices in the city.

But such violations result in sanctions against the medallion holder via a transparent process.

For example (last time I was there, and I doubt that it has changed much), if you get in a cab at JFK, he had to take you anywhere in Manhattan / Queens / Brooklyn / Bronx, regardless of time of day, likelihood of a return fare, disabilities, etc. Otherwise, the medallion faced sanctions.

A rideshare can simply decline.

Yeah, some countries had decent taxi services already; but many others do not, even in the EU, and you can build a quite profitable business just on those.

had this happen to me using ride-sharing. needed to be picked up at sfo. guy who was going to be my driver learned i wanted to go back in the city and he told me it was late and he was looking for down the peninsula. i just said fine since no point in driving with a dude who'd get mad at picking me up.

another time it was early in the morning and i needed to go to oakland airport and there were very few drivers available. the one who was suppose to pick me up took 20 minutes to get over there, and when he kept missing my intersection for some reason he just dropped the ride. i complained to the company and they didn't do shit. (think this one was lyft though).

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