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Comment by shostack | Hacker News Reader

"credit card machine is broken."

Things I don't ever have to hear or put up with ever again #623.

Definitely agree.

Nowadays I have Uber drivers sit around the corner refusing to show up and calling me to tell me I should cancel so that I have to pay the $5 fine. Sure I can contact support to get that $5 back but it has happened to me so many times there really should be a button for it. It’s hard for me to believe Uber is not aware of this behavior.

I don't know about US but in India the process to review cancellation fee doesn't require interacting with support but rather a two click process to state the reason for cancellation. Works quite well and the only time they don't refund is when you do it too often in a short span of time.

Which goes t to show the mass amount of this happening in India. Ilived there in 2017, drivers didn't understand what Pool was and let everyone out at the first stop.

That's very common in Prague. Uber in Prague is a disaster. About 5% of my rides are probably ending up with having to pay a cancellation fee for a driver who never showed up. Contacting support to resolve this is pain indeed. Most of the Uber rides in Prague are owned by limited liability companies (s r.o.). I guess there's some kind of an alliance between Uber and those local companies.

Another 5-10% or so of my Uber orders in Prague involve driver coming my way then cancelling after 5-10 minutes in the middle, then another driver picking up, and so on. You could be on a 3rd or 4th driver sometimes. Initially I thought this had something to do with traffic jams, but I am now beginning to doubt this, as it happened in mild traffic and off-peak hours as well. It is impossible to trust if Uber will arrive in 10 minutes, 20 minutes or not at all. An Uber ride to the airport is a lottery sometimes.

Finally, arrival times are usually understated. It can be 7 minutes on display but 15 minutes in reality. And this is mostly in Kosire area, about 15 minutes from the center. Whoever is reading this in Uber should really look into their Prague situation.

That being said, I am using Uber extensively in London as well and never have these issues. I also used it in California and never had issues. Uber in Prague is something else, my friends.

Exactly the same experience in Warsaw.

There is some hidden benefit for Uber drivers in creating barriers for the passengers. Also, the platform does not allow downvotes until you get on the car.

Try Uber in Stambul. The driver will send a message asking where are you going and ask for double the Uber fare or will cancel the order. They don't care about their ratings.

Uber in California and Russia (it's actually Yandex.Taxi for quite some time here) works great.

Unfortunately it seems to be getting more like this in London, the cancellations are much more frequent and the fares have skyrocketed in recent years. I guess one positive regardless is that it has forced traditional taxis to modernise, previously their card machines were always “out of order” etc. and many can now be booked via similar apps.

The drivers have definitely learned how to game the system in some cases. I was once at LAX airport and the local drivers had somehow figured out how to create a surge fare that only kicked in after you matched with a driver. The app would offer you the higher price and if you turned it down you’d find that there were no cars available. If you canceled and tried again the lower fare would once again show.

This is now common here in Perth, Western Australia. The drivers appear to have figured out that cancelling repeatedly, if they all do it, can create a 'surge' where there was none before.

Interesting. That algorithm problem should be short-lived, I hope.

Same in Croatia. In Croatia this is due to Ubers being also regular cabs.

I am not sure that is the case, but I know most of them use both Uber and Bolt (a competing app).

The solution to this is Square, not Uber.

The taxi drivers have Square. They just choose not to use it to avoid the processing fee. Also, cash payers are more likely to round up for a tip.

Then again, the solution to this is not necessarily Uber, but a regulation forcing taxi drivers to provide credit card payment. As far as I remember, these systems allow a default "do you want to tip" option (but I see what you mean, people probably tend to tip more with cash than with credit cards).

Most cities in the US have that regulation. The drivers trivially circumvent that regulation by saying the machine is broken.

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