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Comment by mjr00 | Hacker News Reader

> Similarly, Uber was absolutely loved by customers when trips were only costing a fraction of what Uber paid for them, aka: VC were effectively paying for a portion of your trip.

As a regular though infrequent user of Uber, in the last place in North America where Uber was legalized (Vancouver CA), the lower prices were probably 10% of why people liked Uber. 90% of it was that it was simply light years ahead of the competing experience of: calling a cab, waiting for them to show, except they don't show, so you walk around downtown at 2am trying to find a cab with a light on...

Yeah, surge pricing sucks and the prices have gone up and all that, but even if Uber were more expensive than cabs -- and it very well may be at this point -- I'm still more than willing to pay extra just to be able to order a ride home from my app, and actually see that it's coming and not ghosting me.

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Not sure how widespread this is, but I took taxis in my city recently for work and I was surprised at how much it's gotten better on the UX side (for scheduling):

- When I called, a robot answered and prompted me for my current/origin address (the voice-to-text seemed to work very well)

- It sent me a text message with a link to a live GPS map & time estimate

Still, there are some inconveniences which is why I still prefer Uber for personal travel:

- Even if Uber is more expensive, at least I know the cost upfront, vs. only knowing at the end of the taxi ride

- I get a rough time estimate for the closest Uber before I order one

- No need to handle payment/tipping with the driver, which is the worst because IME taxi drivers always try to make you feel bad about whatever amount you end up tipping them. At least with Uber, I can tip exactly what I feel is 'right' without the awkwardness or over-spending.

- Some taxi drivers are still opposed to using a GPS for directions (??), so when I need to get somewhere that's not a peak tourist attraction, I have to guide them myself.

From Vancouver , the yellow cab app has actually improved quite a bit, Uber is so expensive nowadays it’s insane

Yeah fair enough, there's more competition now. Still, pre-Uber things were just dire. The BC government was extremely openly corrupt and gave the taxi industry a headstart and tens of millions of dollars to make the Kater app, and it was still completely unusable (and now shut down). Before we got Lyft/Uber you were stuck either using extremely unreliable Yellow Cab dispatch, or using the shady probably-illegal Mandarin-only app that I forget the name of.

Car services existed (that were not cabs), as did other ride-sharing services that didn't have VC money to burn.

Yes, and I became a user of Uber (ubercab in those days) because I preferred being able to book a ride just-in-time using the app rather than well in advance on the telephone, not because it was much cheaper than the car service or the taxis (as I recall, Uber and the car service cost about the same in those days, which was slightly more expensive the taxis for much more reliability and a better UX).

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