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Comment by _the_inflator | Hacker News Reader

Uber USA != Uber Germany.

Taxi business here is quite different.

I'm skeptical. I've only briefly visited Germany, but my very first experience upon arriving was being scammed by a taxi.

In what sense? Not choosing the shortest path for example?

Oh, had that happen in Canada! Drive was supposed to take 10 minutes, 12 minutes in it doesn't look like we're close, "where are we going?", "Oh, didn't you say you wanted the scenic route?" Of course I never said that, ride ended up almost triple what it should have been :/

The taxi that picked me up at the Munich train station didn't start the meter. When we arrived at the hotel, the driver demanded a fee which seemed quite high for the short distance we travelled.

I don't speak German and had been in Germany for only a few hours at that point, so I didn't know for certain that I was being scammed. In fact, I still don't. As far as I gather, taxis are supposed to use their meters to calculate the cost of the trip, but perhaps there are exceptions I am unaware of.

There's a lot of things I find questionable about Uber and its business practices, but the fact that they tell you the price up front is definitely a positive contribution.

Reminds me of the time when I was in Leipzig in late 2018 (at CCC) and I tried to sign up for CleverShuttle. Turns out they had a bug where they could not register using an American number. The app just silently fails and I was left stranded late at night. I tried to use their support line to get help...turns out its an email address and they responded to my inquiry with generic steps to try again....two days later. Luckily a friend was kind enough to give me a ride home. I don't know how Germany manages to write such a garbage app but its their prerogative to chose a lower standard of service compared to the US. I always dread some things about visiting friends in Europe and the quality of service is always one of those things.

We easily claim the opposite for other companies (Apple, Facebook, Google) and other countries (mostly Asian fabrication centers). Why do we have such a strong belief that Uber USA != Uber Germany?

(Edit: I'm Croatian and fairly well aware of how taxis work in Europe)

Taxi in Europe is hugely dependent on country. Take Sweden, anyone can start a taxi company as long as you have a capital reserve of €5000 per vehicle, some requirements on equipment and insurance and a taxi drivers license for anyone who is driving, nothing hard to get. There haven't been anything similar to medallion systems and what not since it was deregulated in 1990.

Uber Pop got kicked out in a couple of months with Uber having to pay the social security costs of the employees. Now it's just an aggregator of Taxi companies, same with Bolt. The possible margin is minuscule since the drivers change apps depending on which pays the best. Often having both open.

For the companies themselves it's an extremely cutthroat business. From what I have heard the only chance to make any money is to own about 50 cars and have all maintenance in house. Otherwise it's just a fools attempt at being independent.

Taxi services in Germany pre-Uber weren't perfect but they weren't the disfunctional rackets you see in the States. Uber "succeded" in Europe by undercutting existing farily decent service providers with subsidised fares. Those subsidise seem to have dissapeared and at least in London Uber is now in my experience no cheaper and significantly less reliable that the older firms which have survived.

I didn’t ride in cabs that much (US) but I never had the dysfunctional racket experiences described in this thread. They didn’t show up once, but that has happened with Uber too.

edit: And Uber charged me a fee to cancel the no-show ride and I had to call and argue with them to take the charge off.

I suspect taxi regulation is strong on every developed country and different.

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