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Comment by alexey-salmin | Hacker News Reader

> People like to complain about Uber, but my pre-Uber experience with taxi services was far worse

Did you live in a small city back then?

I’ve used plenty of small-town taxi services, yes.

If you’re only remembering the gold standard small-town service that did everything perfectly, you’re looking back with rose colored glasses. The typical experience back then was not good.

Well I'm pretty confident in my memories because it wasn't too long ago. The thing fell apart only around 2016 with the rise of apps and the inflection point was a complete misery hard to forget: drivers taking your order and not moving, drivers calling you to ask about the destination point and then refusing to go there, drivers telling you that you should've put the destination point into comments, driver asking you to cancel the order and pay them in cash etc.

However the apps were able to price-dump for around three years until all small players died, then hiked the prices back again.

I'm not saying anything about the "typical experience back then" however I do know that in right circumstances (high demand, cheap supply, no lock-in) competition between independent small companies can have remarkable results.

Did you report these drivers to the app owner? Did they do anything?

Not OP, but I've reported many drivers to the app owner with zero [0] results.

[0] Not quite zero. I always got an immediate computer-generated email telling me I'm important and that my complaint is of utmost importance. Drivers never had repercussions from the companies though; every once in awhile if I had concrete evidence of running over a pedestrian's foot or something I could get law enforcement to care, but the companies DGAF.

They apologized and gave promocodes, subsidizing the service even further. They were well aware of the problem.

Things normalized a few years later. I think the biggest lesson was that clients were willing to endure a lot of hardship for a 50% discount.

I think this varied greatly between different places. In my own country&city, Uber came in as a premium-ish option initially (regular taxis were already dirt cheap), with nicer cars and excellent service. Of course over time things normalized back down to the same sorts of cars and the same drivers, but the first few years it was beautiful, not a race to the bottom.

Still, even today (and with Uber mostly having lost the market to Bolt), the average ride is much, much better than the average taxi ride ever was (and I was a regular user of both). The cars are still cleaner, and it's virtually unheard of to have drivers try to overcharge or otherwise scam you - which were both regular occurrences with taxis.

I live in SF and my pre Uber experience was about as nonexistent as the cabs and the people at the cab company who were supposed to answer the phone.

Fwiw I used to live in small towns until I graduated college and the taxis in Pennsylvania sucked no matter where I was

Now Uber/Lyft aren't great, but it's still way better seeing the driver on the map when they're running late than having literally no idea and having to call dispatch who themselves will begrudgingly call the driver who will just give a bs status anyway

What about living in a small town now? Uber does not operate in most small towns. Small town (and big town) traditional taxi services still suck massively. I would pay a premium to use uber/lyft over traditional taxis.

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