Uber to pay $272M to Australian taxi operators
smh.com.au
smh.com.au
I still remember when I first just arrived in Sydney, I took a taxi from the airport to Waterloo and was charged $95, which made me fearful of Sydney prices. It took me time to realise that I had just run into a scam and that the ride should have cost just $20+. Nowadays I would never take taxi. That's why "they lost income when Uber entered".
Even travelling through Europe I’ve been refused a ride because it was too short, and got overcharged by 2-3x once. I’d use Uber at this point even if it’s more expensive than a taxi.
Wouldn't you just respond "Sorry, no cash!" and walk away? It's literally true for me - I rarely have more than $10 cash on hand, because I never need it.
There really are no “legitimate taxicab companies” in Toronto.
You have dispatching companies and companies that rent out cars with branding to drivers, but they’re all independent contractors.
In theory a dispatching/car providing company could boot a contractor off of its system, but it’s a fine line for them where they’ve taken fewer risks on this than Uber, because they absolutely do not want to be considered employers.
Even if you haven’t encountered the “card not working, cash only”, I’m surprised you never encountered the “right too short”/“don’t want to go there” refusal.
I’ll stand for a half hour in the rain before I take another Toronto cab.
Since Uber, granted, they’ve massively improved. But take it away and, of course, the incentive structure guarantees one outcome.
Instead I get Uber drivers who refuse to come to my pickup spot and drive around in circles hoping I’ll cancel the trip first so they can still get paid something.
They played by the rules where Uber's well-known modus operandi in many countries was to skirt the rules or downright ignore them, while using billions of dollars of investor money to undercut the market.
I'm glad they exist to shake up the taxi market, and the rules changes were probably overdue. But I'm also glad uber got fined, because they behaved like pirates here and in many other countries. And I'm glad they didn't succeed in putting everyone else out of business, which seemed to be the play.
I have no sympathy at all for the taxi cartels - only their victims.
Actually, in CNS, the most common problem was cancelations with Uber. Of maybe a dozen or more Uber trips I took in 4 days there, only one or two didn't have any cancelations. Usually it required one or even more cancelations before a driver would actually "commit".
"Their lobby stopped any competition or reform, and they exploited the most vulnerable." applies to both Uber and cab cartels.
$90 is too much but $20 is just right?
Why?
I'm Irish, and on my last trip to Dublin, I ended up with a €70 taxi. The driver wouldn't take card, so he drove around until we found an ATM, by which time the meter was €75. I paid him the €70 and he left me at the ATM, without a receipt for me to claim reimbursement.
I have absolutely no sympathy for this nonsense.
For future visitors to Ireland, note that this has been illegal since last year. The taxis are required to accept card. If this does happen to you, ask what their number is and say you'll call ComReg and this problem will almost certainly disappear.
Someone finds a way around this malfeasance.
"Hey you gotta pay us for lost income, we spent a lot on those taxi medallions!"
Somebody can probably do 5-6 rides a day at $50 a ride for a $100,000 tag. That's pretty believable for an average over a year. Even $200,000 might be. I have difficultly believing they're all making money needing 30 rides at ~$50 every day all year long for a $500,000 tag.
> value of his three taxi licence plates – worth about $500,000 each.
Keep in mind, they are able to lease the badge out, so you can have your cab running 24/7.
They were at that price because of artificial scarcity. They created a tidy income stream for the governments who sold them, who found by limiting supply the prices when auction rose spectacularly. The net result was not enough taxi's to fill natural demand, while taxi drivers paid to delivery an artificially limited service were paid stuff all. This wasn't unique to Sydney - the model was repeated all over the world; they just copied it.
It created the perfect environment for Uber to step into. Because it was copied everywhere it was a huge, worldwide market. To exploit it Uber had to knowingly break the law, and lie about it. You can see that reflected in Uber's highly criticised internal culture at the time. The governments and taxi drivers fought Uber tooth and nail. Where I live taxi inspectors booking rides with Uber, and fining the drivers for not having a licence. Uber responded with technology, using their apps to track their phones and modify what they saw. The inspectors saw no Uber drivers around. It was open warfare for a while, technology vs the law. Technology won in that case. Uber's "it's all about me, whatever it takes to win" culture was probably a necessary part of that victory. Now the war has been won I see Uber is changing it's culture.
Here in Australia, the taxi licence owners watched the value of their licences evaporate overnight under Ubers assault. When it became evident the huge debts they took on to finance the licences meant they had no hope of competing against Uber commercially, they sued the government over the inflated prices they were forced to pay. The government responded to the law suit by saying no one forced them, they were sold at auction. The courts largely sided with the governments, perhaps because they have near infinite legal resources and the taxi's were broke. Some governments later did hand some "sorry" payments to the taxi drivers, but there were more token amounts.
So the real reason for the enormous pain the taxi's have had to endure (I'm sure it cause financial ruin and suicides) is taxi's licenses were effectively a very poorly implemented tax. When a business discovered how to use new technology to exploit the opportunity created by that tax, it wasn't the drafters of the law who suffered, it was the taxi's. They have my sincere sympathy.
The original point of the comment was that $500,000 seemed difficult to believe. You at least provide a thorough, if rather Machiavellian explanation.
Not sure if I agree on the sympathy, mostly because they probably had $AUS in their eyes initially, seeing the prices other people complain about. However, too far away in America, with too much American shadowbanning filter on all news, to have any relevant view on the issue.
Edit: I should probably add that I don't avoid uber completely, still use it when travelling, esp. if I'm somewhere without a taxi rank. But I prefer a cab from the airport. It's genuinely less hassle.
Also I'd also use the transit system for the following days in the city, so have to learn about it anyways. (Not that there's really anything to learn)
It’s not pleasant in cities with great transit like Tokyo or Seoul, and it’s downright miserable in most of the cities being discussed here in this thread.
I don't know the situation in Sydney, but where I usually travel, it's the unlicensed taxis that overcharge and scam people, i.e., not the real taxis.
Licensed taxi companies charge standard fares.
Also, a booking isn't. It's like that Seinfeld skit. A booking is just an agreement to put your job out at the agreed time. Doesn't mean anyone has to take it. I live too close to the airport for anyone to want to take it, apparently.
What, $95, do t you mean $9.50? (The last time I paid around that amount for taxi fares was from Disneyland to Bel Air along the longest 'carpark' in the world, and from Tokyo to Narita International Airport.)
I've taken taxis from Mascot Airport to my place in the same direction along Botany Rd but further (about double the distance to Waterloo) for at least one third that price. Were you parked in a traffic jam for hours?
I'll grant you the taxi business was already in a bloody shambles before Uber and has needed reform for many years but I've never experienced charges that high.
The root of the problem is that governments have learned to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes a half million or more for taxi plates. Such huge amounts put taxi owners in a very difficult financial bind, they can be on the verge of bankruptcy for years paying for them, and or they hang onto them with grim determination fearing they could never afford or obtain another set. Moreover, increasing the number of plates available devalues them—little wonder taxi owners object strongly at any such move.
Thus, it's long been just about impossible to reverse the maddening situation.
Uber and its competitors have their own problems, but they're still way better, and they've forced positive change onto taxis as well with 13CABS (the largest company) now offering an Uber clone app with fixed fares, tracking, etc.
I believe they are the #1 reason why foreigner tourists are scared of coming to India. The amount of scam and harrasment done by these old taxi drivers is just another level. The luxury and straightforwardness of app taxis is unparalleled to what we used to have before.
You could be possibly sexually assaulted, trafficked, or other things.
That said I've personally witnessed things "nearly" happen, and heard some harrowing tales besides, to / from lone women travelers in a number of countries throughout Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
The world is not a safe place for women.
As an aside, Singapore seems to be one of the outliers here. We saw a woman exercising at about midnight one night coming from the airport. Taxi driver told us it wasn't unusual, ostensibly thanks to capital punishment. No way you'd feel comfortable doing that in Australia.
Over here in Western Australia they are generally better than Uber. You know what sets the traditional operators apart from Uber in Perth?
They show up
That simple. You book a cab, you get a cab, more or less when you want it. You request an Uber and someone might come. They might not. They might accept the ride and then drive in circles for 15 minutes to try to make you cancel (it's not 100% clear what this does, but it's either just cancellation fee farming or to try to trigger a surge).
Uber's been pretty fucked over here for a while.
Uber went south in Cairns in exactly the same way about when Didi and the others came out.
Call a cab and it turns up. Reliability is everything.
Newcastle (north of Sydney) Uber is near unusable. Cancellations etc. as others have detailed here. Taxis are a bit slow but they do at least pick you up.
Sydney - great.
Brisbane - great.
Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, taxis always added an exciting extra frisson to any airport trip or evening date. Would they turn up at all? Would they turn up, honk their horn, and drive away if you didn't run out the door in under a minute? Were you going to be left stranded at the end of the night with a constantly engaged taxi call line? Leaving you to resort to calling friends and family to pick you up?
Perth taxis were some of the most expensive and hardest to book in all of my experiences around Australia, pretty much right up to the late 2010s, which unsurprisingly was a few years after Uber's entrance into the market.
If taxis are a better service than Uber now, that's great. We probably want to keep that competitive pressure to keep the bastards honest.
You have forgotten to mention the cab operators sending complaints, e.g. about overcharging, to /dev/null. There is no feedback loop with the company, either, e.g. being able to report a bad cabbie.
The taxi industry has outlived itself and has to go now.
Uber, for all its faults, is the classic example of "disruption". Now great taxi experiences are the new normal
You can generally sue for illegal behavior that causes you losses.
So it became less of driving a taxi and more about financial investment. People bought dozens of licences and leased them out.
It no longer became about driving taxis and was more an investment.
As soon as Uber came, those who invested heavily were left holding a useless (or heavily reduced) investment.
Homelessness? Check. Drunk driving fatalities? Check. Domestic violence? Check. Abusive monopolies on single-person transportation? Check.
It's an interesting argument because having the app connect customers means they don't have to drive around aimlessly, which almost sidesteps the problem (they still have to pull over somewhere but aren't necessarily causing traffic).
Also you do not want to give out so many medallions that owners cannot possibly make a living. Now transferability outside selling whole business is stupid.
> Also you do not want to give out so many medallions that owners cannot possibly make a living
Do you really think that some government agency can come up with the correct price and license cap using Excel magic? Of course not, most likely this will just lead to corruption and an inferior service.
Let the free market find the price. If it's not possible to make a living people won't drive. Where I live taxis usually charge whatever Uber is showing.
[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/gq9jzm/queenslands-taxi-driv...
[1]: https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/uber-uses-hor...
That protectionism hasn't stepped up properly the past ten years only shows that maybe governments found they would benefit from letting the taxis get slapped around a bit. There will probably be more stories like this in the future as Uber has become entrenched and now will be pressured to get more proper.
They're only just now thinking up maybe potentially one day working towards regulating them. https://www.9news.com.au/national/rogue-taxi-drivers-could-b...
An unjust situation created by the government. Uber didnt pass the unjust laws protecting cabcharges monopoly.
The law said you need a license to provide taxi services. Uber and its drivers didn't have that license. So the lawsuit is for the damages caused by Uber's illegal behaviour.
Uber operates primarily as a taxi service with an app
Ride sharing is a non-core feature called UberPool, which lets users share Uber taxis with other users.
If you don't want to lump them in with taxis, they're a car service with contract workers. That's all they are.
I regularly see people say they’ll call a cab and then use Uber/Lyft.
Ride sharing generally means carpooling/picking up hitchhikers etc. Where the driver is going on the route anyway and is adding passengers for HOV access, gas money, or just conversation. https://rideshare.org/
Uber’s initial intention was carpooling where someone would put in their intended destination and could pick people up for money. However the business model clearly switched to a taxi model with a paid driver not staying at the destination. They still wanted to call it ride sharing because what they where doing was often blatantly illegal
PS: Their initial subsidized prices convinced many people to advocate for an exception which was often granted. That’s the bit that’s rarely talked about, they essentially bribed the general public.
Historically incorrect. Uber started out as a black car service (with California tpc licenses). Lyft started as a pivot of the carpooling app zimride named after the founder.
> Their initial subsidized prices convinced many people to advocate for an exception which was often granted
That's not really what moved the needle. What moved the needle on exceptions was the sharp drop in drunk driving incidents and fatality.
Ahh ok.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/11101...
> Initially, the idea was for a timeshare limo service that could be ordered via an app. After the conference, the men went their separate ways. However, when Camp returned to San Francisco, he continued to be fixated on the idea and bought the domain name UberCab.com.
This entire debate and court case is between Taxi's and Uber, because they're competing by providing essentially the same thing.
The passenger clearly doesn't care if the person driving them from A to B is using a company vehicle vs their own vehicle. Ride sharing is a silly name, as you're not really sharing the ride if the driver isn't going to the same place are they.
You don't have LGBT people paying cops because they committed buggery before it was legalised.
Appealing to unjust laws for your argument is the weakest play in the book.
Uber didnt cause any damage, decades of taxi monopoly caused damage. Uber corrected the injustice.
A $95 UberX ride home is about $109 in a taxi for me.
Talking to a few friends who also live a similar distant from the CBD/downtown find that Taxi's are the better / more reliable option these days too.
The taxi is pretty much always newer, with a professional driver who usually isn't almost falling asleep behind the wheel. The quality of the driving is typically significantly higher. It feels like a safer ride.
Of the recent UberX's I have caught, the car was typically in need of a suspension replacement or significant servicing and around 6-7 years old or older.
Most recent taxi rides I have had a car around 12 months old or less.
Taxi's are better regulated and provide a better service. I'll happily pay the little premium there is in this market to use one over an Uber.
On a recent trip to NZ the uber to taxi price comparison was massively different.. Taxi was like 2.5x more expensive..
They still suck though, and ripoffs and even sexual assault remain legion.
We got to talking about ubers situation in the CBD. He told me he doesnt normally accept fares in the CBD because he gets pushed around by the police. As he was saying that, a motorcycle cop ordered him to pull over for an inspection. I thanked him and decided to walk the rest of the trip.
Anyway, now armed with the reason I couldn't get an uber reliably in the CBD I found that Uber into the CBD, taxi out of the CBD was the best way forward.
When I am on my own time in Sydney, I have an opal card and will train everywhere possible.
Maybe my experience is more a result of being closer to the city.
This was a pet hate of mine in Australia. Order an UberXL "Fits your group of 6 riders (or extra luggage) comfortably" and most of the time someone was showing up in a Honda CRV or Passport (which has 5 seats). We had five passengers plus some luggage at times.
And when you cancel because that "XL" option won't meet your needs then the app starts hitting you for repeated cancelations, despite the fact that all of these vehicles don't actually fit the description and capacity described.
He did not want that on his nice seat, and the trunk would not fit much either since he had his own stuff in there. Silly guy. He made us cancel, old trick, since that makes us pay not him. Support sorted it out.
You can hold that opinion, but as with most things it doesn't excuse you from the consequences of your actions.
Not to mention, every trip in NSW has a $1.32 fee to help compensate taxi drivers.
Taxi operators should have tried competing on merits like price and cracking down on dodgy drivers instead of suing. The last time I got a taxi it was $80 for a 10km trip that's $32 on Uber. If they weren't so terrible then Uber would have never had an in on the market in the first place.
> "Since 2018, Uber has made significant contributions into various state-level taxi compensation schemes, and with today's proposed settlement, we put these legacy issues firmly in our past," an Uber spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Just that regardless, the whole reason for the suit in the first place is just because a new company beat Taxi's at their game and the Taxi companies decided to complain rather than innovate.
In the grand scheme of things it seems like it worked out for them.
So the valid response to an unjust situation is to throw money at it and pray for change?
That our laws should be decided on who has the most money? Cabcharge V Uber?
Or that, the law being stupid and unjust, was ignored by Uber, to the benefit of millions of australians, who experienced cheaper fares, resulting in a massive push to get the law changed from the bottom up?
More do, than don’t. You won’t find many shedding tears for the bullshit grift that was most of the Australian taxi industry. Good riddance to it and the completely terrible laws that allowed their nonsense to continue unabated for as long as it did.
Even if Uber had "Uber" funding, using Uber is a far better experience than using our Taxi services. Paying for and knowing how much your ride is going to cost before hand, using an app to be able to hail an Uber and see in real time as they're coming.
Just the basics they never had
This payment compentsates those taxi licence holders who held the dip.
Just because the barrier to entry was a tradable government stamp is irrelevant. There shouldnt have been a barrier in the first place.
Uber, in a weird, stupid, modernity sucks way, brought justice to an industry that had been unjust for a very long time. Love them or hate them, cabcharge is worse.
>If a regular joe did that he would gaol.
Also bad. The government and taxi lobby should not have set up a situation where giving a ride for money could lead to incarceration. This doesnt support your point, it just further illustrates that the situation was unjust until uber acted.
If I had started an illegal gypsy taxi business I would have been fined or arrested. Why are there different rules for large corporations?
Shouldn't you be wondering why is it illegal for you to do the first thing rather than the last?
Why shouldn't you be able to start what you call a 'gypsy taxi business.' what's the need for arresting you? Is it that authoritarian of a nation?
those laws do not protect wages, uber was right to protest them.
You don't work if you are getting 0 rides because they're too expensive for end-user. What wages?
The whole system is crooked, even today.
I can accept an argument where it was not fit-for-purpose for a tech-era reinterpretation of how vetted drivers deliver this service. Despite that, I think you're probably reaching if you were to try to tell me that you don't understand why the prevailing legislation existed in order to ensure passengers were picked up by vetted, known drivers whose identities were known and who could face recourse if they scammed passengers (e.g. by driving them around in circles to inflate fares), held passengers hostage or worse.
> Why shouldn't you be able to start what you call a 'gypsy taxi business.' what's the need for arresting you? Is it that authoritarian of a nation?
Why do we bother licensing drivers then too? Are we that much of an authoritarian nation that we need to control who drives a car? Should Uber drivers be allowed to drive without a driver's license too?
It's strange that you'd bring this false equivalence.
>I can see why a government might want to license taxi drivers.
Applying for a taxi-driver license is a whole another different thing than just having taxi mafia run your entire taxi industry. Can the said uber drivers even apply for a taxi license?
>If I had started an illegal gypsy taxi business I would have been fined or arrested.
You shouldnt have been. Thats the point.
>Why are there different rules for large corporations?
The large corporation defeated cabcharge dominance for all of us. They get minor consideration for that.
Uber took us from a situation where a single large corporation had a complete monopoly, to a place where multiple large corporations compete, a place where you technically have the right to compete against them. They flattened the rules, they didn't create a new rule where only they get special consideration.
It's worth noting that the regulator also blocked a majority of Taxi providers from providing a single app (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-12/accc-blocks-launch-of...), I think uber should also be able to be regulated.
Law was unjust, they had a moral imperative to break it.
>Furthermore Uber's competitive advantages are fueled by incredibly dangerous financial practices.
And if Uber was seeking a monopoly this might be relevant, but they opened the market up for anyone, including those not doing scary financial practices.
>the new kid on the block typically isn't infused with tens of billions of VC.
Yes, so it should have been the case that the taxi monopolies were broken up decades ago. Not waiting around for VC capital to do it.
I disagree that they had a moral imperative to break it. But our laws must be quite bad because foreign companies seem to love breaking them while claiming the moral highground.
>And if Uber was seeking a monopoly this might be relevant, but they opened the market up for anyone, including those not doing scary financial practices.
Is there any successful rideshare company without similar financial practices? I admit I don't know much about any of them other than Uber. Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. I'm glad to hear that uber isn't seeking a monopoly.
>Yes, so it should have been the case that the taxi monopolies were broken up decades ago. Not waiting around for VC capital to do it.
Irrelevant to my point, but thanks for the take
Considering the low value proposition of the Uber app, I am relatively surprised that theres no strong open source competitor with a very modest sum going to maintain the app. Such a hypothetical competitor would now also be allowed after ubers entrance.
There was a great interview I watched recently on ABC. A gentleman was politely explaining why theres a shortage of produce in Australia at the moment. He explained how the government increased requirements on local farmers, but haven't set the same requirements on imports. So large aggregators set up shop in countries with cheaper wages, and less onerous laws, can the produce there and ship it into Australia while pocketing the difference.
The reporter conducting the interview was shocked, and immediately asked the standard question. "Should the government be seeking to impose penalties, or tariffs or some other kind of support"
The farmer shook his head. He said he didn't think it was an issue of penalties, or tariffs. He just wanted the government to put the industry back the way they found it. But the reporter literally didn't understand his line of thinking. And kept asking. 2 more times he answered. No. No new laws please, just let us compete on the same basis as NZ. The NZ produce is being eaten by aussies anyway. so there's no net difference. Just let his business continue.
So yeah I believe our laws are quite bad. For a variety of reasons. Mainly that the country is addicted to the idea of a great national project, and despite terrible results in these areas (National Energy Market (Debatable but I think it does a lot more harm than good), National Broadband Network, National Disability Insurance Scheme) governments of all stripes continue to smash anything that's right fit at a small scale to fit it into these dumb nasho boxes. I am just glad that the government of the day has forgotten about its pre election promise to disband all private fibre network providers and roll them into the NBN.
Either way, not sure how you can equate asking something of an employee and asking the same from a gig worker. Uber has broken the law in plenty of places, and have always tried to wing it.
the main problem is that it's unclear who pays when there is an accident.
Two preambles: Y'all need to read Invisible Hands, really need to. That book is about how various losely connected sometimes even competing groups of businessmen worked to roll the New Deal back. It's not a conspiracy theory, there was no shadow cabal behind the scenes -- but the goal was common. https://wwnorton.com/books/Invisible-Hands/
Second, Amazon was started to become a monopoly in retail and only begun with books because it was a relatively easy thing to work with.
Similarly, while Uber started with fancy cars soon enough it became a means to destroy the protections organized labor managed to get in the last hundred or so years. Or at least what remained of them. In this the company was exceptionally successful by creating what is called the "gig economy". As people hate taxis, using that market for this purpose was the easy way. If you think past the introduction of UberX in 2012 Uber had anything to do with transportation then, pardon the pun, you have been taken for a ride.