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Comment by resolutebat | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that Australian taxis are generally terrible. They're expensive and notorious for ripoffs, particularly from the airport: scenic routes, bogus surcharges, "broken" credit card machines (plus 5% surcharge when they do work), drivers refusing destinations (by law they're not allowed to), and to top it all off they're not even safe, with taxi drivers responsible for a long string of sexual assaults.

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.

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Same here in India. A lot of people hate Uber but speaking for me personally it's been a godsend upgrade over the black yellow taxis we had here before.

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.

I loved getting taxis in India for exactly these reasons, I used to get taken to random shops way out of the way of where I needed to go ... I'd just go along along with it, total adventure time! But I can see how it could grate after the novelty wore off. Or if you were maybe being a bit cautious as a traveller.

This can be really scary for women who are traveling.

You could be possibly sexually assaulted, trafficked, or other things.

You are 100% right. Though this problem isn't unique to India by any means. In fact you often hear of sexual assault cases re. taxis and ride share going through the courts in Australia.

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.

The funny thing is, 99% of taxi drivers in Australia are Indian. Makes a lot of sense and it’s the context you’re not allowed to say.

> It's worth noting that Australian taxis are generally terrible.

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.

It's weird how different cities in Australia have such different Uber experiences.

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.

You know that is a direct result from competition from rideshare alternatives, right?

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.

Huh, Cairns was so much the same. Watched that happen too. Most of the time we had to resort to enduring a cancelation or two before someone would show up. My parents ended up calling a taxi half the time.

You've nailed it.

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.

If you are on long contract with a cab company, for example if you are a corporation who regularly needs a cab to pick people up from Airport, the prices are almost 4x per trip as compared to Uber. Even at peak hours Uber is much better

You forgot dirty and smelly. Specially compared to any Uber. Living in Sydney, I have had few not so clean Ubers, here and there, but nothing compared to how bad taxis are.

> […] "broken" credit card machines (plus 5% surcharge when they do work), drivers refusing destinations (by law they're not allowed to) […]

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.

I've taken lots of taxis over the years and never experienced any of that. I do believe the stories of sexual assault though.

I honestly think people forget how bad taxis were in general before Uber. In many places people just didn't use them because they were considered unreliable, expensive, and dangerous. Taxi companies had a reputation of being scummy. Now a lot of taxi companies have decided to be better, and it's largely due to pressure from Uber

Uber, for all its faults, is the classic example of "disruption". Now great taxi experiences are the new normal

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