You didn't have to argue, interact with a surveillance company, interact with customer service etc. All you needed to do is pick up the phone and get a luxury ride without tracking or surveillance.
Not to speak of many countries where taxis are outright scammers and getting into one is taking a real danger.
Was it? In many EU countries a lot of taxi drivers act like scammers: take you the long way around, they don't issue you receipt by default because they do tax fraud or steal from their employer, you can't pay by card because suddenly the card machine "doesn't work" so they drive you to an ATM, then you pay cash and they try to keep the change, they don't speak English or even the local language, they don't know the local streets or landmarks you're referring to because they're not from there, etc. All that is super annoying. Multiply it if you're a tourist or on a business trip or job interview.
Ride sharing fixed all that since you just punched in the destination in the app (in your own language) and got the price upfront and shielded you from the antics of scammy drivers and the friction of getting to your destination. That's why ride sharing apps were so successful initially.
It wasn't about the price, it was about the friction or lack thereof.
>you got Mercedes by default for a traditional, regulated taxi in many EU countries
Mostly IIRC Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm and some other rich countries, definitely not EU wide.
The rest are like the poster above me described. In Romania, the taxi drivers tried to strike in the capital when Uber showed up and everybody basically laughed at them.
Except that it took forever. I had no idea when anyone would show up. The driver was annoyed and drove like an insane person. The few times I've actually feared for my life have been on highways with taxi drivers. It was incredibly expensive.
Oh, and half the time they ripped you off.
Yup. And there was no tracking. So if that person wanted to say, drive an insane route? Enjoy. Take a detour. Done. Or dump your body in the woods. You were totally at their mercy.
The taxi system was horrible. The pinnacle of protectionism carving out its niche of crap.
Uber might not be 100% perfect but it has been a real blessing, a salvation of all the misery that we had to endure in the 'functioning' taxi market.
You wait too long to get picked up by a smelly dirty old car and then they pull stuff like pretending the card reader is broken to get you to stop at an ATM so they can avoid taxes.
The worst experiences were in SF. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these companies started there. Of course SF is uniquely dysfunctional in many ways.
I’ve read many comments online over the years to the effect that people would pay more for Uber and Lyft to destroy the taxi industry.
What’s wrong with the taxi industry is that it’s a cartel, especially in major cities, and everyone knows when you have a monopoly or a cartel everything starts to suck.