gravitas_deficiency ,

Tech bros also just reinvented trains recently, so this is pretty appropriate

shapis ,
@shapis@lemmy.ml avatar

Taxis made their bed by being pieces of shit for a long time. No one will have any sympathy for their plight.

Xero ,
@Xero@infosec.pub avatar

I will, I prefer taxis and never use the apps.

Melvin_Ferd ,

Now uber piece of shit, friendship over. Taxi new best friend

Ballistic_86 ,

Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

This reminds me of uber in several third world countries. Most drivers only take cash or direct epay because it bypasses uber's heavy service cut. Everyone benefits because the app lets you hail drivers, but they charge you a fair fee just like a taxi.

Fedizen ,

Techbro has an app for 5,000 year old thing:
"wow this is so novel and innovative!"

RizzRustbolt ,

Apiary app.

Press button for honey

deltreed ,
@deltreed@lemmy.world avatar

Why would you give a regular taxi driver an Uber PIN? You just walk up to a taxi and get in.

phoenixz ,

Because Uber needs to insert themselves somehow to be able to squeeze as much money as possible out of both you and the taxi driver.

deltreed ,
@deltreed@lemmy.world avatar

That still makes no sense. Cabs have no affiliation (e.g. yellow cab) with Uber. I doubt any cab driver cares about Uber PINs. What am I missing?

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

If you got in an actual taxicab, you are correct that the driver would not care about your Uber PIN. Uber is replacing, or trying to replace, the usual pool of taxi drivers hanging around outside the airport terminal with their own herd of "contractors" waiting to do the same thing, only with the totally unnecessary layer of their stupid app being in between.

Leviathan ,

Taxi drivers in my city also have something else Uber drivers don't- a licence that was bought decades ago and is limited to a certain number, they never expire and can be bought and sold between private parties and you end up with one asshole who owns a bunch and rents out the licenced car to drivers who pay him a rent. It's a pretty hardcore mafia and predates on immigrants.

They are also fucking maniacs who almost kill people every day with their reckless driving, but Ubers do that too.

Got_Bent ,

To the immigrant thing - I was on vacation a few weeks ago and took five Uber rides. None of the drivers spoke English. I wonder if ride sharing is going the immigrant predator route these days.

For clarification, it didn't bother me to have non-English speaking drivers. They were all great.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

90% of Uber drivers for me were immigrants. Its normal to me.

Leviathan ,

Oh yeah, I don't think either are great, but at least Uber didn't require drivers to submit to some crazy legal Ponzi scheme while paying for special driver's licenses and competing with other drivers for the good shifts on a shared taxi licence. The Taxi mafia lobbied my city pretty hard and now Ubers get the opportunity to lose money to a middle man too! I've seen a bunch of taxis straight up also driving for Uber throughout the city.

SomethingBurger ,
@SomethingBurger@jlai.lu avatar

Same in France. They had huge protests years ago to ban Uber, because they didn't want competition making it harder to pay for their license.

Motherfucker, who lobbied to limit the number of licenses in the first place?

SulaymanF ,

That’s Uber propaganda. The system was created because prior to that cities had traffic jams with a ton of freelance cabs with no quality controls or regulation. The medallion system set a price floor and mandated inspections and insurance and background checks. Uber bypassed all of that for years and surprise; women were being assaulted by drivers with criminal history, passengers were injured from uninspected vehicles and couldn’t get remedied because the drivers were uninsured, and cities have worsening traffic jams because there was no limit on Uber drivers choking downtown streets.

The taxi industry evolved this way for good reasons. Uber was initially sold as good for immigrants and now immigrants protest how that company gets special treatment over every other cab company and hurts their bottom line.

Xero ,
@Xero@infosec.pub avatar

Yet I value those licenses and medallions more than any rideshare contract.

Leviathan ,

I drive a delivery truck around the city for a living and watch taxis "drive" all day, I wouldn't piss on them if they were in fire I don't value them.

Snapz ,

"Just a taxi" I mean, can a taxi actually regular charge me MORE than a taxi used to cost from the airport to my home PLUS the magic bonus of surge increases in that also higher cost when I'm most vulnerable... I think not - check mate assholes, Uber for the win!"

-a tesla owner while his broken tesla is in the shop waiting months for parts

I_Clean_Here ,

Weird straw man you built there but okay

CptEnder ,

Ngl Lemmy's one drawback are the boomers being mad about stupid shit like this.

Cool, zero wait GPS tracked and background checked drivers that work with my company's corporate account that I don't need to submit a reimbursement ticket for? No no no, BUT MUH YELLOW 19TH CENTURY CAB?!

LMAO have fun taking the "tourist" route.

Rekorse ,

"Background checked"...riiiiiiiiiiight

Theharpyeagle ,

I mean, there are some pretty legitimate concerns about employee welfare with Uber. Do the drivers get paid while waiting for customers?

CptEnder ,

They do in NYC yeah, if it falls below a threshold. I think it's like $23/hr or something.

Snapz , (edited )

"My company's corporate account covers it" - Yeah, while fucking the accessibility of any kind of reasonable taxi service for the rest of us. Eat shit, parasite.

Also, that "zero wait" would mean that those drivers would have to sit around constantly, not being paid, all to uber's profit/benefit so that you can feel like a special little person when you walk up and give Uber the credit - Some parasitic POV you have there on multiple fronts... Maybe take a bit of time to look inward on that (ooh, or just raise VC capital to found a new startup that burns houseless people's bodies for private jet fuel - win for everyone, corporate account bro!!!!!"

Saying this as a millennial, everything I don't like is a "boomer" is a lazy scapegoat. Boomers suck in the many areas where they actually, specifically suck. But in fact here, you seem to actually have a lot more personally in common with the boomers with your pseudo-reaganite, "My company's corporate account covers it" BS POV.

letsgo ,

Maybe it's a UK thing but at large public transport terminals we get lines of taxis waiting for "zero wait" business.

TimewornTraveler ,

before Uber there was... Kakao Taxi. and it was beautiful

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Was it actually available outside of South Korea?

Matombo ,

But now you can't just tell the driver where to go and give him cash, you have to use the app first and you are out of luck if you phone battery is dead. So technology makes the experience activly worse in this case.

WanderingCat ,

They have machines in the door which have the app there for public use for exactly that reason

SuperApples ,
@SuperApples@lemmy.world avatar

I've been overcharged/"taken for a ride" by five or so taxis in my life, never had trouble with a ride-share service, even in countries where they are operating illegally. Never had a clearly drunk driver, too, unlike a couple of taxis I've taken.

When there's any kind of language barrier, choosing the destination in the app rather than trying to speak it is so much easier, and using in-app translation messaging, too. When arriving in a new country, not having to get money out at the airport (avoiding rip-off ATMs or money exchangers) and being able to pay online is so much better than cash, especially when you're not familiar with the currency.

Certainty of price, and ability to give instant feedback are great at keeping things honest. Sure, Uber/Grab etc are terrible companies, but I swear most taxi licenses in the world are owned my organized crime, so not much of an alternative. There is so much that needs to be done with regulation to get rid of the 'gig economy' and make sure that drivers are properly compensated/employed, but the app-powered ride service is just so superior in every way for the passenger, in my opinion.

May I suggest a back-up battery for your phone (I just use my laptop USB as it's always with me and works when the PC is off).

Psythik ,

Yeah but it's cheaper than a taxi, and the best part is that you don't have to interact with a human, which means you don't have to tip (if you book a self-driving car). Furthermore, if you practice good charging habits, you never have to worry about a dead phone.

pyrflie ,

*Only in locations that don't apply Taxi requirements to Uber. Then Uber is worse in every case. They are a Taxi service that cheats their staff and customer.

Psythik ,

Then don't use Uber. Like I said, self-driving cabs are best. No route fuckery to run up the meter, because they always take the most efficient path. I am aware that not every city has these yet, but that'll change within a few years.

Matombo ,

why do you have to tip a taxi driver?

Psythik ,

Short answer: America.
Long Answer: Because American companies are so greedy that they won't even pay a livable wage; they expect working class citizens to pick up the slack with tips in every industry they can get away with doing such a thing. All thanks to the policies of a long dead president from the 80s (Reagan), that were never rolled back. In other words: America.

duffman ,

A few times as a kid I had to take a taxi alone. I knew the way home, but the driver decided to make a lot of unnecessary turns and go this round about way to run up the fair. I was probably in 3rd grade and knew what he was doing but didn't have the guts to call him out.

PlantDadManGuy ,

Is that why you turned to drinking, Mr. Duffman?

deathbird ,

Everyone has stories like this.

LemmyKnowsBest ,

Would be epic for a third-grader to loudly firmly vociferate a taxi driver back into shape

feedum_sneedson ,

You kiss your mother with that mouth?

LemmyKnowsBest ,

My mom's dead but if she was alive I'm sure she'd be proud of my vocabulary. Anyway my parents & I have never been on kissing terms so no.

AgentGrimstone ,

"Sorry, sir. No tip because you kept getting lost."

kilgore_trout ,
@kilgore_trout@feddit.it avatar

Why would you pay a tip to the taxi driver? They are usually self-employed.

AgentGrimstone ,

Because the last time I took a taxi was when I was 10 and that's how I was raised.

tmyakal ,

They are usually self-employed

That varies wildly depending on city, county, state, and (I'm guessing) country requirements. I drove for a few years in a small-ish city, and neither me nor anyone I ran into at the usual spots were self-employed. We all worked for one of two cab companies, making hourly wages plus tip.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

Wait what?

Your culture doesn't tip taxi drivers?

I constantly felt like if I didn't tip the taxi driver, he'd drive in reverse and tell me to fuck off. Because yes they were that kind of asshole.

Valmond ,

Ha ha this happened when I took a taxi to the railway station, leaving Paris after 10 years. It was quite nice to get the "tourist" route early in the morning so I rolled with it :-)

Stupidmanager ,

Way back in 2009 or so… my uber/taxi story. So I land in Newark, NJ and try to catch a cab and it’s $50 to go to the hotel on the other side of airport because we traverse 3 zones (and they charged by zone). Uber was $11. See, when Uber came out it was like a gamified systems and almost always cheaper. Drivers were getting crazy perks too, i swear one guy in seattle said he was banking north of 2k a day just back and forth to the airport. This was the only time in Uber’s history where a normal human could grind and make a nice pay with some added personal risk. I was all for it because in cities like Newark, unions control the politics and the average traveler (in this case, me) gets screwed in the name of “fairness”.

Unions are great, but not when they use that same political power to squeeze regular people for profits by controlling the pricing and forcing zones. I understand why they said they put that in place (fair competition), but in this case we all know it’s about profits first, better working for taxi drivers, second. Does that mean i love uber now? Hell no, they need a union (yep, i agree), but uber broke a broken system and made taxi companies be competitive. I can now open up several apps and see which is cheaper and choose accordingly (and these last 2 years it’s been cabs).

Jericho_One ,

I'm old enough to remember the EDC artist named Überzone

don ,

Botz and Bounce were some tasty jams

Jericho_One ,

I was partial to Beat Bionic.

Saw him live in Austin in the 90s...pure gold

don ,

Damn it’s been a minute, I nearly completely forgot that song, definitely extra dope

LemmyKnowsBest ,

I guess I'm old enough too, but apparently not cool enough. Because I have no idea what you two are talking about.

3volver ,

Uber effectively weaseled their way into the taxi industry by somehow enticing drivers to work for them while also assuming all of the liabilities. Truly, capitalism at its finest.

Cort ,

I'm kinda surprised that insurance companies haven't offered to buy driver information from these types of companies so they can raise rates

drathvedro ,

Oh they most definitely do. I briefly worked at a company that sold data to car flippers and we for sure knew if any particular car was ever used as a taxi or not. Even if we didn't buy this data off taxi company directly, we could easily determine it by seeing unusually high mileage between services and checkups. And we definitely know the identity of the driver, so it's just a matter of putting 2+2 together.

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