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Cab Hailing Service Uber Collected Just $9M of Fares During 15 Months In Boston
curtwoodward writes "Uber, the well-funded startup that hails cabs and black cars with a smartphone app, is a pretty slick way to book a ride. But how competitive is Uber with the traditional, highly regulated cab market? According to results from the startup's move into Boston, not very. Figures released in a court case show that, over 15 months, Uber processed just $9 million in gross fares (the drivers get most of that). Meanwhile, Boston's overall cab industry is pegged at doing about $250 million a year in fares. Despite the publicity, Uber still has a long way to go."
Uber is rather pointless. Why would someone go through a 'middle-man' app, thus incurring a surcharge, when they can just reserve with the taxi company direct?
Why aren't they making billions immediately? This is an outrage!
And it was $75 to go a distance I'd previously been in a taxi for $35... it was a nicer ride, but way too expensive to use regularly.
... wait, what?
So what is the advantage of a hailing program for a phone? Is it like the food delivery service for outlets that don't have delivery? I suppose that might be useful in some areas, but I just walk down a few blocks and get the food.
This really seems like the tech bubble all over again when a sock puppet was going to make us all rich. There are some really good ideas out there that will generate profit, but even Amazon is only making $130 million on $13 billion in sales, or about 1% profit, so making money online is not trivial and we are no longer the innocents we were in the 90s, so we can't pretend it is.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Uber is rather pointless. Why would someone go through a 'middle-man' app, thus incurring a surcharge, when they can just reserve with the taxi company direct?
It's kind of pointless to hail a cab with it, if what you care about is cost; instead, you hail a rideshare. This is one part of what has the cab drivers panties in a bunch.
The second part that has their panties in a bunch is that cab drivers are notorious for "closest fare first" behaviour; so if you are outside the downtown area, or off the line between the downtown and the airport, they will leave you hanging and pick up other call-ins before picking you up. Uber and similar apps commit them to picking up the fare as booked, and they find this annoying because they don't get optimum road miles.
A couple of weeks ago, myself and two friends booked a cab to the Inner Sunset in San Francisco; this is a little way out of the way, wince it requires going about 10 blocks off of 19th Avenue, which is the normal cab travel corridor. We had a person standing outside the entire time, and the cab company tried to claim that the cabbie had attempted a pickup and "got tired of waiting". Twice. But in fact, there were no cabs through the pickup intersection, or either of the cross streets to that intersection for the entire time. We were over an hour past our scheduled arrival time to our destination, thanks to the lying cabbies.
This sounds anecdotal, but it is in fact common practice in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, where there are well known "hop-on" and "hop-off" spots, and if you want a cab, you get your but to one of those locations for your best change of getting one; otherwise, you are considered "off route", and the only way you get a cab is if someone isn't busy. This is not cool
Uber and similar services fix this problem by providing more vehicles for scheduling, through including rideshare and towncar services. This cones at the expense of the cabbies not being booked solid, but having had my butt left hanging in the wind by cabbies on multiple occasions, my heart is not bleeding for them in this case.
Using an app makes metadata collection much easier for marketers and the NSA.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Introducing transportation innovation in Boston is a complete lost cause. Driving here is like a bad knock knock joke that you hear every day. Just substitute knock knock with a friendly phrase also consisting of two one syllable words.
How hard is the regulation? Is there room for competition?
If the regulation prohibits competition then that's the real problem.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The incumbents suck and they're not going to change, so Uber has all the time in the world to take their business away. Their biggest risk is regulatory, where your friend big government decides to protect you from your freedom to choose.
Because each cabbie is a franchise operation and the people you call up to book ARE the middle-man.
No, the parent did not claim it was inconvenient.
They claimed that if you have to talk to a real person, YOU HAVE TO TALK TO A REAL PERSON.
With this app, YOU DON'T HAVE TO.
Why the hell should I talk to a third person when I can just wait to get in a cab DRIVEN BY A REAL PERSON? So I don't have to talk to the cabbie? How inconvenent!
Therefore what YOU would prefer is not what everyone else prefers.
Therefore your assertions about the utility of this company are based on a fallacy that everyone thinks like you. The system is worth it to those who want it.
A company or service is not worthless if some people don't want to use it.
Looking at your postings I don't think the problem is you think you're everyone, I think the problem is you're either a cabbie or working for the dispatch.
Gotta be frightened of competition, aintcha.
That's a better marketshare than Windows Phone has after 3 years from a huge company.
Since the only time I am hailing a cab is if I'm smashed, based on past experiences the last thing I should be doing then is using an App on a smartphone.
uber. use app. get information on when your ride is coming and where it is now. There is no haggle over price, no need to have cash, and no decision on a tip amount. Overall experience: A
taxi. call. wait. no further information available. Some take credit cards, others not. There's always an issue of how much to tip. Many drivers spend the whole ride on the telephone even when asked not to. Overall experience: D-
In my area, taxi service is poor. I've waited up to 45 minutes for a cab. I've never waited more than 15 minutes for uber. Taxis could duplicate or better uber but they chose not to because they are protected (in my area) and have no incentive to spend any money on improving the customer's experience. (Recently it has taken a contentious law just to get taxis to accept credit cards.)
I clinked your name and nothing happens, does it matter what is in my glass when I do it?
I've used the app a few times in Atlanta. I loved it. Basically, you just pop on where you want to go and where you are, it gives you the cost and hails a black car, telling you how long it'll take the car to arrive. For drunken transport, it's fantastic. Your results may vary, but I've got nothing but good to say about it.
I'm from Wisconsin and I visited LA a bit ago. I soooo wanted to hail a cab but nope, someone told me that's illegal. WTF?! They said too many cabbies are getting robbed. Whaaaaat? So instead you call them from any untraceable or spoofed number, tell them to meet you in a more opportune dark side alley in a bad neighborhood for a pickup, and then definitely don't rob them. What kind of idiot made that law that now makes us use services like Uber? I'm glad I live in a 100,000 person city. Okay, so we still have cabs but you call on the phone for them just because they're not just driving around.
$9 million. Yep, meaningless....
Okay, think about. We live in a culture that likes to create one "winner" take all, and everyone else is a loser. This one isn't much, but look at the debate over what technology we 'should' use to generate electricity. For some, unless an energy generating technology can generate high % of the country's needs, it shouldn't even be considered, and we heap contempt on you (well, some proponents of coal or nuclear heap contempt on re-newable sources, and this is one of their debating points. Similar illogics occur in health care.
That's like saying Samsung only sold 100,000,000 mobile phones in 4Q12, which is nothing since 400,000,000 phones were sold that quarter.
Uber made $9 million selling cab fares in 15 months, compared to >250 M for the whole industry.
That's still a pretty significant slice of the action. Just tell whatever story you want to tell! A more telling factor would be the growth of Uber versus the growth of the rest of the industry.
Really tired of apples and oranges hit pieces on /.!