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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."
Why aren't they making billions immediately? This is an outrage!
The cost of the "middle-man" app is tiny. In fact, it may be cheaper to use an app as opposed to having real people answering phone calls. I guess you're right in the sense that taxi companies wouldn't wanna share revenues with another party. But this doesn't make the app intrinsically useless. In fact, taxi companies may well respond with an app of their own (that's what happened in Germany).
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.
Visa/Mastercard is rather pointless. Why would someone go through a 'middle-man' method, thus incurring a surcharge, when they can just pay the company with cash?
There are many good reasons for going through a middleman and add charges. And each case is different. Most of the time what you pay for is convenience.
Whether this is something you would want depends on situation and person. Having the option is good. Many people buy a computer a a whole. I like to buy it in pieces.
Others take up credit on their card, while it would be much cheaper to ask money directly from the bank. Why would they do that? because it is easy. People like to pay for easy. People pay a LOT for easy.
Pressing a button to get a cab is easier then actually calling and there are apparently enough people willing to pay for that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Uber's app makes the taxi process at lot nicer than anything the taxi process has come up with. With a taxi you're still usually calling and talking to a real person. Then maybe they dispatch a cab, and if you're lucky they find you and not someone else. More likely you stand there unsure about whether to keep trying to hail cabs or keep waiting for the one you called. With Uber, you have a map of all the cards in your area and an estimated arrival time. When you reserve one, you have a car devoted to picking you up; they won't stop for anyone else. You can watch them via gps so you know what's going on. The payment goes through your credit cards so there's no fiddling with change. Uber also has nicer cars and UberX costs about the same as a cab, although how sustainable that is is up for debate, since they may be skimping on insurance. The laws here are still being worked out. Of course, this is the situation in SF, where taxis suck. As you'd think, Uber isn't catching on as well in places where the taxi service is better.
I either drive my car, take a bus, or schedule a pickup using the cab service website. About the only time when I do an impromptu taxi ride, it is fixed rate downtown and the taxis are everywhere.
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.
A number of places are hard to find cabs unless you are on the right street. It's even hard to get them to come by phone. If you call in a ride too short, but are too far off the beaten path, you'll not get a cab out, and any complaints will be met with complaints you weren't at the pickup site. But this service guarantees pickup. That's a greater value than calling in a pickup. I've personally been stranded more than once. I wasn't far off the beaten path for one, so I stopped calling in from that location, and instead walk to a nearby hotel, where there is always someone waiting. But with this, if it covered where I live now, I'd use it for all trips in that area.
Learn to love Alaska
1) Currently in San Francisco uberX (their lower-cost, non-town-car service) is cheaper than a yellow cab and, unless you live at a Caltrain or BART station, far easier to find.
2) If you were to reserve a ride with a cab company directly there's very little accountability for how long it will take to get a pick-up. All of these apps let you to see where your driver is while en-route and allow you to give feedback regarding the level of service received.
That adds a lot of value for me on top of the fact that I don't have to wait on hold.
I'd rather be able to speak to an experienced human on a 'phone when arranging a service than use another shitty automated middle man which can only deal with the simplest cases and which operates on volume rather than quality. There's always a significant cost to automation for the end user - it's just more profitable for the system's owner.
Outsourcing is logically less efficient, because someone else is always taking a cut of pure profit which they wouldn't if you provided a service in-house or cooperatively. Giving a middleman control of the initial sale (cf. Amazon, eBay) is one of the worst ways of permanently guaranteeing that a leech will make sure that you have to do an ever-increasing amount of work while they do very little new on your behalf. It's just not business sense.