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."

Comments

Re:It seems that

[malzfreund]

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).

Not pointless at all...

[tlambert]

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.

Re:Not pointless at all...

[AK Marc]

It's not the servitude, but the lying. "Yes, we'll send someone out."

The reality is "Likely nobody will come, if you walk Z blocks to the corner of X and Y, you'll likely be able to hail a cab." But the dispatchers lie to the caller, causing a loss. That's fraud, and the caller should be able to sue for a harming falsehood being told to them.

Re:Not pointless at all...

[tlambert]

I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services of those who they perceive as lower down in the pecking order.

Being a cabby is obviously a stressful and fairly tedious job (and I speak only as an occasional rider). More importantly, it's a job, not servitude. Of course they're going to prefer to the more profitable routes, and there are going to be some providers more competent than others. And if you were sat for an hour waiting for a single cab company in one place in a city, you were doing it completely wrong.

First of all, you're right: it's a job. They should do the job; particularly, they should do the job their dispatcher promised they would do on their behalf. If they have an argument with the dispatcher, that should be their problem, not mine. They're the ones who decided to be affiliated with Luxor instead of Yellow Cab, or Yellow Cab instead of Luxor, or who the heck ever. They have their hack license, and with it, they can pretty much pick what cab company they work for.

Second, I have no problem tipping well when someone has to go out of their way to accommodate me. Sometimes I forget that there are non-Americans on this site, and that most of them don't believe in tipping because they figure the person providing the service is being paid anyway. A cabbie going out of their way like this in America is going to *expect* a tip, where a European cabbie would just say "to heck with it" and pick up the nearest fare, knowing that the extra effort isn't going to be rewarded.

Third, I forgot one of the best things about Uber and similar companies: because they bill by GPS start and end point, you can't be "long hauled". The practice of "long hauling" is where the cabbie takes you on a longer route than necessary to run up the meter. When using GPS start/end points, "long hauling" will cost the cabbie, not you, so it stops the practice rather dead in the water. This is an incredible benefit, if you end up needing a cab at a trade show or conference in an unfamiliar place, since that's when you are most likely to be "long hauled".

Fourth, as far as "doing it wrong", I suppose you are suggesting that I, and my one friend, and my other friend with the walker, go 10 blocks down to 19th street and just hail a passing cab. You have obviously never had a physical disability.

Re:Not pointless at all...

[TrekkieGod]

I've noticed weird trend among the middle classes to feel entitled when it comes to eliciting the services of those who they perceive as lower down in the pecking order.

Lower down in the pecking order? No, no. I absolutely do feel entitled when it comes to eliciting services which are offered for a price, and that I am willing to pay. Why the hell would I not be?

Being a cabby is obviously a stressful and fairly tedious job (and I speak only as an occasional rider). More importantly, it's a job, not servitude.

It's a job for which I am paying them, so they better do it well, with a smile on their face, leaving all their emotional baggage locked up for after they clock out and get to loosen up with their family and friends. It's not because I think they're "lower in the pecking order." It's because there is not a single person on this planet that doesn't have to do the same thing. When my boss tells me to do a tedious job I don't find particularly challenging or entertaining I don't get to say, "you know, I prefer to do something else." That's what I get paid to do, so I do it. When my boss has to deal with clients, he may have just gotten off a huge fight with his wife at home, but he will sure as hell put on a smile and treat them as if they're the most important thing in his life. When the fucking President of the United States meets with other world leaders, he is expected to follow protocol. Monarchs have a public figure they need to maintain...there is nobody, no matter how rich or powerful they are, who doesn't have to do shit they don't want to as part of their jobs.

And if you were sat for an hour waiting for a single cab company in one place in a city, you were doing it completely wrong.

He called a cab company up and asked them to pick him up at a particular time. I've done this and have never had a problem, but if things happened as he described, he most certainly was doing it right, and they disrespected him by wasting his time. It's a service they offer, so they need to do it. If they had told him over the phone, "we're sorry, we don't send cabs to pick people up in your area," that would have been fine. Like you said, it's not servitude and they have the right to decline jobs if they think the money isn't worth it. That said, the moment they agreed to the pickup, they're committed to be there, and to be there on time. He could have been going to an important job interview, and they didn't give him the chance to make alternate plans.

Re:Unacceptable

[saihung]

A company comes out of nowhere to take 3% of a major market and that's "not much." Gotta love it.

Re:It seems that

[platykurtic]

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.

Re:It seems that

[Joining Yet Again]

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.