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Uber CEO Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Price Fixing (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick will go to court over price fixing claims after he initially tried to get the lawsuit dismissed. U.S. district court judge in New York ruled Kalanick has to face the class of passengers alleging that he conspired with drivers to set fares using an algorithm, including hiking rates during peak hours with so-called surge pricing. According to Reuters, district court judge Jed Rakoff ruled the plaintiffs "plausibly alleged a conspiracy" to fix pricing and that the class action could also pursue claims the set rates led to the demise [of] other services, like Sidecar.
What I don't get about all of this is why taxi companies can't just start offering good service. You know, like they fucking should've been doing from the very start!
It doesn't matter which city you're in. Taking a taxi is a goddamn awful experience. You'll likely end up with a third-world driver who doesn't understand the city's native language(s), nor English (the international language of everyone in the travel industry). These drivers will often drive like they're in a third-world country, putting you and others at risk. Sometimes they won't have a clue how to get you to where you need to go, even if it's somewhere relatively well known in the city at hand. Other times they'll take an indirect or slower route to unnecessarily boost the fare. Often the cabs are dirty and not well maintained. It's not at all unusual to have the driver play awful third-world music on the radio, or converse loudly in some third-world gibberish language using a hands-free set, for the entire trip. Then for this awful experience you'll get to pay an excessive price. And to make matters worse, they'll blame this awful experience not on themselves, where the blame rightfully lays, but on "regulation", "the government" or "city council".
I don't want to use Uber. I don't trust hipsters or Millennials behind the wheel, regardless of whether I am or I am not in the vehicle. But they're absolutely golden compared to their taxi driver competition!
Uber wouldn't even exist if the taxi drivers and the companies employing them had just cleaned up their acts in the first place. Offer a good service at a fair price and the Uber issue goes away!