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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.
While Uber has definitely engaged in some questionable behavior, this isn't it... and IMHO isn't likely to go very far at all, even in New York.
Employees of a single company, by definition, can't collude to fix prices. But independent contractors sure can.
Looks like that whole "uber drivers are independent contractors not employees" thing has a lot of unintended consequences that aren't anywhere near as beneficial for Uber as they assumed.
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!
Airlines hire their pilots, train companies hire their conductors, etc. But Uber claims that their drivers are not employees, but rather independent contractors. If this is the case, then there is price-fixing.
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Taxi companies have to pay to purchase, service and garage their taxis whereas Uber pays exactly $0 for the above expensive costs, instead it leeches them from the driver. Given the above, since the driver is doing the bulk of the investing of resources, he should get more than the 70%.
We can hope there are dozens of internet-taxi booking services like Uber, making their service a commodity. Then we would have to pay only a token service charge around 5% of the fare (instead of 20%-30%) to the internet-taxi company.
As a driver, you have two choices: you work for a taxi company or you work for Uber/Lyft/... Working for a taxi company, you get about $12/hour, at inflexible working hours and little personal freedom. The benefits of the taxi monopoly do indeed accrue to the "taxi companies", crony capitalists who have managed to snag medallions. Working for Uber, you are probably going to make more than that, even after expenses. But even if you made the same hourly money, you'd still be better off because of better working conditions and more flexibility.
There won't be if idiots like you keep supporting crony capitalism and keep creating legal hurdles for companies to jump through. After all the shit that Uber has had to deal with, only a fool would start a competitor.
But can you explain why the consumer should pay more than 5% of the fare for the simple service of: "I'm at location X, find a nearby taxi willing to go to location Y?" 20% booking commission is outrageous.