Uber Banned in Germany and France, and Faces Lawsuits in Multiple States (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes that Uber "has suffered double-losses in Europe, as both France and Germany continue to reject the company's validity in their regions." Meanwhile, a Boston Uber driver filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday accusing Uber of illegally classifying drivers as independent contractors to avoid providing full employee benefits. An Indianapolis driver has filed a similar suit, which also complains that Uber won't let them accept tips, and keeps any tips that customer's pay them through Uber's app. And remember when Uber and Lyft left Austin after losing a local election which would've required all their drivers to be fingerprinted? Now two lawsuits charge the companies were required to give 60 days notice to all their employees, and is demanding back pay and benefits.

But an anonymous reader quotes this column from the Los Angeles Times arguing that a federal judge's ultimate question is just "how sleazy" Uber really is. We're familiar with the Uber that talked about responding to bad publicity by digging up dirt on reporters following the company. Also the Uber that allegedly stalked passengers using its service, following their travel routes for the amusement of its party-goers... What about the Uber that secretly investigated a lawyer representing an adversary in a lawsuit, and then lied about it? That's the Uber that Federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York wants to hear a lot more about. On Thursday he ordered Uber to turn over to the other side a pile of documents related to the investigation.
Slashdot reader chasm22 points out that the high-powered investigator hired by Uber is apparently a retired senior CIA officer -- a former chief strategy officer, chief of cyberthreat analysis and chief of counterintelligence.

Comments

Re: Thank goodness

[Anonymous Coward]

And by bribes, you mean licensing fees and driver qualification tests that Uber cheerfully ignores despite the regulations predating both this Web company and the Internet itself. As a German citizen who cares about rudimentary quality control, good riddance.

Anybody can be a taxi driver in germany

[aepervius]

Yes, competition is bad and you're much better off with a monopoly that abuses its customers with high prices and poor service.

this may be true in the state, but in Germany everybody can be a taxi driver. All you need is 1) a taxi driver license (it is different exams to the normal one) anybody can take the exams, 2) an insurance on the car which makes it a commercial car 3) if you do pay per kilometer a counter which is verified to be working and properly counting kilometer/seconds of wait by a german institution ("geeicht" - calibration) and 4) no prison sentence for certain crime IIRC.

That is it. there is no medaillon no other artificial limitation by existing companies and . In fact one of the driver which I used to take (before he switched of job) was a normal person which had a normal car, and just a official distance table (he had no counter).

Basically Uber does not want to respect those minimal alws NONE of which are to protect local non-existant monopoly, all of which are to protect the consumers. But Uber feel it is "über alles" (pun intended) and now Germany told him "get out". Look possibly your taxi are bad in the state, but in Germany I have only very good one, since everybody can go into the business, those who don't do a good job simply get less and less fares.

Wrong headline: Not banned in France

[AdamInParadise]

Uber is not banned in France, and it most probably won't be. Uber was fined because of UberPop, a service that connected "drivers" with no training and no business license with customers. UberPop was illegal from the get go, I have no idea what went through the mind of the executives in charge when they launched this service. The regular Uber service (with professionnal drivers) works just fine.