The statement is absolute bullshit too: "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics."
No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that".
I live in NYC. The Uber app has now been banished from my phone. It's too bad the Gett app is kind of an unpolished turd.
How exactly is this not fraud?
Presumably so that the customer can contact the driver if they need to pass on instructions about a specific place to be picked up, etc.
If you're suggesting that they should be prosecuted, then we can argue that, but Uber is not able to prosecute members of its team. What do you expect Uber to do, other than to stop the behavior?
In this forum we talk constantly about onerous government regulations and the long arm of the law. There are many perfectly legal ways companies can punish or sanction its employees, and IMO it's an eminently good idea to do so.
If you don't want to the government getting all up in your face you're going to have to self-regulate to some degree. Punishing employees who behave unethically is a part of this.
But Gett can take Uber to court, and possibly make a criminal complaint.
Even Uber's legal representation said they could be liable for damages:
If Uber employees intentionally diverted Gett drivers from legitimate business by making phony calls, that is an unfair business practice, illegal under California law," he said. "It is also an intentional interference with Gett's business which makes them liable for money damages.
The balance between sales and the long-term vision of a business is hard. You need people that are driven but are interested in sticking it out. Sales has a high-level of burn out so it's hard to get someone driven and interested in staying long-term at a company.
This Uber thing is salespeople doing whatever it takes to get that commission. Uber maybe needs to reinvent their sales incentive structure the same way they've reinvented ridesharing.
They don't need to reinvent anything here. Lots of companies have salespeople with no experience and a high turnover rate. Yet they rarely directly sabotage their competitors.
The worst thing a company in a leadership position like Uber can do is take actions that acknowledge their competition. Even if they are trying to screw over their competition they are doing them a big favor by acknowledging them.
It seems that Uber may lose their first mover's advantage by their greed and small mindedness.
Will it? Why? Unlike social networks, I don't see why would Uber benefit particularly from network effects; it doesn't even have switching costs, since the consumer can use both concurrently.
A consumer can use Uber and a competitor. This, however, is not unlike social networks, it is entirely like social networks. A consumer can use two social networks as well. However, in practice if one car service or social network does a good enough job the consumer is unlikely to use another.
If all the calls are going to Uber, the drivers will too. If Gett/others have no drivers, they won't be able to build a base of customers.
I believe this is what the OP was referring to with network effects.
MySpace was also the leading firm in its industry.
In Houston I've seen a lot of cabs with some app advertised on them - Hail a Cab or something like that. Actually painted (or maybe long-term decal lettering) so it's obviously embedded somehow in the industry. Eventually you'll see firms with pre-existing relationship take advantage of the business model.
They all essentially claim that a driver's personal auto insurance is good enough and combined with the companies umbrella policy provides sufficient coverage. But then if you go and read their fine print that really isn't the case and if you were to be involved in an accident while driving for them there is a good chance no insurance would cover damage to yourself as the driver or your car.
Lyft for example brands themselves as a "friends giving friends" rides type of arrangement and they call the money exchanged a "donation" so they tell drivers, "who is your insurance company to say you can't do that"!
Uber acts like personal insurance will cover it as well if you are an UberX driver but then in the fine print it says it is the drivers responsibility to confirm driving for a "P2P" ride service is ok with their insurance company. Of course if you call any of the major insurance carriers and ask them they will tell you, "hell no that isn't covered".
If you look at the taxi insurance market it is made up of a bunch of dinky little companies no one has ever heard of or in some cases taxi's are insured by quasi government insurers of last resort or by verifying you have the minimum insurance requirement on hand in cash. None of these options is cheap so it isn't surprising that ride sharing services would want to avoid them because they would have to end up paying the drivers a lot more and they would no longer be 30% cheaper than taxi's
Just in the past few weeks...
"Uber Driver Arrested in San Francisco Crash That Killed Girl"
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Uber-Driver-Arrested-in...
"Lyft Driver Hits Elderly Woman in San Francisco Crosswalk"
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Lyft-Driver-Hits-Elderl...
A Lyft driver hits someone (while active on a trip), Lyft doesn't issue a blog post (a news story contained a paraphrased "statement from Lyft", but I see nothing on Lyft's own blog), and hacker news doesn't seem to care.
This strikes me as pretty strange.
Then later (I think on Jan 2nd?) they updated their blog post, presumably in response to details of the driver being released, to confirm that the driver was an Uber driver (just not one on an active trip), and that he has been deactivated.
Then it closes by repeating the condolences to the family.
I agree that it would have been nice if Uber could have confirmed that the driver worked for them initially, but it's not obvious that they were even in a position to find that out before details on the driver were released.
If a Yellow Cab driver killed someone do you think they would deny, admit and then caveat with 'but he doesnt really work for us because he didnt have a passenger in the car and his lunch break was coming up blah blah blah'
At first Uber denied the driver worked for them. Then they admitted the driver was with them but he wasn't "working" because he didn't have a passenger.
In constrast, some news reports claim that the driver believes he was working for Uber because he was searching for fares at the time of the accident.
They were more worried about being associated with the accident than the accident itself. Lots of weasel words and excuses in trying to claim that the driver didn't work for them, or that the driver wasn't active or doing a trip.
If I worked for Uber, I would have posted something simple and left it at that e.g.
"We have been informed by law enforcement that there has been a traffic accident in San Francisco involving an Uber driver. We send our deepest condolences to the family and victims of this tragic accident."
The end.
Who needs pesky Taxi and Limousine Commission busybodies to ensure people aren't arbitrarily blacklisted from being able to call a cab?
I support (!) regulation prohibiting retaliatory blacklists.
I support criminal prosecution of fraud, like the accusation of Uber's fake orders to rivals.
I support background inspections for taxi drivers.
I support regulation that demands a high level of driving skill from taxi drivers. And any supporting regulation, such as mandatory courses, tests, and inspections.
I do not support taxi commissions as creators of privileged monopolies.
I do not support taxi licenses priced above $1 million per car as a tool to enforce monopolies.
I do not support price controls on economic services, including taxis.
I do not support supply quotas on the number of taxi sales.
I do not support any similar attempt at centralized command & control economics.
Those are the reasons I criticize taxi commissions (that and the extreme corruption). Can you accept that this is the position of most of your opponents? Don't strawmen us.
"Nearly half of [NYC taxi] passengers have a household income of $100,000 or more a year." (2014 Taxicab Fact Book)
- A highly effective and heavily taxpayer-supported mass transit system (aka the subway) that gets people around marginally slower than taxis, and actually faster than taxis during peak hours. Rides are $2.50, less when purchased in bulk.
- A restricted supply of taxis has meant supply concentrates in the southern portion of Manhattan where fares are frequent and relatively short (maximizing profitability as there is a $3.50 meter drop immediately when taking a new passenger). Taxi drivers strongly avoid areas where fares are less frequent, and rides are longer - and surprise, that's where poor people are.
These have nothing to do with higher fees - enforced supply has resulted in lack of taxi availability to the poor, but not because of high fees. Cab drivers are incentivized to min-max their fares, regardless of how much their medallions cost.
There is actually a program out right now: boro taxis, which are only allowed to operate in the outer boroughs - away from the wealthy parts of Manhattan. This program was specifically started to offset the supply crowding and allow people in more far-flung neighborhoods (read: poorer) accessibility to cabs. They charge the same rates as every other taxi in the city.
Also, before anyone points out that the limited supply is keeping taxis out of the poorer areas, there recently introduced boro cabs[2] are meant to solve this specifically, with limited areas where they can pick up passengers and a much cheaper medallion ($500/year instead of ~$200k/year).
[1] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
Overall, keeping cabs expensive is probably a net benefit to the overall city transportation/livability ecosystem.
IMPORTANT: I've used Uber, and the experience has been great. All I'm saying is that I don't love the cavalier attitude towards city regulations on taxis, and that I think that attitude flows down the chain.
There are many companies challenging the first kind of regulation that wouldn't indulge in the breaking the second kind of law. Disclaimer: I started one of them - InstantCab, which competes directly with Uber and Gett.
As far as I understand, the only thing that medallions offer as an advantage in New York City (where they cost a million dollars) is the ability to pick up people who hail a cab off the street. Other car services exist for prearranged rides, and are called car services, not taxis.
Honestly, since all that really matters to Uber is $$ and being forced to deal with the law (and even then only barely), Gett should just sue them. It's clearly illegal (putting aside differences between NY/CA law) and it proves the point in a way they'll be forced to notice.
That's certainly Uber's stance, but it's not "obvious" at all :
> [OP] "In some cases, Herman said the Uber employees waited until the cars had showed up to cancel the order. Uber said the orders were all canceled immediately."
Deliberately waiting until the last minute to cancel a ride would certainly indicate intent to disrupt. That Uber is denying having done this should not exactly come as a surprise.
"opens up new economic opportunities" is that what we are calling "sales" now?
Why does the bit at the end discuss California law? This happened in New York.
Very shitty, lose-lose situation for Gett. The fact that they got "free PR" out of this CNN article is probably small consolation.
How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...
TLDR: Dave Gooden setup a honeypot on Craigslist to test whether AirBnB staff were creating fake Gmail accounts to spam Craigslist users & suggest they should post their vacation house listings on AirBnB instead.
Here's another NPR story about price gouging: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/29/163861383/why-econ...
There's not a law that says you have to charge everyone the same rate - just that you can't base it on certain types of discrimination.
Note: I'm okay with calling all those practices "price-gouging".
The idea is that jacking up prices to take advantage of adverse conditions or emergencies is not the same as normal supply-and-demand based pricing in response to seasonal variations, etc. I don't know if Uber's practice fits the definition in the statute or if they're being investigated for it.
I personally feel like that's not price gouging, so long as it isn't your only method of transportation. If you were very price conscious, you would probably be using a cheaper Uber competitor to begin with.
As much as I love über I think these tactics aren't going to win them fans. Competition in the market should be a good thing, right ?
Calling it "a bit too ambitious" is just further proof of Uber's structural lack of values.
I guess the question is whether sending requests and cancellations to 100 different drivers over 3 days (about 33 different drivers per day, maybe 4-5 per hour in a workday) really constitutes a denial of service. It seems exaggerated, but it is working as Gett is getting attention.
Definitely a bad idea though.
I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a company that was founded on the principle of giving their customers the experience of being a baller.
I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.
I'll be looking to find a boring company that just shows up, doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period and has respect for other organizations.
I once loved you, but now I'm leaving you.
Sincerely, Brian McDonough
>I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.
You can use the Uber app to get cabs or lower cost UberX. UberX is actually cheaper than most cabs while providing the convenience of ordering electronically, knowing roughly how long to wait, and paying electronically (with receipts.)
>doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period
There have been some interesting discussion about this on Travis Kalanick's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/traviskal?fref=ts, December 24, 2013) which basically say that the alternative to surge pricing would be not being able to get a ride at all. Some people on that thread suggested that the Uber client could be improved to let people get notified when the rate goes back down and other UX improvements and Travis said the team would consider those changes.
So I guess I say this with a disgusted sense of admiration - kudos to them for figuring out a new way to beat the competition.
- p. 146, The Tycoons, Charles R. Morris, ISBN:1429935022
It's a competitive market, but there's better ways to grow than attacking competitors and banning developers (earlier story) who try to do interesting things to extend your service.
Generous of the article to refer to Gett as a "rival" and not a clone.
Because Uber is so crazily innovative that no-one else would ever think about doing it? Come on. It's a car service with a smartphone app. There's a reason there are at least a dozen companies doing it.
Zimride did indeed launch in 2007 as a Facebook based carpooling app. It wasn't real-time at that time. Don't know if/when Zimride built an iPhone app but I built a real-time ridesharing iPhone app in 2008: http://ridecell.com/gt/
Uber started in 2009.
Disclaimer: The company I started, InstantCab, competes directly with Uber.
