
Uber to quit Colombia after judge says it doesn’t compete fairly - whoisjuan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/uber-to-quit-colombia-after-judge-says-it-doesn-t-compete-fairly
======
cowpig
As someone whose business is based in Colombia and has lived here for two
years, this article and the comments section are totally out of touch.

In Colombia, the ride-sharing app market is competitive. I personally prefer
EasyTaxi and Beat over Uber here.

The former works with the existing taxi system, and the latter is similar to
Uber, except that the cars aren't universally 30 years old and also it's
legal.

It's as if the world outside of Silicon Valley startups just doesn't exist in
the minds of ~~Uber PR~~ Bloomberg and Hacker News commenters.

Maybe it's a broader part of American media messaging to imply that the world
will suffer badly if a US corporation were to fall. But in an ideal, healthy
economy companies should be exiting markets regularly.

~~~
Shorel
I disagree with you. The article says the truth about taxis in Colombia.
“Millionaire ride” has been a thing for decades, and it still happens.

The competition from Uber made taxis improve so much, that I fear a return to
the norm, before Uber, where taxis would ask 50k COP for a ride that should
only cost 20k COP and so on.

Also, Beat are next in line for these lawsuits.

~~~
cowpig
I've been ripped off by taxis twice in Bogota, though never in any other city
and never one of these boogeyman "millionaire rides"

The first time was my very first taxi in Colombia: I arrived at the airport
and naively thought the guy asking me if I needed a taxi was being helpful.
Little did I know, that was code for "are you new around here" and then he not
only charged me 70k for a 23k ride, but also stole my harmonica and then came
back 15 mins later having "found" it and asking for a reward. I was
blindsighted.

The second time, the guy took me from the airport though some ridiculous route
around the city and when he arrived asked me for about 3x the actual cost. I
gave him what the ride should have cost, he followed me into where I was going
and I just ignored him; he left.

I've had bad taxi experiences in other countries, but I concede Colombia, or
at least Bogota (I lived in Medellin over a year and never had a problem) has
some very unethical drivers.

OTOH, I have never had, nor heard of, any problem with a driver that came via
EasyTaxi, Beat, or any of the other apps that compete with Uber.

I also think it's in the country's best interests to push foreign rent-seeking
companies out of the country.

If Beat gets hit with these lawsuits my opinion will change.

------
xiphias2
It's said to see Uber go, I really liked using it in Colombia (taxis as well,
when it was more comfortable for me).

I just wish that 20 year old cars would be banned from being used as Uber/Taxi
cars there.

A taxi tried to rob me in Santa Marta, but luckily the girl I was with knew
that if the driver asks me to lock my door and leaves the front right door
open, it's a sign that he wants to rob us.

~~~
duxup
>asks me to lock my door and leaves the front right door open, it's a sign
that he wants to rob us.

How does that work?

~~~
acollins1331
Probably by using the child lock you can't get out the back but someone else
can come in the front and stick you up.

~~~
amelius
If it was a child lock, why did the driver need to ask to lock the door?

~~~
TomMarius
20 year old cars did not have electronic child lock, this is how the mechanic
child lock worked

~~~
tinus_hn
Child lock isn’t electronic, it’s a mechanica switch you can only access when
the door is open that prevents you from opening the door from the inside of
the car. Locking the doors does nothing, if the door is going to open it’ll
automatically unlock if you pull the handle from the inside.

~~~
TomMarius
That's not how my old car (Mondeo 97) works.

~~~
tinus_hn
I see in the US requirements that the rear side door lock has to disable both
the exterior and interior handles. Odd.

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adt2bt
I recently honeymooned in Colombia and my wife and I used Uber in Bogotá. If I
recall correctly, it was never exactly ‘legal’ but still quite common and
cheap.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see another local company (Rappi perhaps?) try to
enter the ride hailing market there in response. Unfortunately for taxi
drivers, I don’t know if protectionist policies will do anything but prolong
their slow decline.

~~~
rowanseymour
It's been the same situation in Ecuador for a while. In some cities it's
tolerated, in others the police have cracked down by calling Ubers and handing
out large fines when the car arrives.

I'm sympathetic to the taxi drivers.. but Uber is considered significantly
safer. There's also InDriver and Cabify but they are less popular.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
And Beat and Didi. But the reputation system on Uber is better, both for
drivers and for riders. I'm sad to see it go.

------
jeltz
Anyone knows any details of the ruling? This article mentions nothing about
the actual court case.

~~~
smoe
It basically boils down to Uber considering themselves a tech company while
Colombian law sees them as a transportation company that must obtain licenses
and oblige to regulations around ride fees and such.

More detailed article in Spanish
[https://www.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/apps/taxistas-
demandaran...](https://www.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/apps/taxistas-demandaran-
tambien-a-beat-cabify-y-didi-446406)

~~~
anticensor
They tried the same trick as anywhere else, then. And it is unsurprising that
they failed.

~~~
smoe
We will see. To me what Uber is currently doing smells a bit like a PR stunt.
Especially with all the appeal to emotion in their communication to the users
and trying to get them riled up on social media.

e.g.
[https://twitter.com/Uber_Col/status/1215681583253991424](https://twitter.com/Uber_Col/status/1215681583253991424)

All while, their appeal to the order from December is still pending a decision
from a higher court.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
The judge ordered them to stop operating.

~~~
smoe
Did they? I honestly don't know since I don't use them.

To my knowledge the ruling to stop was mid December and the decision of the
higher instance is expected within weeks.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
I'm no longer sure. I'm looking at this passage:

"Así lo cree Nicolás Alviar, el abogado representante del icónico caso contra
Uber ante la Super Intendencia de Industria y Comercio, que en primera
instancia ordenó el cese de operaciones de la aplicación de movilidad
compartida en Colombia."

Either that says the Super Intendencia ordered the service shut down, or it
says that Alviar (the lawyer playing offense) caused it to happen.

[https://www.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/apps/taxistas-
demandaran...](https://www.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/apps/taxistas-demandaran-
tambien-a-beat-cabify-y-didi-446406)

------
fierro
Of any country I've visisted, Uber is the least necessary in Colombia. The
taxi system is extremely fair and safe, albeit cash only right now. It's
highly regulated and you can count on predictable, transparent, fair rates.

When I took an Uber at the Medellin airport, a guy saw me waiting at the curb
and called my name, explaining that he would drive me to my actual Uber. I
hopped in, and he drove me a mile or two outside the airport to a lot where
all the real Ubers were waiting. We switched cars, and presumably he got some
small kickback, then returned to the airport to smuggle people to their Uber.
It was a pretty interesting experience; the police at the airport readily fine
Ubers that pick up passengers and know the cars by license plate.

~~~
remote_phone
The posted article directly contradicts you. It says most Colombians are
afraid to take taxis because of how unsafe they were.

~~~
FloresHernandez
I've visited Colombia several times on several cities and unless you're taking
illegal cabs you never feel unsafe. The legal cabs are pretty clearly marked.

Uber could give you an extra layer of safeness as you're basically recording
your ride, but that does not mean the cabs are unsafe there. Having said that,
if I had to take a taxi to take me to my Uber, I will really feel unsafe.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
How do you distinguish legal cabs? I live here, and locals tell me half of
Bogotá's 40,000 taxis have fake taxi licenses. Nobody's ever told me you can
tell them apart.

Even the police and politicians here use Uber.

------
aloknnikhil
Uber is essentially a Bring-Your-Own-Hardware for taxis. It's sort of
"decentralizing" the taxi service, if you will. And laws seem to be antiquated
for such a model. I wonder how decentralization of the tech industry, next,
would play out if the laws are not written with that in mind. How do you tax a
platform that offers, say, AWS but with commodity hardware? How do you
ascertain data privacy laws in such a case?

------
jessaustin
If the nation weren't Colombia, would the headline have been "...judge
rules..." or even "...court rules..."? "Says" is a pretty low-status verb. I
don't suggest that Colombian judges should get more respect from headline-
writers, but I would suggest that they should get the same respect as North
American judges.

~~~
xvedejas
No.

I went to news.google.com and searched "judge says". While the article above
was one of the top results, all the other of the top ten results were stories
in various parts of the US, with "judge says" used in the same way.

It seems that to the extent the neutral verb "says" shows any respect,
Colombian judges do get the same respect as North American judges in the eyes
of headline writers.

~~~
jessaustin
I'm not so certain. A _slightly_ more empirically valid investigation than
yours disagrees [0]. Whatever, I'm glad all the "anti-PC" reflexive downvoters
had a chance to do their thing.

[0]
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22judge%2...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22judge%20says%22,%22judge%20rules%22)

