Uber has so many little annoyances that make it a miserable experience. I generally don't engage in the "recreational corporate hate" thing but it's one of the few companies and products I actively dislike.
The app is misleading and insulting to users' intelligence. Multiple times, I've requested a ride, been connected with a driver, and it's completely obvious that the dude is still sitting in his house and hasn't gotten into his car yet. Yet the app will show A) The car moving around pointlessly on the map, B) The wait timer diminishing from 10 minutes, to 9 minutes, 8 minutes, etc.
It's so transparent that some asshole PM in San Francisco thinks he's really clever and that lying to users will improve retention or whatever. Which also means he thinks users are clueless rubes that can't tell he's fucking lying to them.
This might improve short-term metrics - perhaps I'm slightly less likely to cancel the ride on any particular trip - but in the long term it makes me hate this company and avoid using them unless I'm absolutely forced to. There's a million other things in the app and user experience that cause similar mental friction and stress.
The result is that these days I'd much rather drive my car to the airport and pay for parking than take an Uber.
Devil's advocate: the wait timer should diminish even if the driver hasn't left their house, assuming that you can statistically model the time it takes from a driver getting the notification to getting in their car. Also, while there are probably better solutions, it would be a privacy violation to reveal the location of the driver's home.
Also see:
"If you cut through this residential street with 4-way stop signs on every corner and make an impossible left hand turn across four lanes of moving traffic back onto the main road, you can shave 1min off your ETA."
- Sincerely, PM of driving directions in SF who takes a company shuttle into the office and doesn't own a car.
> - Sincerely, PM of driving directions in SF who takes a company shuttle into the office and doesn't own a car.
Silicon Valley PMs must drive a lot. My iPhone constantly nags me about "driving" when I'm riding the Subway reading a newspaper. Maybe when BART finally completes the ring around the bay we'll see products designed for people that use public transportation instead of driving alone.
Here's another one: driver accepts your ride, driver cancels, you get charged a $5 cancelation fee. There's no way in hell this is an accident they're unaware of, but it has happened to me several times the last few months, each time requiring both noticing and then dealing with customer support for them to send an identical copy-and-paste confirming that you were indeed charged a cancelation fee for the driver canceling and giving you your $5 back. In Uber credit. They have undoubtedly stolen tons of money like this from people not noticing or not caring enough. Fuck Uber.
I live downtown in a major city and use Uber + Ubereats a LOT. I used UE twice yesterday and if I go anywhere more than 10 blocks I uber which is a few times a week minimum.
I can't think of a single time I've had a problem like that. The only somewhat consistent thing that I encounter is GPS updating slower than the person actually is, but I'm in a pretty bad GPS/cell black hole.
You couldn't catch me ever driving my car and leaving it at the airport. That's going to cost you/ins $2k when someone chops out your catalytic converter. Don't ever leave your car in public parking anymore cat theft is so, so rampant.
I too live downtown in a major city but have never installed or used an app for rideshare, food delivery, dating or... In fact I pretty much don't use apps at all. Not a shut in, have a family, friend group, tech job etc.
Why did this all become so necessary in the past eight or so years? Aside from facilitating hyper-scheduled high-value per minute business trips, it seems like people efficiency LARPing or something.
I live downtown in a major city and the reason I use these apps is because the area I'm in has pushed everything else out. I live in a very tech centric area of my city and there's one grocery store in walking distance and that's whole foods so I can't get everything there. All of the restaurants are either big chains, 2-3 miles away, or overpriced business focused places. When my lease is up I'm moving to a more walkable neighborhood, but until then if I want good food and don't want to make it, my options are pay $80/plate, get in my car and drive 20 minutes to get to a restaurant 3 miles away, or pay the extra 20% to get it delivered.
I'm not arguing that this is good. Like I said I will be moving to a more sustainable location when my lease is up. But I think it's important to acknowledge and understand the failings exhibited by American cities that end up promoting the use of these apps.
Tangential question from a German: You said "when my lease is up". What does this mean? The way I know it is, if you want to move to a different apartment, you just cancel your current lease. There's a period of notice, usually something like three months, so you would choose the start of the new lease so that it slightly overlaps with the old lease for the purpose of doing the actual move. Is it different in the US?
Food delivery in particular. The added cost is quite significant once you figure in service fee + tip + restaurant mark-up (many restaurants will charge more than the menu price on UE/GH/DD to make up for the cut of the order that the service takes).
You wind up paying a significant amount for food that has been effectively steamed in an insulated bag.
There's a chance that what you consider a shut in might be very different from what I consider a shut in. Not to mention my friends and I aren't married or with families (and in our 30-40s). I work with a lot of people that have families of course due to my age and we live vastly different lives. I have a lot of "friends" that have families but they're more like people I'll grab a beer with once every few months. They're busy with soccer practices and what not. Not the friends I see weekly.
I'm out around town almost every other day. I took an Uber to Oppenheimer last night, 2.1 mile Uber. I think it ran me something like $11-13 before tip. Then I took an Uber about another 2 miles in a different direction from home to meet a friend for a beer. Then I ubered home about 3 miles. All of these Ubers show up within 5 minutes so I'm not spending much time waiting and can almost immediately get place to place. I could take a scooter or bus and dodge cars or spend 30 minutes getting somewhere. But even using a scooter I'm "using an app."
On Wednesday I did basically the same thing to go see Barbie except switch up locations a bit.
Not using UberEats is smart. It's a complete waste of money and I'm paying for total convenience and the fact that I haven't bought groceries in awhile. I also don't enjoy cooking in the least. Being hungry is a total inconvenience to me and if I could take a pill and be sustained I'd be out of this world happy. I don't live anywhere near a grocery store, I'm in a food desert so getting groceries requires me to spend about 40 minutes driving back and forth and all the pleasures that are driving around a big downtown, lack of parking, meter maids, general traffic.
So when I do get groceries I use Instacart/Kroger app. It costs me typically something like a $15-20 tip, lets me sit at my desk and pick out meals/recipe ingredients, etc and shows up in a couple of hours. I don't have to pull my Jeep out of a parking garage and deal with a 40 minute stressful drive to save $15-20.
I'm not sure how you completely missed the app train over the last 8 years and have literally never used an app for food delivery. That is incredibly strange to me. You've never sat at home, had a craving for some special restaurant who doesn't do delivery and .... wanted it delivered? You've never had a hangover or felt sick and wanted Pho to show up in 15 minutes?
Using a dating app is just increasing your pool of options. You can, and I have, spent days and weeks going to bars or meetups and trivias etc meeting people and you have no idea on initial interaction who is single, nor whether or not they find you attractive at all. Dating apps make that easy. If someone swiped on you they at LEAST find you somewhat attractive, theoretically. I've spent hours having conversations with someone I'm attracted to and possibly interested in while out and about to find out they're partnered up or I'm not their type. Dating apps just kind of bypass that and put the options front and center saving everyone time.
In the greater NYC area, it's commonplace to have the ETA immediately increase by several minutes (not uncommonly by 50%+) as soon as you're matched with an actual driver.
Based on other comments, it seems this might be a somewhat location-dependent phenomenon.
> It's so transparent that some asshole PM in San Francisco thinks he's really clever and that lying to users will improve retention or whatever.
Couple this with the arse of a VC who's making the meta worse and you all you need is a self-proclaimed capital F Founder type to have the perfect triumvirate of modern digital malaise.
I've noticed they've started amending the quoted price (after the ride) in London as well. Albeit not to this level.
Completely anecdotally, Uber was great when the drivers didn't know where they were taking you. You booked, someone turned up, you got in and they drove you there. Now if it's 2am and you're going to a part of town that's in the slightest bit out of the way, good luck (and watch the price surge as you struggle to get someone to take you).
And don't get me started on the jobs that get accepted when the driver is "2 minutes away," but are clearly doing a job on another rideshare app and don't turn up for 15 minutes...
It may have been great for you, but I regularly had drivers refuse to take me or abandon the ride once they saw the destination. The worst part is that they report you as not showing up, and then uber/lyft both will add no show fees for the ride that you then have to fight over.
When Uber was a black car service it was great, although expensive. Now it's just expensive.
But at this point haven't they already accepted the journey / aren't you already in the car? As annoying as it is, seems like an easy case to argue/win - they have your GPS location, that of the driver and the fact you've got in the cab?
This is purely Uber trying to keep the truth from both sides. They know drivers don't want to take short/crappy/long/etc drives. They know these drivers use various means to avoid taking those rides, yet they do nothing about it because if they did they'd lose half their "taxi driver" contingent of drivers. So instead they play this cat mouse game that just drags the problem out whilst everyone is equally unhappy.
> Uber was great when the drivers didn't know where they were taking you.
I remember this era with absolute DISDAIN. I HATED getting drivers who didn't know the area at all vs one who grew up in Austin or something. That was the difference between getting stuck some parade/festival traffic for 25 minutes vs taking a couple of back blocks and getting their in 15. I wonder if they account for traffic like that nowadays, I'd imagine not since they want you in the car longer.
Not to mention having to constantly stare at gps, not knowing what lanes to be in, etc.
To clarify, I meant the drivers had no idea of the destination until you're in the car and they press the start journey button.
The drivers may or may not have local knowledge, I know a lot of drivers I chatted with used to drive minicabs before they did rideshare. That said, I mostly use public transport unless it's super late, and at 2am the city is usually quiet enough that the sat nav route works fine.
Oh wild. I don't know if I used Uber that early on. It was banned from wherever I lived for years which was really frustrating.
That sounds kind of awful for the drivers, like if you'd planned to only do 2 hours of driving but someone decided to have you take them city to city or something at the end of your day.
I've never driven Uber (can someone weigh in if they have?!), but from chatting to the drivers the app was designed to try and align drivers with journeys that didn't do that (not that I've ever met a driver that would turn down a large fair!). Apparently there was also a 'heading home' setting that would offer them jobs in the general direction of their home.
I've noticed this in other contexts as well (new cars, restaurant prices, tipping norms skyrocketing) - Americans don't seem to value frugality anymore. Despite all the complaining about these prices, people are obviously still paying them. Same goes for new cars - SUVs and Minivans are now upwards of $60k, yet there seems to be no pressure on the carmakers to lower the price. And why should there be if people are paying those prices?
Personally I have a hard time identifying with it.
Moreso, I am concerned that what appeared to be transitory inflation becomes permanent when consumers do not moderate purchasing in the face of prices rising at multiples of overall inflation levels.
> Despite all the complaining about these prices, people are obviously still paying them.
Because they have no other choice.
Reminds me of the bus strike when I was driving cabs in Phoenix, people paid the price but nobody was happy about it as the other option was not having a job.
Destroy the competition then charge whatever you want.
Many people in the US need cars to work. If their car dies or gets totaled in an accident they'll need to buy a new one. Used car prices aren't that much better than new car prices, and with a new car you can avoid inheriting problems with cars that were previously owned and rejected. You're much more likely to get a reliable car that will last longer buying new than used.
Someone needs to make a rideshare aggregator app that will compare local taxis, uber and lyft. I haven't used a taxi in maybe 15 years because the last experience I had in one was so bad. So I'm not familiar with how different the pricing is between them.
Two mile ride in Miami and we get to the destination and the guy tells me his card reader doesn't work. Not the first time I've had one pull that scam.
edit: I'm getting some responses that I should've just hopped out. I did. Copy pasting the story I just posted in another comment -
---
> I had him drop me off at the mall so that I could grab a belt for a wedding that was happening an hour or two later. He told me his reader wasn't working and I didn't have cash. I was literally wearing swimming trunks and looked like I'd just come out of a pool, because I had.
I said sorry mate you need to warn someone when they get in and not after the ride. I hopped out to go in the mall and grab a belt and he followed me screaming at me the entire time. This probably wasn't even a 2 mile ride. Hotel to Miami mall.
For some reason I can't remember the outcome. Maybe I got so sick of him I went to an atm. I hope I didn't. I don't know what other outcome would've happened. This was when I was young and hot headed and absolutely not afraid of this guy screaming at me.
That's the best scam. Just say "Oh, ok. Thanks for the ride then!" and get out. It's either a free ride, or the reader magically starts working. They legally have to tell you the reader is broken before the ride. Once I did have a driver try to run my card and it failed multiple times, so I called dispatch and gave them my payment info.
Same thing goes if they don't turn the meter on. Also a free ride. If they don't turn the meter on, ask them to right away. Or, wait until the destination and agree on a reasonable price or simply walk away.
If any cab driver tries to negotiate a flat rate ahead of time, it's usually a rip off. Though, I will do this after a busy event if we can agree on a price that's cheaper than ride share surge pricing and not outrageous. It's gotten so bad that if one does just turn the meter on at a busy event I give them a huge tip and say thank you for not pulling that crap.
> If any cab driver tries to negotiate a flat rate ahead of time, it's usually a rip off.
The only time I'd do that was if it was the difference between a round-trip and just dropping them off, usually I'd just shut off the time part of the meter and wait for free. Or if something went wrong I'd give them the benefit of the mistake like if I forget to change the meter off airport rate or something. Other times I'd just give someone a deal because they obviously could use the money more than me and I felt bad for them.
Though...flat rates did make for some better rides since you can take whatever route you want and not worry about people complaining you're taking the long way to run up the meter. A couple times I had people "hardball" me over a flat rate (like "I won't pay a penny over $80 you dirty peasant") and I'd always make sure the meter was well over whatever high price they randomly decided on to make them feel better about their negotiation skills.
Usually whenever someone would ask for "the best price" I'd just say "whatever the meter says when we get there" and leave it at that unless they were doing something unusual like multiple stops over a long time period or if they were super determined and I was in a good mood.
Amazing that cab riders still try this old trick, because sorry but I'm pretty sure most people nowadays just don't even carry cash anymore. I'm not playing that game. You picked me up without a functioning payment method used by 99% of the population with it advertised on your door. Not my problem. Either I pay with my card or I'm leaving.
I had him drop me off at the mall so that I could grab a belt for a wedding that was happening an hour or two later. He told me his reader wasn't working and I didn't have cash. I was literally wearing swimming trunks and looked like I'd just come out of a pool, because I had.
I said sorry mate you need to warn someone when they get in and not after the ride. I hopped out to go in the mall and grab a belt and he followed me screaming at me the entire time. This probably wasn't even a 2 mile ride. Hotel to Miami mall.
For some reason I can't remember the outcome. Maybe I got so sick of him I went to an atm. I hope I didn't.
Yeah, Taxis try the "card reader broken" scam more than 50% of the time IME. Fortunately, it always manages to magically fix itself when I make a show of pretending to not have cash.
aha when I was younger and they tried that shit I would just shrug and say I guess they were not getting paid then which as you say seems to be the magic incantation to fix these readers.
Not a lot of experience with taxis, but what's the scam here? Are they just trying to dodge taxes? Do they count on you to not have change and round up your fare to nearest $1/$5?
Yeah, what's actually happening here is that Uber fares are now climbing to what they "should be" in a functional market; the people accustomed to 15 years of artificially-low prices will need time to readjust.
(Edit: the people elsewhere in this thread saying things like "Uber used to work better than taxis, but lately drivers have started refusing to take me to out-of-the-way locations" are arguably seeing the exact same phenomenon. This is just what taxi drivers do in a normal market, because they're rational actors maximizing their hourly earnings. That was disrupted for a while by the entry of new players making the market topsy-turvy, but now that those distortions are smoothing out it's back to business as usual. You should get used to it.)
In NYC the Curb app is honestly way better. It pairs you up with a taxi (they could've killed uber years ago if they built this app in 2012) and you pay significantly less as there is no surge pricing, you are charged based on the yellow cab fare rules.
I would walk in the thundering rain or snow before I would pay $52 to travel 3 miles. At my normal sedate walking speed that is $52 an hour to take in some scenery.
I did this once. I landed in Newark at 12am on a rainy night. Ubers were about $300 to Brooklyn with a 60 minute wait, and my phone was about dead. So, I took the AirTrain. The AirTrain doesn't go to the terminal I arrived at, so I walked through an empty parking garage, then outside in the rain for a while, then finally to the AirTrain station with all the lights off. Trains were running though! In sections. At each station between this one and the commuter rail station, you had to switch trains. Eventually I arrived at the EWR NJT station, and the machine wouldn't take my credit card. I tried another one and it worked. Eventually I got on a train to Penn Station that ... just stopped for 20 minutes for no reason. Penn Station was closing down when I arrived, and myself and another passenger got "locked in" to the gated-off corridor between NJT and the 7th Ave line. The gates weren't locked, though, so we opened them and pressed on to find the subway. The 2/3 of course runs local at this hour and at 30 minute frequencies. I definitely waited all 30 minutes, and then enjoyed the speedy trip downtown stopping at 27th St, 23rd St, 18th St, 14th St, Christopher St, Houston St, Canal St, Franklin St, Chambers St, Fulton St, Wall St, Clark St, and finally getting off at 2:30AM into the pouring rain at Boro Hall.
It was well worth saving the $290.
(I normally fly into JFK and take the LIRR to Brooklyn. I didn't do that this time because my employer insisted that I fly into SJC instead of SFO to save on taxi fare. AA would only sell EWR-DFW-SJC and not JFK-DFW-SJC. Never again. When I worked for Google I flew business class from JFK-SFO with a fully-flat bed! Then took Caltain down to Mountain View.)
i honestly don’t know what your point is. There is also cheap public transportation in the Bay Area. Is it as cheap and good as NYC? No. Do I personally still choose it over Uber and Lyft while in the Bay Area? Yes.
Anyway the original poster was clearly pointing out that public transportation in NYC is a reasonable alternative to Uber in NYC. Your bringing up the Bay Area is about as appropriate as my bringing up Prague where I live. Both are irrelevant.
That caused Daniel Penny a lot of trouble. If the police won't keep the peace, and since we're not allowed to protect ourselves, then the next solution is paying for gated communities, private schools, Costcos, and private carriage.
I didn't know who Daniel Penny is, and, after looking him up, are you for fucking real? The subway caused him a lot of trouble because he murdered a homeless guy?
Yes, that's quite the inconvenience, I avoid the subway nowadays because all these life sentences add up. What am I going to do, not murder homeless people?
It got political fast, and I believe there was some disagreement about whether or not it counts as murder when done to the homeless. It seems the compromise was to call it manslaughter.
That's a real intellectually honest representation of the situation. Why did Daniel Penny have to defend himself and the other passengers from the violent, crazy dude? Why would I put myself in the same situation, exposing myself to the violent crazy people? I'll take Uber. Or move to Europe.
Your idea of a violent and crazy person is someone who shouts at people that they are hungry and don't care if they die?
"Penny held Neely, in a chokehold on the subway train May 1 after Neely began shouting at passengers that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care whether he died. Penny forced 30-year-old Neely to the train floor and restrained him in a chokehold until he stopped breathing. A medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide."
Also, even if you do have to put a person in a chokehold, remember this from the same page:
“Bottom line – at some point Mr. Penny should have let go before Jordan died,” the statement read. “There is no excuse for choking anyone for that long. Any reasonable person knows choking someone for that long will kill them."
Also to note, Daniel Penny is not some random nobody like you are. He's a former marine, and should have known better because of his military training.
I don't remember now, as I don't read news, and it was covered by everyone at the time due to is ability to play into the current tribal wars. So it was filtering into my social media from witness accounts, analysts, etc. But CNN has no credibility, along with Fox and nytimes. They're into entertainment and will slant their stories to promote tribal outrage, as that keeps people returning for more. Life is much nicer ignoring them.
It's interesting that you mention Europe. Yes, these incidents happen here much more rarely, because we as a society take better care of mentally ill people, but that includes not randomly killing them when they're being mentally ill.
Unless I've read the article wrong, the $52 journey was "to travel a short distance through downtown Manhattan to Uber’s corporate offices to interview him back in May."
that was for a different ride. The comparison was with 113$.
>>> ”I got in the Uber to go to JFK. I was on my phone so I wasn’t paying attention. When I got to JFK, I looked to see what the price was to see what I’d tip. I saw $113. I was shocked. I was annoyed,” she told The Post Wednesday.
Also, PSA: Not sure it is still uptodate but years ago, official taxicab had set prices (~60$) to all NYC airports (JFK,LAG).
Yes I was going to bring this up. The NYC airport taxi fares are fixed price ($70). There are additional smaller fees applied based on time of day, tolls, etc, but a ride to/from Manhattan to JFK shouldn't be more than $85 or so inclusive of tip.
JFK/EWR have the flat rate, but LGA does not. However, it winds up costing about the same to get to any airport from midtown since LGA is closer but you don't get the flat rate.
My understanding is that EWR doesn't have the flat rate because it is outside of NYC (and is also so far away that I cannot imagine how much a cab would be for that destination)
It is just clickbait. Everyone knows that the time the driver has to spend has to be incorporated in the cost, so omitting the time it took for the trip is an overt attempt at making something out of nothing. There are also tolls.
And the fact that no one forced them to pay $52, they could have used a taxi in midtown Manhattan.
I am guessing traffic was particularly bad or something, or the supply of drivers was more constrained for whatever reason.
I take Uber a couple times a year (when there are no other alternatives). I always chat with the driver and ask how much he is making out of that ride. I have seen absolutely astonishing price differences.
Coming back from SFO to south bay at night a couple weeks ago, we were quoted 120$. The driver take home was...30$.
I don't understand how we got in this situation. Is the app really providing that much value? Why can't a scrappy startup with 25 people not create a similar app and take a fixed 1$ a ride?
Today there is no other solution than accepting Uber (or similarly Lyft) prices. There should be a world where instead of paying 120$ I pay 60$ and the driver instead of getting 30$ gets 55$?
Austin has had a number of not-Uber/Lyft rideshares. There was a point where U/L were banned by the city council for not doing fingerprint background checks so a bunch popped up.
> Uber’s CEO blamed inflation for the increased rates, telling Wired during his sit-down that “everything is more expensive.”
> But the company’s prices in the US have increased at four times the rate of inflation – for a total of 83% — between 2018 and 2022, according to a recent Forbes analysis.
LOL, it's amazing watching CEOs use inflation as cover for their pricing decisions.
I'm not one to believe all companies are being this dishonest, but kudos to MSN for disputing their BS.
I'm kinda surprised Lyft is cheaper than Uber nowadays, by like a big margin. Almost $20 difference in fare when going to Airport that usually costs $60.
I'm sure a ton of drivers have both uber and lyft open, and a lot of users check on both lyft and uber. I don't have any special loyalty, go with whoever is the cheapest and if lyft is just $1-2 more expensive then I chose it over Uber.
I think Uber is trying to make a profit but slowly killing the golden goose.
> Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was floored by a journalist’s $51.69 trip, including the driver’s tip, to travel a short distance through downtown Manhattan to Uber’s corporate offices to interview him back in May.
To be clear about the headline. The CEO did not experience the event.
The journalist told them about it, and they were stunned or expressed being stunned. The CEO is distant from their own product and problems, and completely unaffected by them.
This happened in NYC which is the only American city where you can get around using public transport pretty much anywhere 24/7. So working class people don't need to pay these extortionate rates.
1. Pick a cab company, look up phone number.
2. Phone, usually get a dispatcher but sometimes busy signal.
3. Tell them where you are.
4. Get very loose estimate on pickup time.
5. Wait with no updates.
6. Most of the time cab comes, if it doesn’t, GOTO step 1 by phoning back or trying another company.
Compared to
1. Open app.
2. Hit button.
3. “Real time” updates on car location and estimated time
I don’t like the gig economy model and I don’t use Uber and still use cabs, but I can see the appeal.
Yeah, where I grew up it was even worse. The main nearby company constantly had multiple cabs parked and people idling for huge amounts of time, but they demanded at least 24 hour notice and a 3 hour pickup window regardless of the time. For trips taking ~10 minutes.
I'm honestly surprised they still exist. I have no idea whose money is keeping them in business.
if you're of certain minority groups, the cab experience was:
1. Go outside
2. Put your hand up
3. Never get a taxi
> Most of the time cab come
This got really bad in many cities because of a cycle: If the rate of dispatched cabs get low enough, people make multiple requests to the dispatchers, so more than one cab would go to the spot, and you take whichever cab gets there first and the rest are "dropped". So the other cabs can't service dispatch requests, the servicing rate drops, so that further incentivises multiple request...
I'm sure it's worse for minorities, but "cab supposedly dispatched but never shows" is definitely not a rare experience even with maximum privilege in play.
Out of interest, which bit of the flow they described is different in NYC?
It was similar to that in London 10 years ago - the most 'fun' thing used to be booking a cab for an airport drop - would they turn up at 3am as planned? If not, what will you do - as their office may now be closed... I ended up nearly stuck at the airport one night after my booked cab (pre paid!) didn't turn up, so had to get a black cab at twice the cost, and only after I convinced him I had the cash at home, as I didn't have any on my and my card had been cancelled while I was on holiday (for using the card abroad). Fun
I'm not from new york, but I think you just hail the cab down in the street, no? The described flow is what I'd have to do in atlanta to go basically anywhere.
It does appear in this story: "By comparison, the base fare for a yellow cab from Manhattan to JFK Airport is $70, according to NYC’s Taxi and Limousine Commission" (vs. Uber's $113)
> and now in the era of surge pricing I really don't understand it.
Hasn't surge pricing been a part of Uber from day 1? I remember that being one of their original pitches, dynamic pricing being touted as a feature that will help get more drivers on the road when there are shortages.
The app is misleading and insulting to users' intelligence. Multiple times, I've requested a ride, been connected with a driver, and it's completely obvious that the dude is still sitting in his house and hasn't gotten into his car yet. Yet the app will show A) The car moving around pointlessly on the map, B) The wait timer diminishing from 10 minutes, to 9 minutes, 8 minutes, etc.
It's so transparent that some asshole PM in San Francisco thinks he's really clever and that lying to users will improve retention or whatever. Which also means he thinks users are clueless rubes that can't tell he's fucking lying to them.
This might improve short-term metrics - perhaps I'm slightly less likely to cancel the ride on any particular trip - but in the long term it makes me hate this company and avoid using them unless I'm absolutely forced to. There's a million other things in the app and user experience that cause similar mental friction and stress.
The result is that these days I'd much rather drive my car to the airport and pay for parking than take an Uber.