From what I've been experiencing, the service is declining rapidly. Had some bozo take me to midtown using 59 the other day when it was jam packed with traffic. Could have gone Memorial, Richmond, I10, but he went 59 and I wasn't on the ball... another guy waited at my cross street instead of my street expecting me to walk a block? Then he was like, "but it said this address so I waited here" -- and I was like yeah bro, that's my ****ing address you just quoted. I think a combination of people who have no idea what they're dong + ex-cab drivers joining Uber + more people using Uber have resulted in ****tier service. Just my guess.
Isn't it in the driver's best interest to take the longest route possible. Regular cabbies do that all the time. Unless you had some specific route you wanted to travel instead I wouldn't get upset at the Uber driver for trying to reach his maximum earning potential.
I figured that had to be it but normally that route costs $11-$15 and my phone said it would take over an hour with that traffic. So over an hour to make $15? Memorial or I10 are maybe 1-2 miles less, possibly more miles... it didn't compute. Length is one thing but once you factor in time... completely different. Maybe he was a newbie or just not very bright. I had him exit and we took back roads. I of course had to lead the way.
Same thing happened to me using regular Uber. I had a guy who barely spoke any English pick us up from a private party at Lounge Next Door at Ibiza. Dude's ride was a junkyard car, hard to understand English and he asked me how to get home as he had just moved here. I even asked him "If you just moved here how in the hell are you a driver, and you can't follow the map on your phone?" I had him stop at the Reef and had Uber XL dialed in and another driver picked us up in 2 minutes. No idea how anyone thinks it's a good idea to drive people to destinations when they JUST ****ing moved here. I always use Uber XL or Uber SUV now. Rollin' in a 1992 Hyundai with a fart can and a guy with no idea how to get from Travis to Memorial, really? Ain't got time for that ****.
That might be the case for a single route. But the theory of uber is that you can rate the drivers, and low-rated drivers (those who take excessively long routes) are going to get less business. The idea is to incentivize the driver to provide the best possible experience to the customer. Though one uber problem is that it makes it difficult to "select" a good driver. Uber just assigns the nearest one, and it's up to you to keep rejecting the bad ones.
the rate calculates on an equation with variables time and distance. distance has a larger factor though.
That to me is infuriating but cabbies do the same thing. I have friends that are hesitant to call them out but I don't care. I want to get from point A to point B without going sightseeing. Also from what I've seen a bunch of Uber drivers here are from out of town because they say surge pricing hits here more than other cities. So they don't know how to get around well anyway.
I thought UBER kicked drivers off the system if they have less than 3 stars in a row or something of that nature. Also I think UBER monitors pickup and dropoff locations digitally to see if there are drivers that are continuously using longer routes to pad the checks.
Cabbie can rape too. On a side note, I've noticed the quality of service continue to dwindle and the surge rates getting even higher for longer periods of time. I wonder if I should move to Lyft.
I didn't really care for Uber going up on their rates (i.e. implementing "peak pricing") during the Sydney hostage situation in the CBD of Sydney. Thought that was a ****ty way to treat a sensitive situation. That's like if Uber did something like that on 9/11 in New York when everyone was trying to scramble to get out of Manhattan or something. ****ty company tactics.
To be fair to them, the surge pricing is probably an automated thing based on real-time supply and demand. So it wasn't that they actively thought "hey, let's take advantage of this crisis". It's more likely that they just didn't think about the repercussions of their normal business model.
This. It's just getting cheaper just to take a cab. The last time I used regular Uber to pick us up from a dinner party I had a guy who just arrived here from out of the country in a 1995 beater, the car reeked of armpit and he asked me how to get to my house. Tha ****? Since then I've used the black car, and they raise rates any time after 6pm on a weekend. It costs me $35-$40 to go 4-5 miles to get to a Rockets game or to go to midtown (the cost to get home is much higher after 10PM), but the cab ride home is around $20. About done with Uber.
I do myself have hard time reckoning how this is any different than hitchhiking. There's some risk. Generally, everything is going to go well. But there will one day be a scandal. With a cab driver you have some form of professional training, policies, accountability, and responsibility. It's more like a team. Teams communicate and that, like civilization, also advances the drivers education. Those elements improve your service. There are obvious disadvantages like the cost and convenience. I admire the Uber model, it works, it's smart, it like letting a community raise your kid, it works, but I do think there is an inherent lightning like risk there for the rider that will rear it's ugly head at some point.
Uber drivers are rated so the customer holds them accountable. If they are reviewed poorly Uber fires them. If they commit a crime you can track them pretty easily.
There's also the fact that they use regular hired citizens that get paid based on supply and demand. Uber drivers are not a public service, rather a private company. Some of their drivers might not find the risk of going into the area that a terrorist has taken hostages worth the fare. Publicly, it looks bad. But like Major said, the surge prices are based on supply and demand, and understand that they are not a community service nor charity.
