Uber

[Headache in a Suitcase]

So who else is addicted to Uber?

 

[mikal]

What is Uber?


Sent from my iPhone using U2 Interference

 

[corianderstem]

You mean the pink-moustachioed cars?

 

[cobl04]

I fucking love it. I will never go back to cabs. Cheaper, easier, cleaner, no money changes hands... I can't think of a single downside.

 

[No spoken words]

So who else is addicted to Uber?

I stick to the Subway in the city but have used it in other cities and have to say, it's been all positive.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

I thought this was going to be a thread about beav

 

[PhilsFan]

My experience with it has been fine but I have heard from some lady friends that they've encountered some creepy drivers and that there's not much you can really do it about that because they're not really employees.

 

[corianderstem]

My boss and her hubby use it all the time. Me, I so rarely bother taking a cab, that I don't see myself ever using Uber.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I live in queens... One subway stop away from midtown, but mist yellow cabs don't venture outside of Manhattan unless they're dropping off a hire... So Uber has been an absolute godsend whenever they do subway construction, which on the 7 train is like every weekend.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

You mean the pink-moustachioed cars?

No that's Lyft... Similar

 

[bono_man2002]

Used it over the weekend for the first time, It's awesome!

 

[mikal]

So I'm guessing I don't know what Uber is because I live in Green Bay. We use magic cheese carpets to fly around.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

App based rideshare

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQvgyt8fjBE

 

[PhilsFan]

I had a horrific experience with it recently where I got charged $120 to go what should have been 11 miles.

Also, shit like this has happened on occasion:

Uber Calls Woman's 20-Mile Nightmare Abduction an "Inefficient Route"

 

[Sicy]

I've used it a couple of times - love it. Will never call a cab again.

 

[bono_212]

I had a horrific experience with it recently where I got charged $120 to go what should have been 11 miles.

Also, shit like this has happened on occasion:

Uber Calls Woman's 20-Mile Nightmare Abduction an "Inefficient Route"

Maybe this is super backwards of me, but whatever, here's how I'm basically feeling about Uber, and blogs, and just general counter-culture type stuff where the average joe just decides he can do something as well as a "professional" (I use the word lightly for cab drivers).

Is it cheaper? Yeah. Is it faster? It can be. Is it better? It has its moments. Are things like the above worth it? To me? Not even close. and this just seems to be the narrative time and time again. Infrastructure isn't always fun, but it certainly seems to at least curb/prevent shit like this from happening.


Also, Peef, is this surge pricing thing what happened to you?

 

[bonocomet]

Exact same thing happened to me. It can be good usually I suppose but be careful there had been nothing going on in your city they consider is a good chance to overcharge you. We tried to get home one night which was an 11 mile ride. There had been a Paul McCartney concert earlier that evening, and even though we were about a mile from the ballpark, and the show had ended about 2 hours earlier, there wasn't a soul around or any traffic whatsoever, and it was somewhere around midnight, they still wanted triple the rate. It would have cost us $130.00 .

Edit, because bono212's post showed up... It was the surge pricing when I tried to use it. Completely unreasonable because it was hours later and it was late and there was no traffic or crowds.

 

[PhilsFan]

Also, Peef, is this surge pricing thing what happened to you?

No, there was bad traffic because of an accident so the guy took a route way out of our way. I had never used it before and was very drunk (which is why I was using Uber) so I didn't understand that taking a different route was adding to my bill. My understanding had been that the whole appeal was that you already knew your bill and it charged to your credit card and you didn't have to sweat it. I thought that was part of the convenience everyone was raving about. I live 11 miles from the concert I was at, and he ended up driving around 32 miles to go around.

He was a really pleasant dude, too, but he was foreign and I'm not sure he knew he how to get anywhere in the Philly area. I was sort of trying to help direct him, and again, I didn't really understand that I was being charged per mile because I thought my rate was fixed into the estimate I'd been given when I ordered the car in the first place.

Also, apparently uberX isn't an option in Philly or something? So I guess I had a more expensive one to begin with.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Maybe this is super backwards of me, but whatever, here's how I'm basically feeling about Uber, and blogs, and just general counter-culture type stuff where the average joe just decides he can do something as well as a "professional" (I use the word lightly for cab drivers).

Is it cheaper? Yeah. Is it faster? It can be. Is it better? It has its moments. Are things like the above worth it? To me? Not even close. and this just seems to be the narrative time and time again. Infrastructure isn't always fun, but it certainly seems to at least curb/prevent shit like this from happening.


Also, Peef, is this surge pricing thing what happened to you?

I had a terrible Uber experience once. The guy had good strewn in his backseat, and he got "lost" about 12 times, in a very hard place to get lost.

I called Uber and got a full refund.

I've had dozens of terrible taxi experiences from just regular old street hails.

Never gotten a dime back from the city. Go figure.

 

[Phantom Dreamer]

The Municipality of Anchorage sued to get it out of there.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

i have never used uber, but i've used a similar site, carpooling.com. that site is imo way better, as it charges a flat fare. afaik you're not charged extra if you deviate from your route. when i used it to go from ingolstadt (near munich) to berlin, the driver made a couple stops along the way to fill up on gas and also so we could get food. plus he took me to the hostel i was staying at rather than a train station. the site itself didn't charge me anything (as he'd put down to pay him in cash the day of), and he didn't charge extra either.

typing this out now it makes it possibly sound like the dude was a creep or just made unannounced stops all the time, but it wasn't like that at all. it turned out he lived almost within walking distance of where i was staying so it was more convenient for both of us to just drop me off there, instead of navigating through the busiest part of berlin.

aaaaanyway, the whole point of this was to point out that this site is soon coming to the states, too. right now it's just multiple countries in western europe that use it. it's more of an actual carpool thing rather than a taxi service. you can still definitely book at the last minute, so hopefully it'll be better (and cheaper) than uber.

 

[youarenotimmune]

Any experience with Uber or Lyft in Los Angeles?

 

[cobl04]

Yes!

I couldn't get it to work.

I hope this helps

 

[bono_212]

My friend swears by it, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to actually try it.

 

[gvox]

Why not? It's all the rage here. Imo a million times better than any cab experience I've ever had.

 

[youarenotimmune]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Guess I'll try it when I go to LA.

 

[bono_212]

Why not? It's all the rage here. Imo a million times better than any cab experience I've ever had.

Seems creepy as fuck. And I'd rather just take the train, in that case.

 

[Hewson]

There's been a couple instances here of Uber drivers accused of sexual assaults on female passengers.

 

[corianderstem]

Yeah. I mean, cabs aren't perfect, and women have shady shit happen to them in cabs, but the skeevy/shitty stories anecdotes I've heard about Uber makes me not want to use them.

Also, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, or if this has changed, but wasn't part of the cab companies' complaints about the Uber drivers not having to follow the same regulations? I mean yeah, let's give the cab companies some competition, but if they're providing the same service, why shouldn't Uber be held to the same standards?

Ditto w/r/t background checks for their drivers. I hear Uber's not so great about that.