In the US, drivers are telling customers to cancel rides (so that Uber doesn't take action against the driver for canceling) when they don't like the destination or don't think the trip is worth it. If you don't cancel, drivers will simply park and wait for you to cancel and Uber's help doesn't seem to want to help.
I think a big thing is simply that Uber is trying to turn a profit in an industry where the margins just aren't that good. In order to make that profit, they've had to pivot to being this "hostile" company. They're putting pressure on drivers to find ways to lower their costs there. They're no longer helping customers in ways that would lose them money.
In the early days, Uber was cheap and support would do anything to make you happy. Now Uber is expensive and support is working to make investors happy.
> If you don't cancel, drivers will simply park and wait for you to cancel
If I realized this was happening I'd be inclined to simply order a Lyft/Uber and off I go, and the driver will eventually have to cancel to get their next fare.
Because they have driven some competition out of the market so alternatives can be hard to find, compared to pre-Uber days. So a person might say “See? If it’s easier to use Uber then they are providing more value.” Except the alternatives may have been better pre-Uber, therefore Uber only provides relative value now because they have downgraded the overall quality.
This will vary quite a bit by location though. In areas where it had been difficult or highly inconvenient to get a cab pre-Uber then Uber may still provide actual value over prior status quo. I’ve experienced both situations.
I'm calling BS. If there was really a demand for it, the taxis would be back in no time. Operating a taxi is not rocket science nor does it require a huge capital investment.
Call BS all you want, but it takes time for markets to adjust. How long has Uber been around, and for how long has the current status quo in their decreased quality prevailed? It takes time for the market to respond, even when capital barriers are low things don’t turn on a dime. There’s enough risk involved that people aren’t sitting at their computers eagerly refreshing their browser for the merest hint that Uber customers are dissatisfied. But if you’re looking for evidence of people having enough dissatisfaction to look elsewhere you can find it. As I said, competition was driven out of the market, it just may not come back on the time scale that you think it should.
For example, Lyft is inching upwards a few points in market share[1] albeit at the cost to their own bottom line. This is evidence I may be right, and as a result Lyft is attempting to take advantage of the situation I describe. While you, also correct that competitors would try to swoop in, are simply incorrect about the time scale. The dust hasn’t settled yet. “No time” as far as macroscopic market shifts go often starts very slowly, and then all at once.
Of course I could be wrong, but I’m not sure you’ve demonstrated a compelling reason why I must or likely am wrong. My assessment stands, for the current state of affairs, but in a year or two the market could have shifted against Uber. Or maybe Uber will be agile enough to respond before things go to far.
Things get bad slowly and it can be hard to notice at first. When companies slightly shrink their products or change to cheaper ingredients, most people don't immediately notice. To an extent, it's like the boiling frog analogy. You slowly raise the prices and lower the service expectations and people don't notice as easily.
People also become dependent on things. Even when there are alternatives, people have habits and those habits are powerful.
Uber doesn't have a monopoly, but they are usually a duopoly (with Lyft). It isn't easy to compare prices and services between. I hate saying that because if you are trolling, you're going to say "it's easy, you just open both apps", but it's not easy since the pricing is always shifting and with drivers canceling or pushing you to cancel it becomes problematic.
Uber's brand and one's history with the service can leave one hesitant to believe it is now bad. Maybe a few times you think "oh, it's just a couple bad experiences." Historically, you have more positive experiences to balance it out. Many people will want to write off these bad experiences because they've talked up Uber a lot in the past. They don't want the cognitive dissonance of thinking "wow, I was an idiot to buy into their bait-and-switch and get all my friends to buy into it!" They'd rather believe that the service hasn't gotten that much worse and that they still like it.
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We see this kind of thing in a lot of areas. If Google Search is so bad, why are so many people using it so much that it's so profitable? Again, many of the same things: it becomes bad slowly over time and people don't notice it so much; people become dependent on things and use Google as a habit without even thinking about available alternatives - it's the default search in their browser just as Uber is the app they have installed; while Google doesn't have a monopoly, there aren't many alternatives and yea you could just run your search twice in two search engines, but people aren't going to do even seemingly "easy" things to compare or get better results; and Google has a brand associated with search quality that people have pushed forward over a couple decades and people don't like changing their beliefs around that.
We can't make truly free decisions. We don't have a situation where one could say, "If Uber isn't serving you well, you could just make your own transportation network that treated you better and use that." That's not so possible. We're often left without truly free choices because we live in a society where certain things exist and other things don't and we can't rebuild things overnight when something isn't great.
Lots of companies make lots of money while providing bad service because they're using their market position to gain leverage. If your logic is "so many people are using it, therefore it must be good," that really ignores how companies use their market position to leverage more profits because people don't really have choice.
I'm not sure Google is a great example - although they've got worse there's no obvious competitor which is better at search itself. There's various other reasons why you might not wish to use Google but in terms of quality of core text searches I've seldom found anyone consistently better. With Uber I think they've declined (in some places) to the point where they're below the quality of their competitors (even ignoring the ethical/whatever arguments against using Uber).
I think for most people, they won't have even thought about trying a competitor - whether that's Google or Uber. They won't even know whether Uber has declined relative to their competition.
Personally, I don't even know how to get a taxi in most places anymore. At the airport, sure. I live in one of the densest places in the US that isn't NYC, but there aren't taxis going around through most areas. I'd basically be walking to the kind of place that already has public transit to find a taxi (and even then they aren't that common).
There's Lyft, but is that actually any better? I typically find their prices to be higher, but maybe that's changed. A lack of information on actual quality can be a big thing.
I'm not arguing Uber hasn't declined to the point where they're below the quality of competitors. I guess I'm more questioning: how would you communicate to me a competitor that is better? I think that's what is missing in a lot of ways: how do you prove to yourself and others that a competitor is better? Maybe you'll say "Lyft is often $1-3 more expensive, but the drivers don't cancel quite as much and support is better." That's hard to really get a feel for - just as it's hard to really quantify the quality of search results.
Maybe you live in NYC and taxis are plentiful and there are even NYC-specific app-based services. Maybe you live in a part of Europe where there are apps that work with the taxi system. Maybe you're in another part of the world where there's lots of ride-app competition that doesn't exist in the US.
But I'd love to be sold on a competitor. If we were friends having lunch, what would you say? "Oh, you've got to try XYZ because... They're better than Uber because..." But I think most people aren't having that conversation. We had those conversations talking about how Uber was better than taxis. You can see when they're coming, it just charges your credit card, support is great about bad rides, you don't have to call a service, it's all GPS based, you know when you'll get to your destination... That's how we sold our friends on Uber. How do we now argue that something else is better quality? Maybe the issue is that Uber is hitting 90% of the quality of competitors which makes it hard to discern if they're actually worse.
Yes this is very true, and I am speaking from experience. Here's something I've seen financial people say: "We are currently spending x and we want to spend y. How much do we need to adjust each year to get there without losing customers?"
Oh man I hate it when I schedule a ride days ahead of time to JFK airport but the rider shows up and thought that I wanted to go to Newark. Since i'm closer to Newark and they dont bother even reading the destination correctly, I'm told that I have to cancel. Its been so frustrating.
You mean local taxis which were ultra ultra corrupt.
Like seriously, I understand some of the participants on HN are too young to have personally experienced that industry first hand, but it was baaaaaad.
If you think Uber right now is bad, you would have hated cabs.
Interesting. If I realized this was happening I'd be inclined to simply order a Lyft/Uber and off I go, and the driver will eventually have to cancel to get their next fare.
If you do that, the driver might show up and then mark you as not at the pickup spot. Then you'll get charged the cancelation fee. It's really crappy, but a lot of drivers are figuring out how to work the system - as Uber figures out how to work them.
I think a big thing is simply that Uber is trying to turn a profit in an industry where the margins just aren't that good. In order to make that profit, they've had to pivot to being this "hostile" company. They're putting pressure on drivers to find ways to lower their costs there. They're no longer helping customers in ways that would lose them money.
In the early days, Uber was cheap and support would do anything to make you happy. Now Uber is expensive and support is working to make investors happy.