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Stevo985

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10 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Just to challenge the narrative here a bit.

I once got a blowjob in the back of an Uber on the way home from a Tinder date. Not my idea, but rude to say no. Text the girl the next day to ask if it had affected her rating (yeah she paid, I'm a gentleman). She said it appeared to have gone up!

So there's a positive story for you.

£30 soilage charge for sticky residue

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22 hours ago, Ingram85 said:

 I have never done anything to warrant a lower score. Yet I've read a few things online and in reddits where drivers have openly said that if they dont even like the look of you, if you are a different race, religion, culture or whatever, even if they are in a bad mood or having a bad day then they'll just mark you down for the hell of it through no fault of your own. 

Just like shitty customers do the same to drivers.

You're always going to get shitty drivers and shitty customers who abuse a ratings system.

 As you have more trips, your rating will stabilise to reality (same for new drivers).

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Just now, ender4 said:

Just like shitty customers do the same to drivers.

You're always going to get shitty drivers and shitty customers who abuse a ratings system.

 As you have more trips, your rating will stabilise to reality (same for new drivers).

So becomes utterly pointless. Rating is on last 500 trips for drivers, not sure on customers, i suspect the threshold is lower (maybe 100) but have no evidence for that

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5 minutes ago, bickster said:

So becomes utterly pointless. Rating is on last 500 trips for drivers, not sure on customers, i suspect the threshold is lower (maybe 100) but have no evidence for that

well, its as pointless as tripadvisor ratings, amazon ratings, google ratings, etc. 

Ingram says he's only used Uber 10 times, so same issue as if you see an Amazon product with only 10 reviews or a restaurant on Tripadvisor with only 10 reviews. 

Its not a perfect system, but its more useful that not having a ratings system.    You'd expect it probably drives up overall standards of drivers and customers behaviour in taxis.  

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35 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Its not a perfect system, but its more useful that not having a ratings system. 

It is if you want to enable casual racism, vindictiveness for petty dislikes etc (and by this I mean, they kept me waiting a minute, they had shopping bags, hair was too long, had a wart of their nose)

If a driver rates a customer as three stars or below (read that as 1 star, as no-one rates 2 or 3) they never get to pick that person up again

Trip Advisor ratings are shit, I can show you many places rated highly with lots of reviews that I wouldn't go to. I've never really paid much attention to Amazon ratings tbh as I very rarely use them.

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People reviews of anything are stupid. 

As Bicks says, Trip Advisor is something I try and be really objective with.  If a place has faults, I'll mark it how I see it, but acknowledge that McDonald's isn't going to be the Ritz. 

People put 1 star reviews up because they didn't book a table, wanted to eat some place and got turned away because it was full! 

Unless the owner of the restaurant specifically leaves a note on that review, to people scanning or just looking at stars, it must be awful!  The restaurant then loses business, potentially going out of business, despite maybe being pretty good.  

My friend manages a TGI Friday's.  He kicked a table out for putting glass in their own food and them claiming it was put there so they got free meals (they were also picking up tips for staff left by people as they were leaving).  He was notified by a colleague that the restaurant had received a 1 star review and that the person (my mate) who kicked them out was racist, plus they used his actual name (from the name tags they use).  He tried to get Trip Advisor to keep the review, as it's up to the people whatever they thought of the place, but to remove his name.  Took him 3 months to get it done, and people during that time mentioned to him "Were you the racist guy?"

(some) People are just horrible. 

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This is why the licence was revoked. And remember, this is the second time, they promised to improve. They actually told TfL themselves too apparently.

Quote

Man with criminal caution for child porn images is among 43 fraudulent drivers without Uber licences who faked IDs to get fares as ride-hail app is banned in London
Uber driver had caution for distributing indecent images of children, TfL found
He was one of 43 Uber workers who used fake IDs to pick up customers
Transport bosses in capital yesterday stripped minicab app of licence to operate
They say the company has failed to address concerns over safety and security
Statement reveals passengers on 14,000 trips were duped over their driver

Daily Heil

Firstly thats just what they found, guranteed they didnt check every record. Thats 14000 uninsured journeys btw

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  • 10 months later...
  • 9 months later...

Uber.  
 

As someone who has championed them in the past, I now no longer use their shoddy service.

This is how the booking process has worked out for me the last few times I’ve tried and I no longer even bother: 

I request an Uber. They accept the booking but then spend an age searching for an available driver. A driver accepts, but, lo and behold, what do we have here AGAIN? “Demand is higher than usual so fares are higher” or whatever the cocking message is so they now want, and this is the most recent example, 47 quid to take me less than five miles. Say if I were to accept, the driver would probably take much longer than the indicated five minutes or make a pathetic attempt to reach me before cancelling because he no longer fancies it. Say I do get the pleasure of someone actually making it to me, they’ll then follow some crappy route suggested to them by whatever useless app it is they’ve decided to use because they don’t know the way themselves. 

Now I just don’t even bother and will just flag down a black cab. They’re nicer, quicker to find (and get me to my destination), the drivers are more pleasant AND they are now often cheaper. 

And as for Bolt. LOL. 

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1 hour ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

Uber.  
 

As someone who has championed them in the past, I now no longer use their shoddy service.

This is how the booking process has worked out for me the last few times I’ve tried and I no longer even bother: 

I request an Uber. They accept the booking but then spend an age searching for an available driver. A driver accepts, but, lo and behold, what do we have here AGAIN? “Demand is higher than usual so fares are higher” or whatever the cocking message is so they now want, and this is the most recent example, 47 quid to take me less than five miles. Say if I were to accept, the driver would probably take much longer than the indicated five minutes or make a pathetic attempt to reach me before cancelling because he no longer fancies it. Say I do get the pleasure of someone actually making it to me, they’ll then follow some crappy route suggested to them by whatever useless app it is they’ve decided to use because they don’t know the way themselves. 

Now I just don’t even bother and will just flag down a black cab. They’re nicer, quicker to find (and get me to my destination), the drivers are more pleasant AND they are now often cheaper. 

And as for Bolt. LOL. 

I’ve only ever used Uber in Orlando. It’s brilliant there. Cheap, fast and reliable. 

I’ve tried a few times here and there’s never a driver nearby.

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44 minutes ago, Genie said:

I’ve only ever used Uber in Orlando. It’s brilliant there. Cheap, fast and reliable. 

I’ve tried a few times here and there’s never a driver nearby.

Not any more it isn't. They've treated the drivers so badly in the US that the number of drivers has fallen dramatically (was already happening before the pandemic but that has accelerated the issue) and the model is so completely different to the original model that instead of getting 75% of the fare, they are now lucky to get 40%. Lyft is even worse. The only reason they still have drivers is the scarcity of drivers and the constant surging.

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2 hours ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

Uber.  
 

As someone who has championed them in the past, I now no longer use their shoddy service.

This is how the booking process has worked out for me the last few times I’ve tried and I no longer even bother: 

I request an Uber. They accept the booking but then spend an age searching for an available driver. A driver accepts, but, lo and behold, what do we have here AGAIN? “Demand is higher than usual so fares are higher” or whatever the cocking message is so they now want, and this is the most recent example, 47 quid to take me less than five miles. Say if I were to accept, the driver would probably take much longer than the indicated five minutes or make a pathetic attempt to reach me before cancelling because he no longer fancies it. Say I do get the pleasure of someone actually making it to me, they’ll then follow some crappy route suggested to them by whatever useless app it is they’ve decided to use because they don’t know the way themselves. 

Now I just don’t even bother and will just flag down a black cab. They’re nicer, quicker to find (and get me to my destination), the drivers are more pleasant AND they are now often cheaper. 

And as for Bolt. LOL. 

I presume with the mention of Bolt, that this is London. London is a completely different situation to the rest of the UK. In London, even now, supply of drivers exceeds the demands of passengers because London is a comparitive ghost town to what it was pre-pandemic. The long pushed idea that surging is based on market forces is laid bare. The rest of the UK has seen demand return to pre-pandemic levels but there is a nationwide driver shortage, people are having to wait for cars at times they wouldn't normally expect to. The surging in the provinces can be given the market forces excuse (even though it isn't true) in London that isn't the case.

So now you have a situation because of the surging, that the drivers pick and choose their jobs and even throw them back half way to the job, because they can't be arsed, they are earning decent money. Also, I've always said that Google Maps (or Waze or any other App navigation tool) isn't suitable for the taxi trade. The is an obligation on a taxi driver to take the shortest (within reason) route, that isn't what those apps do, they are all about fastest and avoiding traffic which is great for normal motorists but not taxi passengers and I'm fairly sure is a breach of licence conditions in most local authorities

I don't know the answer to this but are Uber charging VAT in the UK yet? I'm fairly sure they haven't paid their £1.5 bil tax bill yet

Uber drivers now get guaranteed minimum wage, they get pensions (like that pot won't get raided) and supposedly VAT should be being charged but doesn't appear to be, yet they haven't changed their model here yet, the drivers are still taking 75% Think about that for a sec. The drivers take 75% and the VAT take 20%, so on those two items alone Uber's take is 5%, that has to pay, staff, IT Costs, drivers pensions, min wage top ups etc Customer promos..... What do you reckon they are making? On the current model? You don't need to be a maths genius to know the answer isn't profit, But constant surging will make that 5% of theirs a bigger amount of money but it'll only help a little

Uber continues to lose billions of dollars every year but now they have shareholders and if profits aren't forthcoming in the near future, those shareholders will start to see their arse, in some respects, the pandemic has given them an extension but it will crash and burn at some point

Anyway, I'm not surprised that people who got used to cheapp subsidised taxis are outraged when they are invited to pay back the subsidy with higher fares

 

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I always found Uber to be incredibly useful, however since heading back out after Covid it seems to be really difficult to actually get one now in and around Solihull and Birmingham. 

I can't understand why. Are there not enough drivers? 

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2 hours ago, DCJonah said:

I always found Uber to be incredibly useful, however since heading back out after Covid it seems to be really difficult to actually get one now in and around Solihull and Birmingham. 

I can't understand why. Are there not enough drivers? 

National shortage of drivers across the whole industry

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9 hours ago, bickster said:

Anyway, I'm not surprised that people who got used to cheapp subsidised taxis are outraged when they are invited to pay back the subsidy with higher fares

 

Absolutely. I conned myself, and enjoyed the cheaper fares, without realising the implications, but I hope other people in London have seen sense and are doing the same as me and going back to black cabs. We all turned our backs on them en masse but I hope something good comes out of this in that the traditional black cab business has a more secure future. 

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2 minutes ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

Absolutely. I conned myself, and enjoyed the cheaper fares, without realising the implications, but I hope other people in London have seen sense and are doing the same as me and going back to black cabs. We all turned our backs on them en masse but I hope something good comes out of this in that the traditional black cab business has a more secure future. 

Uber has destroyed the traditional Private Hire model in London, it was too immature to survive the arrival of "rideshare" because the rules governing London had only been in place a few years. The rest of the country PH will survive and rethrive when Uber goes

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10 hours ago, bickster said:

 

Uber drivers now get guaranteed minimum wage, they get pensions (like that pot won't get raided)

I'll bow to your knowledge of the taxi trade, but this point is a constant angle of scaremongering i see about pensions, and it's just not possible with a defined contribution pension, which almost all modern pensions are, including Uber's. It's a fund of cash immediately owned but not yet accessible to the employee. The employer can not possibly raid the fund, and even them going out of business can't wipe out the pension. The trade-off for that is that our pension security is tied to the whims of the stock market.

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