The Morality of Uber

[william marshal]

sorry for rambling. for both livery and limo the pay pay is a split with the house. normally it is a fifty fifty split and the driver pays gas toll and any other expenses while on the road. they also tend to tack on an other fee, which is sometimes called a dispatch fee or radio fee. this is not exactly a percentage but is a sliding scale. for instance it might be $10 for the fist $100 you book, going up from there. $10/100, 15/125, 20/150, 15/175 with no top. lets say you have a good night and book say $300, 150 goes to the house, 50 to the extra fee, and 50-60 for gas. riddle me this, with that situation how important would tips be to you.
here is the big secret for why drivers put up with it and why dispatchers lie to you about where the car is and why they tend to be late.

dispatchers are not hourly they get a percentage of the extra fee. so the more customers the more money they make. you call someone else and the dispatcher gets paid less. so they string you along. it is very frequent for dispatchers to supplement their income by demanding tribute from drivers. if you don't pay you could end up siting most of the shift and only book $50.

let me back up a bit. in NYC only yellow cab require a medallion they are also the only cars that are allowed to pick up what are called street hails. livery and limo companies have to have register with TLC and be licensed as what are called bases. this can cost ten of thousands of dollars and up. livery/limo companies are not allowed to pick up street hails. this rule is only enforced in Manhattan below central park north. the ticket can be between $500 and $5000 and possible loss of license depending on how often you do it.

in the outer boroughs it is common for drivers to hawk and pick up street hails or have customers call them directly and not report it to dispatch. keeping the entire fair for them selves. you end up with this common scenario, a driver has his own customer in the car, gets a call to pick up a customer and lies saying, on my way, even though you know it will be at least twenty minutes. the dispatcher lies to the customer saying the driver is on his way, not wanting to loose the commission. dispatchers tend to look the other way because they're on on the take from drivers and frequently bully drivers into driving far longer then is safe when they don't have enough man power to cover a shift. almost everyone is being paid off in one way or an other and look the other way. 

did i mention that around 80% is was off the books. this is changing, the TLC and IRS is cracking down on it. i got into driving cabs by working off the books while collecting unemployment, in between jobs or on weekends to make some extra money. as long as customers are paying in cash it's easy to cook the books, but credit cards make it much harder. which is why the industry fought so hard to keep cards out of cars.

limo companies on the other hand have much higher expectations and wont put up with any of that. they have a different set of issues.

[sperry]

What are you even talking about? You do understand that taxis already exist, yes?

 

You do understand that outside of a very few markets (like New York and San Francisco) the taxi market is absolutely atrocious?  You are lucky to get a cab at a given time, you're completely at the whim of dispatchers, the cars are neither friendly nor clean, you're at risk of fixed meters, and prone to any other number of scams. Oh, and good luck getting a cab if you're a minority in many places.

[IamMe90]

 

You do understand that outside of a very few markets (like New York and San Francisco) the taxi market is absolutely atrocious?  You are lucky to get a cab at a given time, you're completely at the whim of dispatchers, the cars are neither friendly nor clean, you're at risk of fixed meters, and prone to any other number of scams.

You do understand that none of that has anything to do with the claim that Uber is a new market? 

[sperry]

You do understand that none of that has anything to do with the claim that Uber is a new market? 

For all intents and purposes on demand transportation is a new market in many places, the city where I live among them. Taxi service is so unreliable as to not really be a thing. The ubiqutious yellow cabs of NYC are not the norm where 95% of the country's population lives.

[IamMe90]

 

 

 

For all intents and purposes on demand transportation is a new market in many places, the city where I live among them. Taxi service is so unreliable as to not really be a thing. The ubiqutious yellow cabs of NYC are not the norm where 95% of the country's population lives.

The effectiveness of a business is not a criterion for which market it's fulfilling. Your claim was that Uber was "a completely new market creating new jobs, " which is patently false, as competing markers already exist, regardless of their quality. If you don't care about those jobs being displaced, just say it, but don't disingenuously claim that Uber is not affecting jobs in the private transportation market. 

[sperry]

 

The effectiveness of a business is not a criterion for which market it's fulfilling. Your claim was that Uber was "a completely new market creating new jobs, " which is patently false, as competing markers already exist, regardless of their quality. If you don't care about those jobs being displaced, just say it, but don't disingenuously claim that Uber is not affecting jobs in the private transportation market. 

I explicitly stated that Uber would be replacing jobs in some markets. My claim was that those were crappy jobs that were being replaced with other crappy jobs.

[william marshal]

now on to uber, i got into it because it seemed like a great way to work, knowing that dispatching is done via computer was great. no more kick backs or kissing ass. i tried to do it the legal way as an owner operator. TLC requires cars be younger then 7 years old. never buy a new car, get last years model, you'll save $10,000 to $15,000 right off the top. commercial taxi insurance here is between $12,000 to $20,000 per year depending on driving record. then there safety equipment. which is an other $5,000-10,000. for instance a commercial version of lojac, the least required is a camera that takes pictures of the occupants every time a car door is opened or closed. barriers are only required in yellow cabs. there is a long and expensive process involved in getting a car set up to do it legally here. a lot of these regs are to keep drivers alive or at least to id the purp after you're murdered. which is far to common here.

 

i got into uber via a neighbor. he had never driven professionally and was looking for extra income. when i went to apply after getting my car all the legal requirements. the uber rep at the LIC office on jackson ave off queens plaza (their NY office) told me "it is nice that you have all that but we don't require any of it." the reason i mention this. well at the the time i thought that it's odd, but i've got all my ducks in row so what ever. about 3 months later this neighbor got into an accident with a customer in the car. guess who threw who under the bus, and guess who ended up with their normal (non commercial) insurance refusing to honor the claim and who ended up with over a hundred thousand in debt.

there are a lot of people joining uber with out understanding what the risks are and it is only a matter of time before the crap starting hitting the fan.

 

now about uber, again not sure how they do it in other places, so i can only comment on what goes on locally. they take 29% off the top. when i did it i was averaging $400 per night. when driving cabs i prefer nights. there is a predicable pattern. start by getting into Manhattan no later then 4:30 pm to get after work crowd, which is people going out after work or going home, that starts to slow down around 9pm at this point you start getting people either going home after dinner or going out to bars from home. this goes on until around 2:30am to 3am, then it gets quite. around 5 am you starting getting airport runs. which goes on until around 8am or so. at which point i start heading home. if i could catch something on the way cool if not also cool. like i said earlier i worked uber for about 7 months and averaged about $400 per night gross, but after all the expenses and wear and tear on my car i was only netting about $125 per night before taxes. off the books that would be workable on the books not so much. that was full time mostly 5 nights per week, sometimes 6.

the reasons for deactivation from uber is if your rating falls below 4.5 stars, they start busting balls when you're at 4.75. you have to accept 90% of all calls dispatched to you regardless of the legality of it. for instance i have a NYC TLC license. which means i can only pick up customers in NYC  although i can drop off customers anywhere. when on the west side of Manhattan i would frequently get call from jersey city or newark. of course i would refuse those. cops in jersey are fast to ticket cabs that pick up customers with new york plates. when i brought this up to the uber rep i was told. how is that our problem. use your 10% allotment to refuse them. we where also told that yes customers are rated and that refusal to interact low rated customers are grounds for deactivation. ooh almost forgot airports. there are three port authority run airports here, to legally pick up rides at them require airport permits, which could cost up to $20,000. (i'm rounding numbers each airport had it's own fees) port authority does not play with this, they will ticket you and can impound your car. again uber does not care, they don't warn new drivers of these pitfalls and will throw you under the bus in a heart beat.

 

[william marshal]

on a personal level i think times are a changing, uber if not already will do to taxis what amazon did to book stores. my problem is that they are a transportation company and as such should work with in the same laws as everyone else. not the corruption bullshit but the laws, some of which are out date and need changing some make sense and need to be enforced, they try to claim that they are not a transportation company and don't need to be regulated.

on the food thing, the only places that i've worked that required feeding customers are limo companies. they provide the food/drink. while with uber i averaged 4.7 rating because i didn't provide food and drinks. eventually i got fed up with the entire industry and am now a fleet manager of an ambulance company. which is why i'm willing too talk about any of this. i no longer have a horse in the race and am beyond uber's repercussions for not towing the party line about how great they are.

[Spring Bass]

Doesn't this understate by several orders of magnitude the portion of the economy comprised of drivers, which also includes long-haul truckers, delivery drivers and associated support service sectors (motels, highway diners, and truck stops)?

I think full-scale adoption of the exclusion of human drivers from the transportation economy will have much further reaching negative repercussions than the few bumps in the road you're anticipating. Hell, I would imagine even the insurance companies would end up taking a substantial hit.

That's where the whole "not overnight" thing comes into play. For example, I think it will be a very long time before trucks and commercial transportation above the size of a taxi are totally driverless, because it's useful for the manufacturer to pretend that the driver is still in control and technically liable for accidents even if 99% of the driving is being done by the Auto-Drive system.

Keep in mind that entire industries have disappeared before in the transportation sector, with relatively little effect on the broader economy (especially if the economy was booming at the time). Remember what happened to the milk men, the ice men, and so forth? Many of them just disappeared in the Postwar Period of the US.

[william marshal]

earlier i mentioned that most companies livery/limo split the booking 50/50 with the drivers. this is always with company cars, when an owner operator it's normally far less. uber takes 30% where most owner operators are at around 10-11%.

the corruption in transportation is staggering and if it wasn't real would be comical and worthy of a "B"grade gangster movies. the stuff i could tell you about buses and trucks. then again better not or you'll never be willing to share a road with a gray hounds again.

[william marshal]

earlier i mentioned that most companies livery/limo split the booking 50/50 with the drivers. this is always with company cars, when an owner operator it's normally far less. uber takes 30% where most owner operators are at around 10-11%.

the corruption in transportation is staggering. if it wasn't real it would be comical and worthy of a "B"grade gangster movies. the stuff i could tell you about buses and trucks. then again better not or you'll never be willing to share a road with gray hounds again.

[Commodore]

why is a middleman necessary? what does Uber offer that an open source app cannot?

 

[sperry]

why is a middleman necessary? what does Uber offer that an open source app cannot?

 

Uber offers quite a bit of protections to the user.  It also offers the critical mass of drivers that ensures you can get a ride when you need one, which is the critical component.

 

Not sure if an open source app could accomplish that.

[Commodore]

an open source app could certainly reach a viable level of adoption

cutting out the middleman's cut is appealing to drivers (higher wages) and consumers (lower prices), and it opens up the code to the entire world to improve upon (BitTorrent/Linux are perfect examples of this)

I used a sharing service (Rover.com) to find a dogsitter. It was good for finding someone, but now I just interact with the sitter directly and cut out the unnecessary middleman. The sitter charges me a bit less and still makes more money.

Uber offers driver background checks, but there's nothing stopping drivers from getting that on their own. An app could incorporate that as well as a driver/rider rating system. 

[Seli]

 

the bastardization of words like "force" and "exploitation" in this thread is illuminating

I belief the company terminates the ties with drivers that don't get a high enough rating (one of the reasons they are not the innocent intermediary they claim to be). Which is forcing drivers to written and unwritten standards and expectations.

Eta: and actually explained by people with actual direct experience. Many thanks

[Fragile Bird]

<snip>

Thank-you for that information, William.  You just reinforced everything I already knew about Uber and why I won't use them.  Of course, I'm fortunate to live in a big city well serviced by taxis and limos.

[william marshal]

i just reread my posts and the spelling is horrendous. i apologize and can clean it up if anyone wants me to.

[TerraPrime]

Yes thanks for the inside look, william marshal. I read them and learned new things from them.

And you're relatively new to the board, but most of us regulars have been trained by OsRavan to be able to decipher most typos, so don't worry. :-D

[The guy from the Vale]

OsRavan? Never heard of that poster...

Anyway, thank you for the interesting insights. Over here, Uber has been forbidden for not complying with taxi licensing laws, so our taxi corporations aren't feeling the pressure yet (or any more). That said, they do seem to work fine over here - I never had to wait excessively for any cab.

[william marshal]

actually i've been lurking here for several years and have found most of the regular posters to be very insightful regardless of whether i agree or not. for most of my life i've been paranoid about spelling. for long time just assuming that i was just stupid. when i was in college i had to take a typing class which i failed like 3 or 4 times in a row. the school sent me for a dyslexia test and sure enough. there ya go. but i'm still touchy about it and normally only write when mandatory. inner city high schools in the 1980s where very different then they are today and didn't care one way or an other. in fact it was my teachers who where telling me that i was stupid and to do everyone a favor and drop out already. if you're wondering i drove trucks during the day and went to school at night.