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She signs up for Uber in the back of a medallion cab
By adamg on Wed, 03/04/2015 - 7:42am
Mary Moore writes she had actually been proud to have never taken an Uber car.
My patience ended this morning, when I stood on the street for 20 minutes in temperatures that hovered in the teens, waiting for a taxi that I'd ordered the night before.
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http://services.taxihail.com/greenyellowcab/
http://services.taxihail.com/greenyellowcab/
http://taxihail.com
Green and Yellow might be 5 cents less per mile than other metropolitan area cab companies
http://greenandyellowcab.com/
Longtime Green/Yellow user
I like them, and they almost always show up on time. However, their drivers often pretend their credit card machines don't work, another thing you don't have to worry about with Uber. In my last Green Cab ride, the driver told me the credit card machine was frozen, then used it to print a receipt 8 seconds later after I used the last cash I had. I complained to the office, and they gave me a full refund, so at least they were responsive.
Note that they do not accept app reservations during snow emergencies.
I had to call the police on
I had to call the police on one cab driver. They told me that legally if the cc machines are not working the cabs are not supposed to be on the road. She said to tell them you have the police number in your phone and do you have to use it. She then said the machines are usually start working like magic.
I get they get screwed on cc rides which is why I always tip them really well. But enough with the not showing up, dirty cars, bad attitude drivers. There is a reason that ppl are taking UBER... though I do think UBER should be more regulated.
They didn't get screwed on CC
They got a big fare increase to offset the costs associated with accepting credit cards. They're not getting screwed at all.
yeah I've had this happen for
yeah I've had this happen for an early morning airport cab ride and I called the dispatcher and they were literally like "oops he slept through his alarm" and he showed up 10 minutes later
Hah!
I had this happen on a mid-morning airport ride and the cab was "15 minutes away" for 2 hours. Up until the point where they never showed up and I missed my flight. That combined with other crappy cab experiences pushed me to Uber. Never going back. Have not had a single issue in two years of Uber use. Oh, and tip your UberX drivers. Their base rate is BS.
Hallelujah! Another soul
Hallelujah! Another soul saved!
Although it's weird that her first use was for Uber Taxi, which is more expensive than UberX on average and she seemed surprised that that's what she had selected.
Yeah...
gotta love that surge pricing!
Surge pricing still generally cheaper
Before I joined Uber recently, I would take a cab to/from my car repair shop, about 3 miles from home. Easy $20-$25 fare, including tip.
Just had to go pick up my car last week, and even with a slight surge pricing it was $9.
The only times surge pricing is enough to be a real expense are the same times it is impossible to get a cab (bar closings, snow storms, major T meltdowns). So you make the informed choice up front: is it worth your money for the convenience, or should you wait a bit or find another way? It's basic economics at work, supply and demand, yadda yadda.
Red Sox do the same thing...
..charge more for tickets to games against better teams.
No outrage there?
So do...
Hotels, airlines, concert venues....where's the outrage? It's supply and demand. More demand? No increase in supply? Prices go up.
and the Red Sox charge less
and the Red Sox charge less than base prices for low demand games - prices are never less than the base fare on Uber. But the biggest difference is the Red Sox publish their prices at the beginning of the season, its not like you get to the game and have to look on your phone to see what the price is now and if you can afford it or have to come back another night and hope when you get to the park the price is affordable.
A more accurate analogy
would be StubHub (for instance). If the team sucks and it's a mid-week game against the Carolina Hee-Haws then the price on StubHub will be far below face value (aka: Uber's regular fares being always below a cab's base fare).
If it's a weekend game against the Yankees during a pennant year, the price will be way above face value (Uber surge pricing during major storm events, T meltdowns, bar closings on a Saturday, etc).
But the face value of Red Sox tickets are the highest in MLB no matter what, just like our cab fares are the highest in any comparable urban area. And, if you want to buy your tickets any way other than walking up to the ticket office in person during business hours, you get a "convenience fee" and a "per ticket surcharge" that can add around $7-$12 to the per ticket cost (comparable to the bribes you have to give to drive to certain neighborhoods like Eastie).
So the analogy would be that Uber is StubHub-- you, the consumer, can choose whether you want to go for a cheaper option if you don't need to go right at the moment there is surge pricing. Or, you can decide you need to use the service during surge pricing, and accept the higher fee (like you would pay $300 for bleacher seats to see the Yankees play).
Either way, the cabs are making you pay an artificially high fare ALL THE TIME and ask you to smile while they do so. But at least you get to see the Wally Wave, right? That's what I call it when a cabbie, while talking into his cell phone during the whole ride, takes his hands off the wheel to answer his second phone and the car waves to the right and almost veers off the road.
piling on
I'll pile on medallion cabs. Last summer I was traveling to Logan for a business trip and thought what the heck, work is paying so I'll call a traditional cab. Metro and hello taxi never picked up, uber did. Same thing last night. They keep blowing their easy chances.
She sounds confused...
How does one support "independent taxi drivers" and yet is proud to not use Uber which has done more to break the taxi cartels than anything else? The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one.
When traditional cab companies are gone I will dance on their graves.
Given my druthers
I'd take Uber. Last time I got in a cab the driver was smoking, he had left the window open to keep the smell out - it was freezing and it didn't work and he spent the whole time on a cell phone chatting. Oh - and the door wouldn't open from the inside.
Give me uber or give me death - literally either slowly from second hand smoke or quickly from the flaming car I can't get out of.
Uber used to be good and
Uber used to be good and affordable, but the pricing is fake at this point because their "low standard fares" are rarely in effect. It is almost always surge pricing, which so its totally undependable now if it will be an affordable option. The majority of the time shouldn't be surge pricing, if it is raise the standard price so its only surge at high demand. If its high demand all the time, its no longer high demand, its normal demand.
Thanks anon!
For this completely made up account about the service!
My last 5 rides:
Friday, 8:52 PM:
0.8 miles, $5.32 (not surge, just inflated due to the base fare and the fact we were stuck waiting for snow removal to be completed at one intersection)
Feb. 23, 11:44PM
2.55 miles, $10.62 (1.4x surge post-Beanpot final)
Feb. 18, 9:29AM
3.12 miles, $20.85 (1.4x surge, plus tunnel toll, on a day that Blue Line customers were waiting 45 minutes+ to board)
Jan. 31, 12:41AM
6.03 miles, $14.11
Jan. 24, 3:35PM
3.2 miles, $14.63 (including tunnel toll)
I think I'm a pretty average user of the service, and I've yet to see this phantom "never not surge pricing" phenomenon you describe. And these numbers are without including the fact that the trips home I took past midnight would not have been as easy with cabs. With Uber, I pull up my app, and they arrive, and then drop me off at home. With cabs, they eventually get flagged down, and then refuse to bring me through the tunnel. Rinse, lather, repeat for a half hour or more until I finally get someone to bring me home if I have cash and will tip at least 10 bucks on a $20 fare.
Those fares seem normal, cheap even
Because the time I was the biggest user of Boston cabs was in college, and I routinely took cabs from Packard's Corner to Kenmore Square, or BU East to Back Bay Station, and those fares were always $8 ($10 with tip), back around 2005 or so.
You quoted me as saying
You quoted me as saying "never not surge pricing", yet I clearly did not say that. I said rarely, since you needed to lie to 'prove' your point you must not have a good one. You also seem to be an infrequent user (1 or 2 times a week) so I don't think you can say you have a big sample size.
You said almost always...
That's all.
Here's the weird part of the article for me
When she actually summoned an Uber, it was a Metro Cab. How does that work?
Uber Taxi
It's one of the options with Uber, along with the black car service and UberX, which is what really goads the cab companies since it's just people using their own cars. Different fare structures and availabilities for the different levels.
Yesterday as I watched a
Yesterday as I watched a Cambridge cab blow through a red light at 30mph, slam on the brakes to avoid t-boning a truck, and then, once moving again, honk at the pedestrians that were in the way because they were crossing with the walk signal, I thought to myself, "Here is another great reason to use Uber."
Not that Uber drivers are necessarily better/safer/more courteous, but if they are consistently unsafe there is a feedback mechanism that bans them from the service. Definitely a missing feature with traditional cabs.
>"Taxicab Complaint/Compliment...
>"Taxicab Complaint/Compliment
> To report a taxi complaint or compliment please fill out the form below. Please ensure you note the Medallion number of the cab, the pick-up location, date and time.
> If need to speak to a staff member or Hackney Officer during business hours please call 617-349-6146 Otherwise, please feel free to email hackney at cambridgema.gov
https://www.cambridgema.gov/iReport/taxicomplaint.aspx
or
http://www.yelp.com/biz/green-cab-and-yellow-cab-somerville