Taxi for Uber: Ride-hailing app giant stripped of licence to operate in London Transport for London has ruled that Uber is not fit to run a minicab business in the UK capital. The authority detailed a string of security, insurance and safety failures by the taxi hailing app biz which means it will not get a new private operator's licence. Uber got a temporary two-month licence in September while TfL …
What's so terribly bad about having a driver who once downloaded some kidyporn? Uber has a rule that they won't carry unaccompanied people under the age of 18, so I doubt many kids are hailing Uber cabs as they will get rejected 99 times out of 100. Not that liking underage porn means that the person is all that likely to do anything bad in real life. People who like horror films are unlikely to pose a risk of suddenly going on a rampage with a chain saw.
Congratulations on the knee-jerk reaction. Now try looking at things with a little more perspective and some fact-based evidence. The facts show that vanishingly few people who have been convicted only of having downloaded indecent images of children (which includes cartoon drawings and non-sexual photos of 17 year olds) are involved in any hands-on offenses involving children.
>Uber has a rule that they won't carry unaccompanied people under the age of 18, so I doubt many kids are hailing Uber cabs as they will get rejected 99 times out of 100.
Given the reason Uber is being refused a licence because its understanding of rules and their implementation is deeply flawed, this is a totally flawed line of reasoning.
Uber having a rule doesn't mean it is actually abided by the "self-employed" drivers.
Uber may have a rule, but is there evidence that Uber is policing this and that drivers are enforced (at the 98+%) it ie. on turning up to pick up a lift, refuse the fare.
How many teenagers/young adults have been asked to provide proof of age?
I suspect there is plenty of evidence of U18's using Uber, just not officially recorded...
Uber has a rule that they won't carry unaccompanied people under the age of 18
And you really think that they will abide by their own rules? Given their longstanding habit of flouting any rules that they feel like (including some legal ones) I have no confidence that they will actually comply with their own (unenforced) internal rules.
well, I could find a few to be a good match, amazon for starters, and then the usual suspects, google, facebook, etc.
p.s. amazon, cause they caught me with amazon prime AGAIN, while making the usual purchase, and then, I was NOT able to find how to cancel, despite having gone through the usual links showing how to do it. Fortunately, their customer service sorted it out via chat in about, literally, 20 seconds what had taken me about 10 min to fail to find (and I had tried _really_ hard).
"it kind of puzzles me people keep falling for this bullshit"
Who's falling for it? People keep investing in them because they see other people doing it and think they're going to make money, eventually. People keep using Uber because it's easy and convenient.
At the end of the day, if you withhold your money from every scummy company in existence, you pretty much have to retire from modern society, unfortunately.
There are but Uber has the best combination of price/coverage/lack of randomly refusing certain destinations. It also works internationally and really helps get over the language barrier when travelling.
Many minicab firms only pick up within certain areas around their office, apart from Addison Lee who charge an arm and a leg.
Black taxi availability is highly variable outside of the centre especially late at night, and then you run into "not going to xyz/south of the river this time of night mate". Their fares get expensive very quickly, although over short journeys they actually compare well to Uber especially as the drivers aren't just mindlessly following an app and can pick the best route.
Uber are a reprehensible company but they have a fantastic product. I just wish they charged a bit more but invested it into safety and driver welfare.
Uber are a reprehensible company but they have a fantastic product
As long as you don't mind a 'product' that relies on an everlasting churn of unchecked drivers who are often operating at below minimum-wage levels and backed by a company with ethics that make the tobacco companies look relatively benign?
Are you happy to buy clothes made in far-East sweatshops? Because Uber are the taxi equivalent.
What's wrong with phoning a known and trusted licensed cab company for a cab and actually talking to someone, like we've done for decades? Your smart phone is also a phone.
This fantasy that if there isn't an app for it you can't do it is pure nonsense, promulgated by the techno-behemoths that want to own us.
but my local firm have replaced the nice operators with an impenatrable IVR, that states your last five destinations and pickups and hangs up on you if you want something different.
Their App on the other hand is at least as good as the above mentioned, and doesent suffer from 3.4x surge pricing, as rates are regulated by the council
Boris bikes? Should in principle be quickest for many journeys.
Once upon a time I tried[1] to figure out how to take one out. Couldn't see any lights on them: do I need to bring my own? And it wasn't entirely clear how to pay. Nor what happens if I get one out and it turns out to have a problem.
[1] OK, not very hard. It was dark and cold at the time, and in reality I'd left just enough time to walk.
I had already switched from Uber to Bolt some time ago as I didn't feel comfortable with my money going to Uber. According to the drivers they get to take a bigger cut of the fare home and they feel less pressure/like a machine than with Uber.
Also, as they are in fierce competition they throw discounts and affiliate links around like there's no tomorrow. I switched to Bolt in July and haven't been without a discount since. 5% here, 10% there, affiliate links so getting someone else signed up gets you a free ride etc. etc.
Don't like Bolt? You can always try Kapten. I've never tried them myself but many drivers I speak ride for all three companies so just have all three apps open.
Unfortunately, Uber in Chitown has cut into and therefore reduced the number of cabs freely hailable on city streets.... very noticeable to me who ain't touching Uber with an 11 foot app... cab drivers say about 50%.
Of course, the previous Mayor/brother? is a big investor (IIRC)... and the police were told to not give Uber drivers the "time of day". To bad, based on how I see moving violations daily (not just illegal but just plain stupid or dangerous)... we coulda cut into the city budget deficit!.
I truly enjoy the freedom/chaos of a random cab hail.
simply instruct the drivers to take a selfie when instructed
Because that would imply they would need extra admin staff[1] to check that the selfies matched the driver picture. And hiring extra people would put them even further into debit on their financals.
[1] Because, as we all know, 'AI'[2] really, really isn't good enough to do a proper job.
[2] AKA 'rules matching logic, trained by random sample that usually isn't that random'
Rather OT, but am I alone in finding the picture above this article creepy?
The two women seem to be pretending to hail a cab, but they aren't making a serious effort to be credible. They're looking away from the traffic on their side of the road, so they're presumably trying to flag down a cab on the opposite side, in which case they need to wave harder. Perhaps the one who's hardly waving at all should stick two fingers in her mouth and whistle?
Also, neither of them is wearing a trail of chilli sauce from a half eaten kebab down their front, and they're both apparently still standing on the pavement rather than staggering into the road, which seems to be the approved method of stopping taxis? Also, neither of them has a decent coat ->, so I'm guessing this is Newcastle?
"so I'm guessing this Newcastle"
If they had less on /and/ it was snowing, maybe. I lived in Newcastle and the Bigg Market on weekend evenings was like Beirut, only covered in snow and powered by nuclear-strength curry and lorryloads of cheap lager.
Abdul Latif, who owned a curry house there, bought a title to become Lord Harpole of the Rupali.
Great times.
This may be because the traffic in the obvious-stock-photo is driving on the correct side of the road, and the ladies are indeed looking towards traffic from where they're standing....
Although the photo is admittedly confusing, because from the reflections on the street one would conclude the weather in the photo is definitely British.. How the ladies stayed dry and well-coiffed is another Great Mystery..
They claim to have made improvements when they say the claims are wrong; but the claim is that while they have improved, they haven't improved anywhere near enough. Their "rebuttal" is a complete joke.
Again, the real issue has and always will be that uber makes money by having an incredibly small bureaucratic overhead; they are as involved as they absolutely must be, and nothing more. The level of engagement actually required of the company is to the extent that it will severely hurt their bottom line, and they will do everything in their power to remain only distantly involved outside of actual app maintenance.
Uber makes money
It really doesn't.
It subsidises its transport operations on the assumption that it can (a) eliminate competition and (b) eliminate human drivers so that it can substantially raise its margins before its investment capital is used up.
Good heavens, Uber is becoming more profitable!
Historically, it had to spend over $1.50 to earn $1.
To look at it another way: it spent its entire revenue then made a further loss of 50% of that turnover.
But these latest figures show a triumph of Uber's management team!
Now they're only spending $1.30 to earn $1.
Pyramid scheme. Big VC buys in early then sells on their interest in future profits to smaller mugs ias the hype takes off. When the penny drops and the firm can't get any more funding the big boys are long gone, leaving the small boys out of pocket.
I haven't been able to find the original, official, statement about it from Uber, but one news agency claims Uber said "Greyball has never been used IN THAT FASHION in London", and others have said simply that it has never been used in London. It, or rather Uber's statement about the technology, was cited by TfL in 2017 for withdrawing their licence.
I don't know why I received a down vote... I thought if anyone would be in the position to clarify that association, it would be El Reg!
Never having used Uber, I was unfamiliar with this, but having read the wiki, I can only say that I can't see much wickedness in this device, and that in their shoes I would probably do the same.
Uber claimed that it used Greyball to deny service to individuals suspected of violating the company's terms of services, such as people seeking to harm Uber drivers, disrupt Uber operations, or carry out law enforcement actions against Uber drivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball
I think I recall stories from a while back when TfL first wanted to revoke Uber's licence. A lot of the commentards were actually quite defensive of Uber - saying that the licence revocation was because of lobbying by the black cab drivers who wanted to avoid Uber weakening their near-monopoly.
Strange to read the comments today which generally seem to be in favour of the ban, and people hapy to see Uber getting a bit of a kicking because of their business practices.
To be fair to Uber, they were very popular early on, as their app was easy to use and there are so many artificial restrictions on city taxi schemes that they're alwways either expensive or there aren't enough of them. Or often both. So a bit of competition cutting through the regulatory capture might improve things. Whereas minicab firms were too small and under-funded to have fancy apps - and even ones that did aren't going to be universal.
However, since then, more news has come out about what Uber get up to. And they're basically indefensible.
@AC
I am one of those. And I still agree with my opinion supporting them then and my opinion against them now. They are a technology company who managed to introduce innovation in what was very much a protected (protectionist) market. That is not a crime. Serious security flaws allowing people to impersonate others in the service industry seems reasonable grounds to deny permission to keep working there.
The issue here isn't the scrutiny that the legitimate drivers got - it's largely the same for taxi and private hire drivers. What has happened here is that a legitimate driver has been impersonated by someone who does not possess a PHV licence.
PHV drivers are supposed to wear a badge with their photo and identity on it, but Uber appears to have allowed drivers to change their in-app photograph to that of a different person, making it appear to the passenger that the driver is legitimate.
I would imagine that a certain amount of impersonation is not uncommon (it's more economic to recoup the cost of leasing a vehicle and insuring it if it's generating revenue over 24 hours), but Uber's system seems to have facilitated it.
This is good news for consumers - not just from a safety perspective, but also because it will shatter Uber's monopoly in one of the biggest European markets. If Uber is banned and binned, it will open the door for competitors like Bolt, Ola, Kaptan, Wheely, Careem, Gett and others. Equally, regulators should find it easier to regulate multiple weak companies than one behemoth.
The Uber bubble is going to burst. You can't carry on losing money on every ride forever, and there's no way for Uber to make money other than total domination of the market, which is both impossible for them and bad for us. The Uber app was great - it's time to move on to other providers.
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