Be Excellent To Each Other

I've found the black cabs the safest taxi service when compared to the minicab.

In mini cabs:
Offered sex with a male driver
Offered drugs
Ripped off for short journeys
Late arrival
Extra long routes

I've never had a problem with the black cabs other than the cost. However my selection of late night mini cabs could also not be official cabs.

That's a feature, not a bug.

Thanks!

No, thankyou!

An uber driver explains how easy it is to bypass the companies lax background checks. Worrying.

Valid concerns (particularly calling out some misstatements by uber) but also as the comments say, the dodgiest as fuck uber cab is still arguably more traceable than the most legit minicab that you pick up in London should something go awry

This is starting to sound like a great company:

http://t.co/ggiFdGMYyr

Not Uber, but will question the 'Black Cab benefit' that Hailo provides going forward (and black cabs in general)

Booked a cab home with the wife and boy on saturday, picked us up on time, then proceeded to drive in the wrong direction. After continuing to constantly drive the wrong way I challenged him that he had no idea where we were going, and despite claiming to indeed know, couldn't describe the route we woudl take. With £14 on the clock, told him I'd had enough, and told him to pull over as we were getting out. He did so, I opened the door, and he then floored it, ostensibly to park in a 'safer place'.

For that £14, we'd acheived half a mile, in the opposite direction to where we were going. 30 seconds after he drove away got an email confirming that £15 had been taken off the card.

Logged a complaint with Hailo (this was about 9:30 on Saturday night) and finally got a response yesterday evening saying that they'd struck him off their list. I assume therefore that there were multiple complaints, as they've also escalated it with TFL. We'd suggested in our complaint that there was a strong likelihood that he'd borrowed the cab and wasn't licensed too.

To be fair, as bad as that story is, anecdote != data. You'd be much more likely to have an experience like that with Uber than Hailo, due to the different screening processes to become a driver.

I'm not convinced it's especially bad - if it were a normal black cab there was little Riles could do unless he noted down the number, and even then his £15 would probably be gone.

He got his money back and the driver was removed from Uber's books, and in less than a week.

Do Hailo even screen the drivers?

In a black cab, I'd not have handed money over - with Hailo they could auto withdraw it on the account after I had left the cab.

It is a black cab experience, and not a Hailo specific experience, and yes, Hailo can escalate it without me having to note the number and report through TFL. I'm not sure whether Hailo screen drivers - it would seem kind of pointless with the level of TFL checking that goes on.

However, I would venture that Hailo does potentially facilitate shennanigans that I hadn't considered a risk - an potentially unlicensed black cab driver needs to drive around with his light on to pick up fares, whereas a Hailo blackcab can park up and accept the requests - thus removing the negotiation and discourse (and, while I don't have the stats, I'll bet that TFL/DA POLICE don't pull over occupied cabs to check the driver as frequently as unoccupied cabs).

Uber respond here with some interesting accusations:

Uber are defiantly shaking up the world of taxis up city by city.

There business model is not that hard to copy though, I would think once the dust has settled there will be a few company's doing the same thing sharing the market

It's clearly not an invaluable service. It very much has a fixed value, and passengers have decided that they don't value it highly enough to pay the higher fares.

Uber loses its licence in London (appeals a-go-go).
Might read the ruling in depth. I'm kind of torn: love the idea of the app, but if they are seriously breaching the regulations, then yes they should lose it.

Not going to please millions of people who can't get a ride, however.

21 Days left to appeal and they can still operate during this time, BBC doesn't have any info as to why at this point.

Appeals process most likely.

Not fit and proper due to concerns for passenger safety. According to Radio 6 just now

https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press ... tcmp=50167

Some info from TFL

Came across an interesting detailed look at Uber and its behaviour in London and elsewhere. I also now fear I might waste a lot of time on this blog. I've never been a big London fan but one thing I'm really fascinated by is its transport network (or at least the Underground - I have a deep seated loathing of buses).

That is very interesting, thank you.

London Reconnections is one of the biggest rabbit holes on the Internet. I lost an afternoon at work (when I was really fucking busy) to a four article series on rebuilding bank station recently.

I've never heard anyone talking about Uber being banned in London as being about the app, like that article says. Who says that?

[edit]Oh, the email they sent mentions it, I guess, but it's a bit of an odd thing to base an entire article on.

95% of the cabs I take are for work so I use the work recommended company as its just easier.

The other 5% I'll be out in London and get black cabs as journeys are never that far and half the time my brother pays!

I do like the idea of Uber as black cabs can be a total rip-off, especially at Heathrow.

That said Uber appears to have a disregard for rules and have been disgracefully slack over a driver who was accused of assaulting a female passenger, (wasn't sacked until he did a 2nd time) their CEO was a bit of a nutter so hopefully, new leadership can change things.

This is worth a watch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0916ghz

Turns out they are a taxi firm after all.

It's an invaluable service since it preserves such "antiquated" things as "workers rights" or "unions". You can't just say that it should be the market to decide what's valuable or not. Market decided that it's ok to wreck the environment and trample workers rights by mass manufacturing gadgets and useless stuff in china. Most consumers just don't have any kind of social responsibility. Uber system is plain evil, and using their "contractor" model as a basis for every other service (who never heard of the "Uber for X" concept?) will only lead to a neo-liberal dystopia and the erosion of social values.

Seriously, fuck uber and everyone who uses it.

Aren't black cabbies self employed?

Don't know how it works in the UK. Some of them are, some of them aren't.

Still, the prices you pay include a percentage that will go to an union/professional order who in turn manages such an antiquated thing as welfare.

European court decided that Uber is a transportation company and not an IT Platform. Fuck yeah.

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/d ... cid=346750

Obviously, they, will probably go on as usual, not caring for any local laws because they are from silicon valley, and obviously more important than any of us.

They are self employed. They employ themselves. Whose welfare are they paying into? If their employer is treating them badly, they should probably have a word with themselves.

There are many many reports of Uber treating their employees badly. The problem is that Uber argues that they're not their employees. That's the main cause of concern. Uber takes a good chunk of their earnings and has no social obligations to them whatsoever.

So, that makes the black cabs unantiquated, how?

I ask every Uber I drive in what they think about the working conditions, and that's a lot of them. Absolutely without exception every single one says the flexibility they get from not being directly employed is the most attractive thing about the job. They want to be able to work as many or as few hours as they like, and most of them have not just Uber, but also Lyft or others, which they wouldn't be able to do if they were directly employed.

I appreciate that in somewhere like San Francisco, the pricing model is so brutal in order to steal the market that the drivers are painfully underpaid. In London, my experience is overwhelmingly that the model works for users and drivers.

It makes them "antiquated", according to some people. I was just arguing against that idea.

Traditional cabs model have problems, mainly because they don't have an incentive to offer a good service, but Uber definitely isn't the answer, and does more harm than good.

In my experience, the uber cars are cleaner, drivers cleaner, and fares cheaper than local minicabs. But this is based on 3 uber and lots minicabs.

Do you really think it's fair that Uber charges 25% of the cab fare, after being themselves who stipulate pricing conditions? With such conditions how can are argue that they are "self-employed"? Just because they chose their schedules, it doesn't necessarily mean they are self-employed.

When i do contractor work for someone, i have to pay something in taxes yes. It can be 25% or more if it adds VAT. Still, that money goes to the state and i get social benefits in return and also contribute to social services. It doesn't go to someone already filthy rich in california.

Yes.

Every single black can I’ve ever been in has been driven by a middle aged white guy. Many of them have been openly racist. Every single London Uber I’ve ever been in has been driven by an immigrant to the UK. That’s significant. Uber is a very good idea, executed brilliantly by flaming arseholes. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I strongly distrust any binary opinion of the company, in either direction.

And you think this is due to Uber "amazing inclusion policies" or because it's the immigrants that have more need to work and mind less about not being unionised or not having social benefits?

If someone were to use Bolt and got charged £10 too much when they processed the payment, and later received a text saying ‘oops, we charged your card £10 too much’, they’d be entitled to that money back, right?

Because they aren’t refunding the money and instead have added a £10 credit to the account, which has to be used within the month.

As they aren’t budging, who’d be the ombudsman to complain to? If it were on credit card it might be easier, but I think it is debit card.

Council might be a good shout.

It’s in London, and (I believe) across boroughs, so I’m not entirely sure how that would work.

The bank should sort this out. It doesn't matter whether it's a credit card or not, you can't just overcharge people and retain the credit.

Brill, thanks. It looks like trying to reason with them directly is not working. They’ve already issued credit, so they can’t do anything, apparently.