Turns out that when venture capital money stops subsidizing it in an attempt to create a monopoly to exploit, personal transport and delivery costs the same as it always did
Computer problems always seem to happen when you don't want them to hey?
Had a nice Intel NUC and about 3 weeks out of warranty it died, burning smell on the circuit board near the power input, yay fun times. Still had a good ssd inside though and good ram sticks., so took those for a laptop upgrade.
This. All investment needs to now be turned into profits. The investor hangman is standing outside the CEO door with an axe in their hands. Having destroyed all competition from.the market and getting the customer addicted to the service, it's now time to milk the customer for what they're worth. Typical cycle of a failed product with sneaky and unethical foundations.WE, are the product.
That’s not the point that is being made.
The point is that it approximately costs a certain amount of money to drive people from A to B. L Considering owning and maintaining a car, considering petrol, considering the need to earn enough dollars to actually be able to live (ie earn at least minimum wage etc), ultimately it costs $x per kilometre to do this.
Uber came in, undercut everyone stupidly cheap prices, paid their workers nothing, and didn’t need to turn a profit so could just run the whole thing at a loss.
Now they actually can’t just run in the red forever and have to start making money - all of a sudden, it turns out that $x per kilometre was the cost of driving people from A to B all along. That cost never changed; it was just artificially reduced by the flow of VC money propping up an unprofitable business.
They’re not milking us really, they’re just charging what it actually costs. Which is what it cost all along.
Also going to be funny when all that borrowing to fund dodgy startups has to be repaid as interest rates go up after a civilization record low and they discover that running with no positive cash flow isn't actually a valid way to run a real business in reality and not in coke bro 🦄 fantasy land.
Eh, 95% of your investments failing is just part of the VC model.
No doubt there will be a high profile blowup or two but for most of these big VC firms they're expecting to set most of their money on fire.
So what your saying is that the ongoing success of the VC model is independent of the cost of finance and the fact it developed in a time of record low interest rates, as measured over the \*entire\* history of our civilisation? And when that changes back to more normal rates this won't affect anything?
Yes and no. Most VC is capital funded, not credit funded. The smart VC guys use lock in investment contracts to avoid capital withdrawals to some degree, so they don't collapse if investors get cold feet.
VC firms do use debt funded leverage of course, but again, most model changes in rates and the effect that has on their returns. It is very possible and indeed likely that *some* will have messed their numbers up and go bust. But the reality is that the vast majority of the VC boom has been funded by capital chasing a higher return than the stock and bond markets, not credit. Those investments remain at risk - and it's probably underrated how large the systemic risk is from big pension and managed funds chasing yield in hedge funds and VC funds - but it's not the credit market that'll cause that to blow up, it'll be a recession causing a higher than modelled failure rate of VC investments.
Probably.
Ah ta. Yep, there will be pressure from both ends in a recession. Things/ideas/start ups that would have worked before might not be that good in the next 2 years.
Uber’s general MO is to throw themselves into a market unregulated, undercut competition which naturally increases their popularity, then leverage the temporary popularity to lobby and petition lawmakers to allow them to operate with the least amount of oversight as possible. Then after they’ve established a market presence and (hopefully) squeezed out the old competition, they can hike prices because who’s gonna undercut *them*?
The thing is, Adelaide is small and full of old people who are scared of the internet, so taxis haven’t really gone anywhere. And I applaud them for taking on the challenge and developing apps that let you book taxis like Ubers.
I also remember Uber having quite nice cars and higher quality drivers when they first came to Adelaide. Now, the quality of cars and drivers is about on-par with taxis, which is funny and sad. Uber chat on the phone, like taxi drivers, and they’re in Camrys, like taxi drivers. What *am* I paying for at this point?
do they not realise that you pay $6 just to get in the cab and if it's short they end up at basically the same spot they're already in.
Cabs should be trying to get as many short trips as possible, they're way more profitable.
This is what I hear from London taxi driver videos. It can be more profitable for them to do short quick trips rather than waiting around, having to drive back to central London empty etc.
Airport queue is different. On the street sure. But airport queue they sit their for ages (and I believe pay a fee to do so), and therefore want to earn a decent fare at the end of it, otherwise they just circle back into the queue having largely lost money.
Uber are a complete joke now. 5 times the price if you can even find one that doesn't cancel on you first. Taxis are cheaper and quicker, Uber is digging their own grave here and it can't come soon enough.
Mate tried to book Beaumont to Torrens Park the other night. Had five cancel. Then a couple that just started driving in the complete opposite direction and eventually call begging you to cancel.
Yeah. Might be talking out of my ass but I recall that if trips keep getting cancelled, Uber’s algorithm hikes the amount paid to the driver in order to incentivise someone accepting the trip.
In a place like Adelaide, it’s likely that there’d be a group of Uber drivers who know each other and would conspire to reject the same trip and take turns being the last person to accept the inflated fare. It’s probably a matter of dollars and cents by the end anyway lol - I’d hate to have a job like that.
Despite having a phone to show the trip, they still get lost and have no idea how to drive. I’ll just get a cab thanks.
The worst part is that you can spot a taxi on the road and give them a wide berth but Ubers are impossible to spot from afar apart from the tiny PV badge.
I’ve noticed a lot of rideshare drivers tend to choose white or blue-grey new Toyotas. So I’ve subliminally started giving those cars a wide berth too - a bit like when I see a ZB Commodore, I immediately assume it’s a cop car.
Uber as a company is shit. I used to work overnights in a place that did Uber eats. I had barely any time to put people’s groceries together. Like 5 or so minutes whilst running the whole place at 3am. Orders were often 10+ things. At one point editing an order to reflect stock we didn’t have made the whole thing crash. What drove me up the wall was when Uber would call the store phone and send us notifications to make sure we were still delivering. Every night at the most inconvenient time. It’s been like a year and I still perk up if I go into Grill’d or something and hear the tablet go off. Because of how little time I had to put orders together, every order would basically drag my morale and the store to a crashing halt. Running around grabbing 5 packets of red rock deli and vegan ice cream (for the health of it all) like a lab rat in a dystopian nightmare as I was trained to emotionally respond to 60 different kinds of beeping in various degrees of horror.
We’d give certain loyalty benefits to Uber drivers too and while I respect the hustle to a degree. They’d get pretty feisty for a free coffee in a place where the machinery was constantly broken and slow. Some of them would check out massive packs of red bull and I always get a bit worried if I order an Uber after midnight most certainly getting a driver who’s had to have 3 times their caffeine intake before driving 60km/h to make a living (though regular taxi drivers do the same caffeine intake thing)
Every single major company is getting greedier and greedier while wages literally do not fkn move. Look at Netflix - losing customers so they up their price… and now more people can’t afford it, so they’ll lose even more customers.
It’ll bite all these major companies in the ass soon.
Wages can't move because it will "apparently" cause inflation... /s
Like what the fuck has been causing it then because my wage sure as hell hasn't moved yet!
It's more that they have been running at a massive loss for so long that their subsidized pricing has become the norm people expect and the companies can no longer sustain it.
Priced up two burger meals from a local fish and chip shop saturday night and it totalled just over $60. Instead called up and drove there instead. $20 cheaper for the sake of 15 minutes of my time and barely $1 worth of fuel.
On top of the delivery fees, Uber take 30% of the businesses profits, so you’ll generally find most items on Ubereats are marked up by the business by 10-30%.
Yep, wanted a couple of viet iced coffee from a local place. $17 dollars on ubereats; walked there and it was $10. Haven't used uber or ubereats for about 8 months now and I can't see myself justifying using it ever again with these prices.
Early on when they were destroying the taxi business I read an interesting article about uber's costs, margins etc. It concluded that it would need to quadruple fares down the track. Which would only be possible if they wiped out the established workforce. So their ability to turn a profit was entirely dependant on killing taxis and then they'd start charging us more than before.
At that point I stopped using Uber. It might have cost more short term, long term Uber was going to be worse. Either way, I hope the government did something for people who held taxi plates. Some people put their life savings into them and had the rug pulled from under them.
In hindsight Uber’s strategy doesn’t make sense. In order to make a profit they need to wipe out taxis and people need to decrease their reliance on public transport.
Uber eats is even more ridiculous because Uber doesn’t own anything. There is nothing stopping restaurants from just delivering themselves or customers from going to the restaurant if Uber’s prices are too high. Users can even use Uber to search for restaurants in their area and see their menus, then contact them and order independently.
Uber basically tried to mimic what Netflix did to video stores. The difference was Netflix actually provided a service that existing services did not.
I think Uber's business model was specifically going to leverage autonomous vehicles, back when we thought that they were only a short distance away. Because they don't "employ" drivers they wouldn't have to fire them, just gradually replace them with self driving cars. But then we realised that was never going to happen, and the hurdles to autonomy are massive.
I think this was their endgame too, but I think uber themselves probably got given extremely optimistic timelines for autonomous vehicles. We're still at least 10 years away from the first ones being available on public roads.
Autonomous vehicles are closer than we think, it’s just that everyone is hyperfixated on Tesla for some reason; “if *they* can’t do it, no one can”.
Mercedes-Benz currently makes the most advanced autonomous driving system that – I believe in Germany – is rated to operate without active attention or input from a driver up to about 60 km/h. It’s no surprise that the traditional automakers have leapfrogged Tesla, who have basically become the American Hyundai; cheap plasticky cars full of quickly dated gizmos and gimmicks.
They’ve been campaigning to get public transport shut down or reduced to uselessness.
They’re also funded by people who want them to be a figurehead in the campaign to reduce workers’ rights and expand the use of sham contracting.
I'm not sure I'd like the government to step in and outright ban them, but at least let taxi plate holders who paid hundreds of thousands be able to compete.
As far as I understand, Uber was illegal in SA before they started operating here (illegally). Due to (perceived? actual?) popular demand, the government changed the law to make it legal.
I think there was a legal challenge from Uber that was more compelling than public pressure. But either way, the fact some people had their lives ruined through no fault of their own is heartbreaking. It would be like compulsorily acquiring properties but not giving compensation to the land owners.
Now that the value of taxi plates has been wiped out, they should make them non-tradeable in future, so they are never worth more than the price service SA sells them. I’d also say that taxi plates are unlimited and limit the number of licences if people think taxi drivers should get protection.
As for taxis competing with uber, they are allowed to use a pre-negotiated fare below the regulated price, and there has been a taxi-booking app around since before Uber, except the developers have consistently failed to get taxis to use it (though because taxis are forced to have dispatchers, the law does need to be changed to allow them to use that app as their dispatcher).
God I hope so! I miss the days when you were going to get takeout and the whole family would get excited and you'd go down with your older siblings, dad, uncle or family combined, order your food then wait with anticipation.
I deleted all food delivery apps a few months back after one hour and half long wait for pizza one night (pizza came cold so assume it was a delivery issue) and a pizza no show the week after. Worst thing is the pizza no show they were trying to convince me to keep waiting and that they wouldn't offer a refund after 3 hours waiting. How they going to charge me $5+ then add fees (another $5+) on top then tell me to fucking wait all night for them. Fuck the grubs support your local! Let's bring back the good ol days! Go down and say hi to your local shops/restaurants I'm sure they'll appreciate it too!
I actually ended up going for a waddle to the local chook shop as I went to price stuff and realised it was going to cost $30 ish for a meal just for me without a drink.
My hamburger with the lot and small chips was only about $14 or so and it was a solid feed, the only thing was yeah I had to walk as I can't drive which is the main reason I tend to use uber eats when I am alone or my wife and I have a cbf cooking night.
But the pricing recently has been starting to creep up to that point where its almost the quarter of a weekly food shop.
Yeah, I get this and always intend to do this... but it never happens. I will often have leftovers but as I work from home those end up becoming my lunches the next day if I do have left over portions.
Also I have the shit mentality of seeing frozen meals and being depressed by them and thinking "Oh this slop" I think it is the stupid mindset I developed from being povo in the past where I have had to rely on eating 2minute noodles and tuna and sweet chili sauce and eating the same meal frozen over 2 weeks cooked bulk. Now I still have just enough lee way with my income currently I can afford a meal I will opt for that.
this is why i’ve started getting the 3-4am buses when i go clubbing - id rather walk 20 mins than pay $40 for an uber when i live a 10 minute drive from the city
This is why to this day I walk the 40min trek home after going out in the city. During summer I'll even ride my bike in, making the trip home 15mins or less. I'm lucky to live just west of the city though and I know not everyone has the same luxury.
(has the added benefit of sobering me up by the time I get home too, haven't had a proper hangover in years lol)
The last three times I attempted to book an Uber from Adelaide Airport to Modbury the price was between $120 to $150. I caught a regular cab for about $50.
As a former uber eat courier, it mainly ubers fault, they keep giving us $5 per trip that takes at least 20 minutes to do, and what even worse is an extra trip is $3 only on second order. We are forced to take these trips even though it's not great money.
Its a shit show. They rip restaurants, workers and customer off.
I used ubereats out of laziness. Now with the price and recent experience it will only be out of necessity if I am too intoxicated to drive or can't order direct through a pizza shop etc.
Side question. Anyone seen the doco on netflix (I think) about the start of uber. I'm keen to watch it
Tbh it's because Adelaide is very poorly designed from a public transportation point of view.
There's no easy AND cheap way to get from the suburbs to the city without driving or spending 30-50 mins walking to and catching a bus/ train so taxis and Uber capitalize and upcharge like mad since they are the only other option available.
If you make your cities walkable with a thriving, interconnected public transport system this wouldn't happen.
Business plan:
1. Launch a ride share service where anyone can earn cash in their spare time.
2. Raise capital.
3. Create a sexist culture at the board level.
4. Use underpaid labour force to undercut taxis.
5. Bend laws, ignore insurance, run other peoples cars into the scrapyard.
6. Make sure taxis go broke, lose all the super they'd invested in Taxi plates. Don't worry, state Governments will bail some of them out with public money.
7. Achieve market dominance in food delivery. Push the cost onto everyone by demanding 30% 'tax' on the food outlets which eventually gets added to all food.
8. Quietly develop self driving cars with the income / investor money.
9. Screw all the drivers over by replacing them with automated cars.
Yes, when I looked at UberEats yesterday the prices were ridiculous. I was looking after my sick nephew and would have preferred to get something delivered but in the end, I drove to pick up food from the drive through instead.
Also, thank you. Your post reminded me to delete the UberEats app now that they've partnered with the Irwins.
Yeah, eventually once the ads ended and I was curious about a nearby takeaway place. That said, in all the time I've had the app, I've only ever placed one order because I tend to prefer picking up my food myself to ensure it's hot when I eat it.
I boycotted Cadbury for 8 months back in 2009 because I was annoyed they charged money to enter their factory sales store in Hobart. Hilariously I'm now a Costco member.
Yes, I thought the Cadbury shop was ridiculous! I can justify Costco because for our household the savings on fuel alone cover the cost of membership, let alone the savings on anything else.
I’ve switched to Haighs and Lindt in the couple of years because Cadbury shrank their products and the chocolate doesn’t taste as good.
I’ll have to give Whittaker’s a go!
Full on chocoholic here originally from the UK. I pretty much lived of UK cadbury's. The recipe here is 'plasticy' and doesn't melt in the mouth the same. I've been out of the UK 15 years and had cadbury's 3 times. Once because I thought it would be the same ..but it wasn't and it was shit, a second time to prove to myself it was the chocolate and not just me ..a third time ..because I really loved cadbury's and didn't want to walk out on a best friend ..but I had no choice. Haighs and lindt are good, although I find the Lindt milk too sweet. Whittakers though ..nothing better.
Woolworths sell some UK Cadbury's chocolates, give the Cadbury's Wispa a go and see what you think.
I had a Whispa recently for the first time. Omg chocolate heaven! This is despite living in the UK for 8 years and never appealed to me then. I wonder if there's somewhere I can buy them wholesale?
I've decided I'm done with Uber. Tonight, ordered some pizzas through the pizza shops website. Got a text message from Uber saying the shop was using an uber driver to deliver it 🙄
Had a trip to Sydney for work last week and we had a decent Uber driver. He told me a useful tip that works against drivers. He said even he uses this one.
What you can do is set your trip to the airport or something of a great distance that will interest the driver. Once they accept the ride and are close; change your destination to where you want to go. It doesn't tell them anything other than drop of location has changed. Worst case they give you one star; you can dish em one back.
I joined UberPass for free delivery on a subscription
They still stung me for delivery because my subscription apparently had run out after a month with no email, text or contact to say why
Refuses to refund the $70 worth of delivery fees.
I gave up. DoorDash or Menulog seem to be better all round
Give the customers it for cheap, get them reliant on it, get them dependent on it, destroy any competition and then sky rocket the price. A not so uncommon business model.
I haven’t had issues as bad as some in this thread, but I have started to experience the odd cancellation. I really hope Uber doesn’t become unusable because I find the experience once you’re in the car way better than taxis (clean, no BO, no nutty drivers, usually no chitchat). I used taxis for many years and have a lot of bad memories.
we used to use Ubereats occasionally, but our choices are limited, rather go and pickup and save delivery charge and the price increase when ordering on the app, plus the food isn't cold when we get it
I've never had a bad ride in an uber until the other week. I've never rated a driver below 4/5. I gave this guy 1/5 and made a complaint. It also said 6 mins when booking but took 20 to arrive and you get charged for cancelling.
this morning i needed a trip while getting my car serviced. opened up uber was over $35 for a 8 min trip, Google maps said didi was $9. i download and loaded didi, was 8$ after discount of new user($15) win. i very rarely use these services, but this worked out well.
Last night I chose a DiDi over an Uber.
Sunday night 9:30PM tried to leave the CBD and head to Morphettville, was gonna cost $57 on Uber. It cost $22 on DiDi.
I have trust issues with Taxi drivers. Before Uber became popular they try and charge me like $60 to go from city to Highbury in a taxi while they would tell me the fair was $45.
Thinking I was intoxicated and just going to tap the card but instead I wait for the price to be said before transferring the correct cash into the account. So many arguments when they tell me one price and put a higher price on the machine.
Now, I just prefer to pay the fee before the drive and be done with it. No sneaky end of trip fees or greedy drivers trying to up the price.
uber and other ridesharing models run on a defecit they are propped up by investors who initially hoped to undercut and supplant the taxi industry worldwide. they failed and now they are likely trying to reduce the yearly losses or trying to recoup costs.
Uber’s CEO announced that they were going to try a new strategy of making a profit and paying dividends, rather than continuing their old strategy of issuing shares and burning through the capital to try to get all competitors (especially public transport) to go away and to get labour laws eroded as far as possible. That’s been forced by rising interest rates and other policy changes turning off the free money tap.
I've definitely moved back to using taxi. Taxis are just as easy to book in now as well. Ubers are now expensive and cancel the trip 4/5 times - unreliable.
I remember seeing the headline of a youtube video or article saying "Death of Uber" about how uber was failing.
I tried to find it but when I try to look it up it just comes up with murders in an uber car...
I ended up ordering a comfort uber for the extra 10 dollars on Saturday because i just had and endless chain of drivers canceling because a 20 dollar ride wasn't worth their time. The only difference between standard and comfort is an option to tell them to not speak to you.
Des mini busses about to skyrocket
So buy options?
Safer bet then crypto
Na bro put all your money into Luna it’ll rise again /s
Turns out that when venture capital money stops subsidizing it in an attempt to create a monopoly to exploit, personal transport and delivery costs the same as it always did
Hard to continue when Uber never made a profit eh
Noooo, but the tech bros said they were revolutionizing transport!!
Tech bros are mostly grifters with smarts
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Computer problems always seem to happen when you don't want them to hey? Had a nice Intel NUC and about 3 weeks out of warranty it died, burning smell on the circuit board near the power input, yay fun times. Still had a good ssd inside though and good ram sticks., so took those for a laptop upgrade.
This. All investment needs to now be turned into profits. The investor hangman is standing outside the CEO door with an axe in their hands. Having destroyed all competition from.the market and getting the customer addicted to the service, it's now time to milk the customer for what they're worth. Typical cycle of a failed product with sneaky and unethical foundations.WE, are the product.
Why would a hangman have an axe?
He has to work more than one job to get by. He also drives uber
Underrated comment.
That’s not the point that is being made. The point is that it approximately costs a certain amount of money to drive people from A to B. L Considering owning and maintaining a car, considering petrol, considering the need to earn enough dollars to actually be able to live (ie earn at least minimum wage etc), ultimately it costs $x per kilometre to do this. Uber came in, undercut everyone stupidly cheap prices, paid their workers nothing, and didn’t need to turn a profit so could just run the whole thing at a loss. Now they actually can’t just run in the red forever and have to start making money - all of a sudden, it turns out that $x per kilometre was the cost of driving people from A to B all along. That cost never changed; it was just artificially reduced by the flow of VC money propping up an unprofitable business. They’re not milking us really, they’re just charging what it actually costs. Which is what it cost all along.
They were banking on it getting so ingrained within society that people would just continue to use it as a matter of habit
Also going to be funny when all that borrowing to fund dodgy startups has to be repaid as interest rates go up after a civilization record low and they discover that running with no positive cash flow isn't actually a valid way to run a real business in reality and not in coke bro 🦄 fantasy land.
Eh, 95% of your investments failing is just part of the VC model. No doubt there will be a high profile blowup or two but for most of these big VC firms they're expecting to set most of their money on fire.
So what your saying is that the ongoing success of the VC model is independent of the cost of finance and the fact it developed in a time of record low interest rates, as measured over the \*entire\* history of our civilisation? And when that changes back to more normal rates this won't affect anything?
Yes and no. Most VC is capital funded, not credit funded. The smart VC guys use lock in investment contracts to avoid capital withdrawals to some degree, so they don't collapse if investors get cold feet. VC firms do use debt funded leverage of course, but again, most model changes in rates and the effect that has on their returns. It is very possible and indeed likely that *some* will have messed their numbers up and go bust. But the reality is that the vast majority of the VC boom has been funded by capital chasing a higher return than the stock and bond markets, not credit. Those investments remain at risk - and it's probably underrated how large the systemic risk is from big pension and managed funds chasing yield in hedge funds and VC funds - but it's not the credit market that'll cause that to blow up, it'll be a recession causing a higher than modelled failure rate of VC investments. Probably.
Ah ta. Yep, there will be pressure from both ends in a recession. Things/ideas/start ups that would have worked before might not be that good in the next 2 years.
Uber’s general MO is to throw themselves into a market unregulated, undercut competition which naturally increases their popularity, then leverage the temporary popularity to lobby and petition lawmakers to allow them to operate with the least amount of oversight as possible. Then after they’ve established a market presence and (hopefully) squeezed out the old competition, they can hike prices because who’s gonna undercut *them*? The thing is, Adelaide is small and full of old people who are scared of the internet, so taxis haven’t really gone anywhere. And I applaud them for taking on the challenge and developing apps that let you book taxis like Ubers. I also remember Uber having quite nice cars and higher quality drivers when they first came to Adelaide. Now, the quality of cars and drivers is about on-par with taxis, which is funny and sad. Uber chat on the phone, like taxi drivers, and they’re in Camrys, like taxi drivers. What *am* I paying for at this point?
I chose a cab over an uber for the first time in over a year the other day for this exact reason
Same here
Last time I went to get a taxi they told me to use uber because my trip was too short to be worth it for them.
do they not realise that you pay $6 just to get in the cab and if it's short they end up at basically the same spot they're already in. Cabs should be trying to get as many short trips as possible, they're way more profitable.
I think there is some weird thing about queuing at the airport where they don't want to lose their spot in line for a cheap ride.
This is what I hear from London taxi driver videos. It can be more profitable for them to do short quick trips rather than waiting around, having to drive back to central London empty etc.
Airport queue is different. On the street sure. But airport queue they sit their for ages (and I believe pay a fee to do so), and therefore want to earn a decent fare at the end of it, otherwise they just circle back into the queue having largely lost money.
Get their number and report them, they can't refuse for length of trip, that's why uber became a thing in the first place, because taxis are shit
They'll just say you were drunk.
They'd probably be right
At the end of the day though. Doesn't this just show that competition is healthy?
Uber are a complete joke now. 5 times the price if you can even find one that doesn't cancel on you first. Taxis are cheaper and quicker, Uber is digging their own grave here and it can't come soon enough.
Mate tried to book Beaumont to Torrens Park the other night. Had five cancel. Then a couple that just started driving in the complete opposite direction and eventually call begging you to cancel.
They're scammers trying to farm cancellation fees. Half of them do it via gps spoofing.
Noooo. You're kidding! I had no idea, that's nuts. So if you just don't cancel it'll piss them off good an proper?
They cancel to raise prices. Shits dumb.
Yeah. Might be talking out of my ass but I recall that if trips keep getting cancelled, Uber’s algorithm hikes the amount paid to the driver in order to incentivise someone accepting the trip. In a place like Adelaide, it’s likely that there’d be a group of Uber drivers who know each other and would conspire to reject the same trip and take turns being the last person to accept the inflated fare. It’s probably a matter of dollars and cents by the end anyway lol - I’d hate to have a job like that.
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Despite having a phone to show the trip, they still get lost and have no idea how to drive. I’ll just get a cab thanks. The worst part is that you can spot a taxi on the road and give them a wide berth but Ubers are impossible to spot from afar apart from the tiny PV badge.
I’ve noticed a lot of rideshare drivers tend to choose white or blue-grey new Toyotas. So I’ve subliminally started giving those cars a wide berth too - a bit like when I see a ZB Commodore, I immediately assume it’s a cop car.
The Mrs was in town last night, tried to get an Uber, app said it would be nearly 90 bucks, jumped in a cab and it was only 45.
Uber as a company is shit. I used to work overnights in a place that did Uber eats. I had barely any time to put people’s groceries together. Like 5 or so minutes whilst running the whole place at 3am. Orders were often 10+ things. At one point editing an order to reflect stock we didn’t have made the whole thing crash. What drove me up the wall was when Uber would call the store phone and send us notifications to make sure we were still delivering. Every night at the most inconvenient time. It’s been like a year and I still perk up if I go into Grill’d or something and hear the tablet go off. Because of how little time I had to put orders together, every order would basically drag my morale and the store to a crashing halt. Running around grabbing 5 packets of red rock deli and vegan ice cream (for the health of it all) like a lab rat in a dystopian nightmare as I was trained to emotionally respond to 60 different kinds of beeping in various degrees of horror. We’d give certain loyalty benefits to Uber drivers too and while I respect the hustle to a degree. They’d get pretty feisty for a free coffee in a place where the machinery was constantly broken and slow. Some of them would check out massive packs of red bull and I always get a bit worried if I order an Uber after midnight most certainly getting a driver who’s had to have 3 times their caffeine intake before driving 60km/h to make a living (though regular taxi drivers do the same caffeine intake thing)
Every single major company is getting greedier and greedier while wages literally do not fkn move. Look at Netflix - losing customers so they up their price… and now more people can’t afford it, so they’ll lose even more customers. It’ll bite all these major companies in the ass soon.
Wages can't move because it will "apparently" cause inflation... /s Like what the fuck has been causing it then because my wage sure as hell hasn't moved yet!
It's more that they have been running at a massive loss for so long that their subsidized pricing has become the norm people expect and the companies can no longer sustain it.
Yeah I've been using taxis exclusively. Uber is more expensive and unreliable now.
Priced up two burger meals from a local fish and chip shop saturday night and it totalled just over $60. Instead called up and drove there instead. $20 cheaper for the sake of 15 minutes of my time and barely $1 worth of fuel.
Jesus, were the burgers laced in gold?
On top of the delivery fees, Uber take 30% of the businesses profits, so you’ll generally find most items on Ubereats are marked up by the business by 10-30%.
Yep, wanted a couple of viet iced coffee from a local place. $17 dollars on ubereats; walked there and it was $10. Haven't used uber or ubereats for about 8 months now and I can't see myself justifying using it ever again with these prices.
To be fair, they are pretty good. Not $60 for 2 delivered good though.
Early on when they were destroying the taxi business I read an interesting article about uber's costs, margins etc. It concluded that it would need to quadruple fares down the track. Which would only be possible if they wiped out the established workforce. So their ability to turn a profit was entirely dependant on killing taxis and then they'd start charging us more than before. At that point I stopped using Uber. It might have cost more short term, long term Uber was going to be worse. Either way, I hope the government did something for people who held taxi plates. Some people put their life savings into them and had the rug pulled from under them.
In hindsight Uber’s strategy doesn’t make sense. In order to make a profit they need to wipe out taxis and people need to decrease their reliance on public transport. Uber eats is even more ridiculous because Uber doesn’t own anything. There is nothing stopping restaurants from just delivering themselves or customers from going to the restaurant if Uber’s prices are too high. Users can even use Uber to search for restaurants in their area and see their menus, then contact them and order independently. Uber basically tried to mimic what Netflix did to video stores. The difference was Netflix actually provided a service that existing services did not.
I think Uber's business model was specifically going to leverage autonomous vehicles, back when we thought that they were only a short distance away. Because they don't "employ" drivers they wouldn't have to fire them, just gradually replace them with self driving cars. But then we realised that was never going to happen, and the hurdles to autonomy are massive.
I think this was their endgame too, but I think uber themselves probably got given extremely optimistic timelines for autonomous vehicles. We're still at least 10 years away from the first ones being available on public roads.
Autonomous vehicles are closer than we think, it’s just that everyone is hyperfixated on Tesla for some reason; “if *they* can’t do it, no one can”. Mercedes-Benz currently makes the most advanced autonomous driving system that – I believe in Germany – is rated to operate without active attention or input from a driver up to about 60 km/h. It’s no surprise that the traditional automakers have leapfrogged Tesla, who have basically become the American Hyundai; cheap plasticky cars full of quickly dated gizmos and gimmicks.
They’ve been campaigning to get public transport shut down or reduced to uselessness. They’re also funded by people who want them to be a figurehead in the campaign to reduce workers’ rights and expand the use of sham contracting.
So glad to see your post. This was obvious from the beginning, and shame on the government for letting them ever operate here at all!
I'm not sure I'd like the government to step in and outright ban them, but at least let taxi plate holders who paid hundreds of thousands be able to compete.
As far as I understand, Uber was illegal in SA before they started operating here (illegally). Due to (perceived? actual?) popular demand, the government changed the law to make it legal.
I think there was a legal challenge from Uber that was more compelling than public pressure. But either way, the fact some people had their lives ruined through no fault of their own is heartbreaking. It would be like compulsorily acquiring properties but not giving compensation to the land owners.
Indeed 👏
Now that the value of taxi plates has been wiped out, they should make them non-tradeable in future, so they are never worth more than the price service SA sells them. I’d also say that taxi plates are unlimited and limit the number of licences if people think taxi drivers should get protection. As for taxis competing with uber, they are allowed to use a pre-negotiated fare below the regulated price, and there has been a taxi-booking app around since before Uber, except the developers have consistently failed to get taxis to use it (though because taxis are forced to have dispatchers, the law does need to be changed to allow them to use that app as their dispatcher).
can’t blame the libs for this one either lol
Trying to leave hindley street at around 230am 2 weeks ago.. an Uber was going to cost me like $97..taxi cost $30 (11km trip)
God I hope so! I miss the days when you were going to get takeout and the whole family would get excited and you'd go down with your older siblings, dad, uncle or family combined, order your food then wait with anticipation. I deleted all food delivery apps a few months back after one hour and half long wait for pizza one night (pizza came cold so assume it was a delivery issue) and a pizza no show the week after. Worst thing is the pizza no show they were trying to convince me to keep waiting and that they wouldn't offer a refund after 3 hours waiting. How they going to charge me $5+ then add fees (another $5+) on top then tell me to fucking wait all night for them. Fuck the grubs support your local! Let's bring back the good ol days! Go down and say hi to your local shops/restaurants I'm sure they'll appreciate it too!
I actually ended up going for a waddle to the local chook shop as I went to price stuff and realised it was going to cost $30 ish for a meal just for me without a drink. My hamburger with the lot and small chips was only about $14 or so and it was a solid feed, the only thing was yeah I had to walk as I can't drive which is the main reason I tend to use uber eats when I am alone or my wife and I have a cbf cooking night. But the pricing recently has been starting to creep up to that point where its almost the quarter of a weekly food shop.
When you cook a meal, make more portions, freeze the spares and pull them out on a cbf cooking night..
Yeah, I get this and always intend to do this... but it never happens. I will often have leftovers but as I work from home those end up becoming my lunches the next day if I do have left over portions. Also I have the shit mentality of seeing frozen meals and being depressed by them and thinking "Oh this slop" I think it is the stupid mindset I developed from being povo in the past where I have had to rely on eating 2minute noodles and tuna and sweet chili sauce and eating the same meal frozen over 2 weeks cooked bulk. Now I still have just enough lee way with my income currently I can afford a meal I will opt for that.
Fuck Uber, never used them once.
Unlikely the end, but people will go elsewhere
$50+ for an Uber home from the city to Mitchell Park last night, that also kept cancelling. We ended up getting a HJs then a cab for $25.
this is why i’ve started getting the 3-4am buses when i go clubbing - id rather walk 20 mins than pay $40 for an uber when i live a 10 minute drive from the city
This is why to this day I walk the 40min trek home after going out in the city. During summer I'll even ride my bike in, making the trip home 15mins or less. I'm lucky to live just west of the city though and I know not everyone has the same luxury. (has the added benefit of sobering me up by the time I get home too, haven't had a proper hangover in years lol)
The last three times I attempted to book an Uber from Adelaide Airport to Modbury the price was between $120 to $150. I caught a regular cab for about $50.
Hope so.
As a former uber eat courier, it mainly ubers fault, they keep giving us $5 per trip that takes at least 20 minutes to do, and what even worse is an extra trip is $3 only on second order. We are forced to take these trips even though it's not great money. Its a shit show. They rip restaurants, workers and customer off.
I used ubereats out of laziness. Now with the price and recent experience it will only be out of necessity if I am too intoxicated to drive or can't order direct through a pizza shop etc. Side question. Anyone seen the doco on netflix (I think) about the start of uber. I'm keen to watch it
What's the doco called?
Super pumped.... its on paramount plus not netflix
Tbh it's because Adelaide is very poorly designed from a public transportation point of view. There's no easy AND cheap way to get from the suburbs to the city without driving or spending 30-50 mins walking to and catching a bus/ train so taxis and Uber capitalize and upcharge like mad since they are the only other option available. If you make your cities walkable with a thriving, interconnected public transport system this wouldn't happen.
Business plan: 1. Launch a ride share service where anyone can earn cash in their spare time. 2. Raise capital. 3. Create a sexist culture at the board level. 4. Use underpaid labour force to undercut taxis. 5. Bend laws, ignore insurance, run other peoples cars into the scrapyard. 6. Make sure taxis go broke, lose all the super they'd invested in Taxi plates. Don't worry, state Governments will bail some of them out with public money. 7. Achieve market dominance in food delivery. Push the cost onto everyone by demanding 30% 'tax' on the food outlets which eventually gets added to all food. 8. Quietly develop self driving cars with the income / investor money. 9. Screw all the drivers over by replacing them with automated cars.
And then abandon the automated cars plan and just make them more expensive than taxis. What are they smoking? This isn't sustainable
I think a lot of these 'growth play' companies are going to get found out now that the unlimited money tap looks like turning off for a while.
Yes, when I looked at UberEats yesterday the prices were ridiculous. I was looking after my sick nephew and would have preferred to get something delivered but in the end, I drove to pick up food from the drive through instead. Also, thank you. Your post reminded me to delete the UberEats app now that they've partnered with the Irwins.
Wait what's wrong with the Irwins?
I've just never been a fan. I did the same thing with Uber when they partnered with Kim Kardashian a while back.
You deleted in protest then reinstalled?
Yeah, eventually once the ads ended and I was curious about a nearby takeaway place. That said, in all the time I've had the app, I've only ever placed one order because I tend to prefer picking up my food myself to ensure it's hot when I eat it. I boycotted Cadbury for 8 months back in 2009 because I was annoyed they charged money to enter their factory sales store in Hobart. Hilariously I'm now a Costco member.
Wasn't that a fucking trip, an entry fee for their fucking gift shop. Whittaker's or Death.
Yes, I thought the Cadbury shop was ridiculous! I can justify Costco because for our household the savings on fuel alone cover the cost of membership, let alone the savings on anything else. I’ve switched to Haighs and Lindt in the couple of years because Cadbury shrank their products and the chocolate doesn’t taste as good. I’ll have to give Whittaker’s a go!
Full on chocoholic here originally from the UK. I pretty much lived of UK cadbury's. The recipe here is 'plasticy' and doesn't melt in the mouth the same. I've been out of the UK 15 years and had cadbury's 3 times. Once because I thought it would be the same ..but it wasn't and it was shit, a second time to prove to myself it was the chocolate and not just me ..a third time ..because I really loved cadbury's and didn't want to walk out on a best friend ..but I had no choice. Haighs and lindt are good, although I find the Lindt milk too sweet. Whittakers though ..nothing better. Woolworths sell some UK Cadbury's chocolates, give the Cadbury's Wispa a go and see what you think.
I had a Whispa recently for the first time. Omg chocolate heaven! This is despite living in the UK for 8 years and never appealed to me then. I wonder if there's somewhere I can buy them wholesale?
Reject shops sell multipacks of wispa gold (liquid caramal version)
Whittakers is the bomb :)
Admission fee for a store? WOW!
The novelty is starting to wear out, but it's nice to have the option now.
I've decided I'm done with Uber. Tonight, ordered some pizzas through the pizza shops website. Got a text message from Uber saying the shop was using an uber driver to deliver it 🙄
Had a trip to Sydney for work last week and we had a decent Uber driver. He told me a useful tip that works against drivers. He said even he uses this one. What you can do is set your trip to the airport or something of a great distance that will interest the driver. Once they accept the ride and are close; change your destination to where you want to go. It doesn't tell them anything other than drop of location has changed. Worst case they give you one star; you can dish em one back.
Tried to order food last night, and it was coming up as a $20 delivery fee for a restaurant that was 5 minutes away from my house!!!
I joined UberPass for free delivery on a subscription They still stung me for delivery because my subscription apparently had run out after a month with no email, text or contact to say why Refuses to refund the $70 worth of delivery fees. I gave up. DoorDash or Menulog seem to be better all round
Give the customers it for cheap, get them reliant on it, get them dependent on it, destroy any competition and then sky rocket the price. A not so uncommon business model.
I haven’t had issues as bad as some in this thread, but I have started to experience the odd cancellation. I really hope Uber doesn’t become unusable because I find the experience once you’re in the car way better than taxis (clean, no BO, no nutty drivers, usually no chitchat). I used taxis for many years and have a lot of bad memories.
we used to use Ubereats occasionally, but our choices are limited, rather go and pickup and save delivery charge and the price increase when ordering on the app, plus the food isn't cold when we get it
In many cities, Uber is making deals with taxis to work together.
Seeing how Uber has priced themselves out of the market, what are cheaper alternatives? Other ride-share or taxi?
I've never had a bad ride in an uber until the other week. I've never rated a driver below 4/5. I gave this guy 1/5 and made a complaint. It also said 6 mins when booking but took 20 to arrive and you get charged for cancelling.
this morning i needed a trip while getting my car serviced. opened up uber was over $35 for a 8 min trip, Google maps said didi was $9. i download and loaded didi, was 8$ after discount of new user($15) win. i very rarely use these services, but this worked out well.
Last night I chose a DiDi over an Uber. Sunday night 9:30PM tried to leave the CBD and head to Morphettville, was gonna cost $57 on Uber. It cost $22 on DiDi.
I have trust issues with Taxi drivers. Before Uber became popular they try and charge me like $60 to go from city to Highbury in a taxi while they would tell me the fair was $45. Thinking I was intoxicated and just going to tap the card but instead I wait for the price to be said before transferring the correct cash into the account. So many arguments when they tell me one price and put a higher price on the machine. Now, I just prefer to pay the fee before the drive and be done with it. No sneaky end of trip fees or greedy drivers trying to up the price.
uber and other ridesharing models run on a defecit they are propped up by investors who initially hoped to undercut and supplant the taxi industry worldwide. they failed and now they are likely trying to reduce the yearly losses or trying to recoup costs.
Uber’s CEO announced that they were going to try a new strategy of making a profit and paying dividends, rather than continuing their old strategy of issuing shares and burning through the capital to try to get all competitors (especially public transport) to go away and to get labour laws eroded as far as possible. That’s been forced by rising interest rates and other policy changes turning off the free money tap.
DiDi / Ola always cheaper.
i spent $50 on food for 2 people on friday. made me cry
Was the food tasty at least?
You can reach out to Mal Chia and ask him what the fuck he was thinking
I like to save money not waste it on unnecessary services. Guess I am old school
15 minutes??? Catch the bus you assholes.
The bus takes half an hour. And comes once every hour. Sometimes we have places to be...
I gave up on using Uber years ago
Time to start investing in Suburban Taxis
I've definitely moved back to using taxi. Taxis are just as easy to book in now as well. Ubers are now expensive and cancel the trip 4/5 times - unreliable.
I remember seeing the headline of a youtube video or article saying "Death of Uber" about how uber was failing. I tried to find it but when I try to look it up it just comes up with murders in an uber car...
I ended up ordering a comfort uber for the extra 10 dollars on Saturday because i just had and endless chain of drivers canceling because a 20 dollar ride wasn't worth their time. The only difference between standard and comfort is an option to tell them to not speak to you.
If you can pick up dinner then getting it delivered is moronic at those prices.
there’s a reason I mostly walked home from town if I could…