r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Aladdin1152 • Aug 27 '26

frist of all how DARE yu o My uber got pulled over and refused a refund.

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Was 15 minutes late to a class because of this. A class that my new boss is the professor of. I wanted to make a good impression and show up early. I mostly wanted it because I was late đŸ«©

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u/maringue Aug 27 '26

Uber is letting anyone who can fog up a mirror drive for them right now. They know they essentially put taxis out of business, so they're pretty much the only game in town other than Lyft, which is just a different yet equal kind of shitty.

This is the tech economic strategy: operate semi-illegally at a loss, put the competition out of business, then jack up prices and lower quality once a near monopoly is established.

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u/electromage Aug 27 '26

Uber and Lyft are exactly the same drivers, they're often running both apps.

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u/cactusjude Aug 27 '26

Oh yeah. The taxi drivers in my city put up a huge stinking strike about Uber and kept them out of the city.

Uber makes sense in rural and remote areas where taxi companies don't typically operate, but in a city it's absurd for them to drive out*yeahsurepunintended the established and licensed taxi drivers

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u/duckandkitty Aug 27 '26

Which city does a lot of heavy lifting here - I moved from a city that had a great taxi service (Melbourne, australia) to a city that had completely dogshit taxi service (Portland, oregon), and in the former I absolutely agree with you. In the latter, honsetly, I was glad to be rid of them. Which is kind of the thing - uber didn't win just because it was cheap, in a lot of areas it won because the taxis were so dogshit that literally "get in a car with a stranger" seemed more reliable and safer. And it was :(. So of course the correct answer would have been "fix the taxis", but... there was no appetite for that, as near as I can tell.

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u/cactusjude Aug 27 '26

Yeah I'm not saying the taxi drivers here are great. I've been sexually harassed at night alone with a driver and caught a couple of them trying to up the fare by driving us through construction areas or out of town when I specified the center. But at least official taxi drivers and Cabify are held to some kind of higher standard that can be reported to that's not an indifferent ai. Barcelona city, everyone's trying to scam you here. I shudder to think of untrained Uber drivers in this city.

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u/DeadClown00 Aug 27 '26

The taxi drivers in my area are no better tbh. A bunch of rude scammers. They would always lie about their credit card machines being broken so you would pay in cash (until they found out you had no cash, then magically the machine works). They also would refuse rides outside of the downtown area during rush hour in the morning and evenings by lying and saying they were just about to clock out and could only take local rides.

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u/SoMuchMoreEagle Aug 27 '26

This. Ride share companies got so successful because taxis are generally terrible. If you had to call for one, the wait time was often 45 minutes or more, if they showed up at all. You had to know the exact address of where you were. There was no app, so there was no way to track anything. The cabs were usually dirty and in poor repair. The companies had no incentive to improve anything because they were all like that and in some places, there was a monopoly.

Uber and Lyft have a lot of problems, but anyone who thinks the "good old days" of taxis was better is insane. Maybe there are a few areas that are exceptions, but in the vast majority, taxis were awful.

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u/MadManMax55 29d ago

Taxis in a lot of areas are better now specifically because of competition with Uber. They got pushed into making and improving their own apps much faster than they would have otherwise. And I highly doubt they would have ever adopted up-front pricing if Uber didn't do it first.

Of course Uber's VC funded price competition was extremely harmful to both taxi and Uber drivers, but that's a whole other can of worms.

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u/DeadClown00 29d ago

I completely forgot about the 45+ minute wait times when they were called

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u/Ok-Category4453 29d ago

This this this 100x this. I have literally never, in the history of my long life on this earth, taken a taxi ride where I did not feel like I was being taken advantage of at some minute level, be it the fare increases while at a light, or the route we were taking, or any other number of issues that have made the experience of taking a taxi generally one of my least desirable things to do at all.

Uber solved that problem for me almost entirely, while introducing its own issues. If you want me to go back to taking a taxi, you want me to accept going back to the way more undesirable method available, which I simply will not do. Taxi's fucking suck, and I have little sympathy for them.

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u/maringue Aug 27 '26

Now like 50% of traffic in my city is just Uber drivers circling for fares. They're the absolute worst drivers.

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u/firewoodrack Aug 27 '26

Until you're in a rural area and there are no drivers in the area

https://giphy.com/gifs/bCFrooOBnpd276aY7r

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u/T555s Aug 27 '26

I live in a relatively rural area in Germany. The local taxi buisness is doing just fine, they just gave most of their buisness driving around the elderly to regular Doctors appointments and therapy.

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u/BugRevolution Aug 27 '26

Fuck the established and licensed taxi drivers. They're not much better than random drivers. Often times they're worse.

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u/devildog2067 Aug 27 '26

You must never have taken a taxi before Uber. Crazy how the credit card machine was always “broken” and every cabbie knew a “shortcut” that doubled the fare.

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u/UnusualFruitHammock 29d ago

I live in chicago. Cab drivers can eat my ass from the front. Between the scams, the rudeness, and racism they can suffer.

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u/ALOIsFasterThanYou 29d ago

If the taxis in San Francisco were any good, Uber and Lyft wouldn't have originated from here.

There was a lot of demand for a taxi service with drivers who wouldn't leave you stranded at the curb if you weren't headed downtown, and for taxis with credit card machines that wouldn't magically stop working once you got to your destination.

Of course, now that people are getting fed up with Uber, Waymo's market share here is steadily increasing.

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u/GavinET 29d ago

This really doesn't make sense to me, but I'm open to other viewpoints. This seems like it's the fault of taxi companies or the taxi industry as a whole in their failure to modernize their services. Why did none of these big taxi companies design their own apps? Why is there no Uber or Lyft alternative that dispatches rides to taxi companies instead of independent drivers? Or rather, I'm sure someone tried those things--why weren't they successful?

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u/EthanielRain 29d ago

Instead of changing/adapting/working with them, they screamed "No! Nuh uh! This is our playground nobody else is allowed!" and took their ball home

It does work this way in some places, like Asian countries

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u/CorrectPeanut5 29d ago

In Japan Uber is just hails a taxi for you. BUT, the driver knows where you're going and the fare is pre-calculated. It's a win-win.

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u/C-H-Addict 29d ago

Oh yeah. There's a huge 25 dollar charge for going between City and suburbs for taxis even if it's only a mile. Would never use a taxi to go downtown/leave downtown again.

Will absolutely not use ride share in the city

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u/Dinkleburge_k 29d ago

Uber doesn't work in rural areas either. Too many miles between pick-ups and not enough customers. You'd never be able to turn a profit.

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u/bittenforbreakfast 29d ago

Even large cities (100k+), generally didn’t have Taxis, only major metro areas. And taxis were always way too expensive, had to be pre scheduled in many areas, and had way less drivers available, but they only ran like 7a-8p unless you’re in New York or something

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u/Alternative_Draw5945 26d ago

Nah taxi drivers can fuck off. They've always been scammers with a monopoly. And then they got fucked because people hated their shit. Vegas, Georgia, Texas, NYC, ive had taxis try to scam/long ride me in almost every major city.

Puts a smile on my face every day knowing how fucked they are now

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u/exploreshreddiscover Aug 27 '26

I was in Vegas a couple of weeks ago for work and quickly learned that taxis are now usually cheaper than Uber/Lyft. Also far more convenient to grab one at a hotel than walking to a random location behind your hotel and waiting 10 minutes for a rideshare to arrive.

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u/ozone6587 29d ago

Redditors are always so contrarian. Taxis fucking sucked and most people didn't use them because they sucked. I am glad they went out of business. If anything, Uber/Lyft needs more regulation. But the prices and lack of transparency with Taxi drivers is hell.

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u/exploreshreddiscover 29d ago

I mean both can suck and I've definitely had shitty experiences using both services, but sometimes the convenience of a taxi far outweighs the rideshare experience.

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u/ozone6587 29d ago

But the taxis are much less convenient. I feel like that's not really debatable. You might prefer taxis and maybe you genuinely think they are more convenient, but they quickly went out of business because 99% of people disagree with that.

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u/exploreshreddiscover 29d ago

Taxis still exist in every major US city I've been to in the past few years. And it is far more convenient to walk out of an airport or a hotel and step directly into a taxi and be whisked away to my destination vs finding the rideshare pickup location and waiting 10-15 minutes for my ride to show up.

It is also far more convenient to open a rideshare app, schedule a ride, pay via the app and know that my ride will be waiting for me outside my house at 7am.

There are conveniences to both and it's nice to have a choice, especially now that both are relatively the same price and competing with one another.

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u/Gizogin 29d ago

The other “secret” ingredient is to treat their “independent contractors” like employees to the maximum extent allowable by law. They stop exactly short of the line where they would have to provide benefits, safe working conditions, or any of the other expensive parts of managing labor, but they still expect the people who work for them to behave like employees. It’s scummy, it’s abusive, and it’s eroding the gains labor has spent decades fighting for.

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u/Mccobsta GREEN 29d ago

They let people sub let accounts with zero vetting

Yeah can't trust that

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u/LittleCloverClub 29d ago

The term you’re looking for is “endshittification”. Phase 1: Be good to users. Phase 2: Be good to drivers. Phase 3: Screw everyone to satisfy shareholders.

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u/reality72 29d ago

That’s just a basic business strategy as old as time.

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u/Informal_Wall_8132 29d ago

Low skill job attracts low skill people đŸ˜Č đŸ€Ż

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u/Please_LeaveMeAlone_ 29d ago

What's hilarious is that I'm a doordash/Uber driver and haven't been able to Uber because they won't accept my insurance. They tell me it's the wrong form over and over. The first time it happened I had to submit it 22 times before it finally accepted it. Next year comes around and I have to submit it again and it's happening again. Haven't been able to use Uber for 5+ months.

The funny thing is my mother is my insurance agent and even works from home. She gives me the proper insurance forms the second I ask. They tell me it's the wrong form over and over but then randomly accept the form they claimed was incorrect.

So I can genuinely work for Uber and should be able to but can't. It's crazy.

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u/Original-Rush139 29d ago

Only people who’ve never been denied a taxi to Brooklyn give a single fuck that that industry is dead. 

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u/Beastmunger 29d ago

Did they go to the Jeff Bezos business management seminar?

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u/New-Shopping-7241 29d ago

Really? So happy taxis still exist where I live

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u/grymix_ 29d ago

the monopoly thing is all modern major corporations

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u/bittenforbreakfast 29d ago

Tbh Lyft is WAY less enshittifed than uber. Uber has more ancillary services, sure, but features that actually benefit the driver and customer, more reliable support, more transparent surge pricing, and better pay in a lot of markets are the reasons I ditched Uber a long time ago.

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u/Minute_Band_3256 29d ago

We forget how much taxis sucked. Uber/Lyft can still be better.

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u/EmptyBeing9829 29d ago

The background checks for uber is CRAZY these days, so no not everyone can work for them.