Uber eats and food delivery aps are the future

For sure taxi operations are garbage and deserve to be disrupted. However, the price that Uber charges for rides is far below the actual cost of production. Driver remuneration doesn’t pay enough to cover the maintenance costs to the vehicle. Drivers are essentially being paid up front for maintenance and shifting the burden down the road. Uber, just like Amazon relies on the next sucker being willing to work with them and has a huge amount of vendor churn. Legacy taxi companies understand the actual cost of production and price their services accordingly to get an adequate return on their deployed capital.

Uber will eventually be forced to switch from “disruption” mode to rent seeking mode once they’ve established market dominance. Then they’ll be forced to raise prices, the vendor base (drivers) will professionalize and the pricing will end up roughly similar to what taxis charged. Once the rent seeking shift occurs, Uber will then become as non-responsive to service issues as any taxi company since they’ve displaced competition and no longer care.

TLDR; Uber will eventually become a big shitty taxi company with a pretty app. Enjoy better service and reduced prices for the short time it lasts.

 

Like I said, I will enjoy every day they inflict pain upon the legacy taxi industry in Paris. When it's over, oh well. I no longer have a use for taxes anyway. If that wasn't clear, this is just about revenge enjoyed vicariously through Uber & Lyft.

I don't think you have a clear picture of how bad the monopolistic taxi situation was here. They have an all-powerful lobby relying on ancient laws/rules that cap the number of (lifetime, sold for a fortune at retirement) licenses that make competition impossible. They fiercely defend their right to provide crappy service and their fantastic business situation with demand largely exceeding offer. For instance, they successfully sued the app companies to force them to have a delay of at least eight minutes before they can pick up someone when receiving a request. You know, why adapt to a new level of better service when you can force the competition to lower their standard to your level? Fuck them. Maybe they won't die, but they will hurt for a while. I'll take what I can get.

Other than that, no strong feelings on the issue one way or another.

 

Bitter are we ??

 

Why would you think that?

 

Call me Quasimodo but I've got this hunch.

 

I get that Uber eats supplies a need for some people but it's a scam. Uber takes money from the restaurants, the driver and the person they are delivering to and all they supply is a cute little ap.

Don't like it, will try to never use it and blah blah blah, now git off ma' lawn!

 

What makes it a scam? I have never read anywhere any claims that it costs the same as going to the restaurant yourself.

The cute little app makes delivery available from a lot of restaurants that did not offer it before.