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The Uber whistleblower: I’m exposing a system that sold people a lie

taxicabjesus 4y ago
I started taxi driving in early 2012. I'd drive my little 1994 Honda Civic Hatchback to the taxi yard and check out a cab for 12 hours or 24 hours. It was a pretty good deal: the taxi company took care of complying with Arizona's minimal taxi regulations, provided insurance and customers. I could do anything I wanted with their taxi, I just had to pay them at the end of the shift. I always made money, even on my 4th day when the dispatch system went down. On that day I found some people in downtown who'd scheduled a cab to go to the Frank Lloyd Wright museum in Scottsdale. The taxi was free that day. After the 'new driver' $20 off coupon the taxi company actually paid me to drive their taxi around. Uber arrived in Phoenix ... in 2013 or 2014? I remember sitting at the Cardinals' football stadium. Another of the company's drivers had gotten an uber fare. He said something like, "it's not that cheap". We didn't realize at the time that what the driver got was not what the passengers paid (that is, drivers' pay was subsidized). Things started to get bad for us taxi drivers in 2015. I remember sitting in old town Scottsdale. Two ladies were waiting for their ride-share driver to show up. A "gypsy-cab" driver (someone not associated with one of the big taxi companies - who'd gotten a taxi meter and insurance, and complied with Arizona's minimal licensing) asked if they needed a ride. The ladies said, "you're too expensive." A Honda Accord showed up, with two ladies in the front... I figured the female driver didn't feel safe driving around by herself late at night, and recruited her friend to copilot with her. Cars are expensive. I'd made enough to upgrade my old honda civic to a Uber-acceptable Ford Fusion by ... 2013? (Truthfully my father paid for most of the vehicle, I took out a $5,000 loan.) When I did the calculations on driving my Fusion for Uber, the numbers just didn't work. I figured I'd need a transmission sooner or later, and the miles really add up quickly when you're driving. We'd put 100,000 miles a year on our taxi-Priuses. The early years of 'ride sharing' was an exercise in Wall Street tricking people who wanted nice cars into wearing out their personal vehicles for barely minimum wage. I took to blogging about my fares, initially at kuro5hin.org [rip]. Lots of stories... reposted them at https://www.TaxiWars.org/ https://www.TaxiWars.org/ Had this recent comment about the taxi industry get a couple upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31065345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31065345 ("The company had economy of scale in their fleet operations that was hard to beat: mechanics who knew the Prius like the back of their hand, boneyards (for parts), connections in the automotive industry.") On the one hand, Uber's software was better than our 'electronic taxi dispatch v1.0' system [0]. But Arizona's taxi regulations were so incredibly minimal, that it wasn't very fair for Governor Ducey, et al, to throw us under the bus. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmm3kECLxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmm3kECLxw / http://www.taxiwars.org/p/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.html http://www.taxiwars.org/p/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.html
- ciguy 4y ago
  I am glad the taxi industry worked for you as a driver for a while. But it was unbelievably bad for consumers for so long, I have no sympathy for anyone related to the industry pre Uber at all. You might have been a good driver but most were not and frankly the odds aren't in your favor either. I am sincerely glad that the taxi industry got fucked as hard as it did, it forced them to at least think a little bit about customer experience and improve in some places.
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    - ciguy 4y ago
      You're not exactly wrong but your comment isn't really reflective of anything meaningful. Correlation does not always equal causation. And I know a LOT of people with the same experiences. The commonality of these experiences leads me to believe it's a cab thing and not just a me thing. In all other aspects of my life I tend to be pretty easy to get along with and generally have reasonable expectations. I don't have any reason to think my expectations of the cab industry are out of line with my expectations for everything else.
  - taxicabjesus 4y ago
    The hn comment I linked told of how the company I drove for became the default cab company for the Phoenix area. One aspect was how passengers could file a complaint, and they'd look into it. I got taken for a ride by a taxi driver in San Jose, cira 2003... That should have been a $20 fare, not a $100 fare, but I was naïve. Sometimes my passengers would watch our route on their phone.
- balderdash 4y ago
  I’m glad you pointed the driver economics out, I meticulously keep track of my auto costs (hour out to road trip [1]) and am always surprised by what my actual mpg/cost per mile is, as well as how repairs and maintenance add up over time - I honestly don’t think most Uber drivers realize they are just trading deferred maintenance costs, and depreciation expense for cash now. [1]https://apps.apple.com/us/app/road-trip-mpg/id298398207 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/road-trip-mpg/id298398207
treis 4y ago
I don't think this guy deserves the title whistleblower. A whistleblower leaks the crimes as they're happening in order to stop them. Not 6 years after participating in the crimes to settle a grudge.
- mulmen 4y ago
  It's on brand for Uber. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons in the worst way. Really pushing the limits of the ends justifying the means.
- registeredcorn 4y ago
  That's actually an interesting point! Other than the term "informant" or "insider" I can't really think of how you would describe this type of thing. There's whistleblowers, and death bed confessions. I suppose someone could simply be called a "tattle tale" or a "former employee", but neither really describes the act of revealing knowledge that was not publicly available. "Leaker" might fit, but that seems to be more for someone who is a current employee, who is trying to disclose information in a secretive manner. Advocate has an equally weird meaning, too. Can anyone else think of a better term?
  - _nhynes 4y ago
    Perhaps “disgruntled former employee”? “Disgruntled” is a term that often comes up in mandatory security training and describes people to whom you probably do not want to share production secrets.
fatjokes 4y ago
I have zero sympathy for the yellow cab industry. None. I have a lot of negative feelings about Uber, and I would never work there myself as a SWE, but these feelings pale in comparison to my experiences with yellow cabs (NYC bias here). I've had my partner be threatened (the usual pay cash/credit card machine broken or "better be a good tip"), cabs drive right pass after asking where you're going, scammed. I've had female friends molested by drivers. Sure, all this could happen (and some have) in an Uber. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that Uber can track down the driver must easier than your usual taxi driver. (Who the hell remembers the medallion numbers?) TK is an asshole, and I'm no fan of assholes (e.g., screw Apple products). But if he was the price we have to paid to upend the yellow cab industry, then I for one am willing to pay it.
- tensor 4y ago
  Man, if you think cabs in NYC are bad, try Toronto some time. Our cabs are beyond awful. At least you have credit card machines in the back of your cabs! Our cabs are probably twice as expensive as NYC cabs, and there is no credit card machine in the back. 90% of the time the driver lies and says "it's broken" to try and force you to pay cash. They'll even drive you to an ATM sometimes to get cash, just don't leave your stuff in the cab because they may just drive off with it instead of waiting. When they DO give you a cash machine there is a high chance of getting your card swiped. And yes, they commonly do the "where are you going?" trick then refuse you a ride because it's not far enough for them, they want the more lucrative fares. Also, the cars are all completely awful quality, just terrible.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > 90% of the time the driver lies and says "it's broken" to try and force you to pay cash Two can play at that game. Despite the practice being illegal, cabbies in the Vancouver area ask if you've got cash before you get in. I always say yes. But, I never carry cash. When we get to the destination, I play dumb, and ask if they've got a machine. They do, because they're required to by law. Or, on the off chance I do have cash, I'll say "oh, but I only have a $10" and sometimes they'd rather knock $5 off my fare than take a card. Also, I live in a burb, so I've taken to lying about where I'm headed until the car's in motion. Since they always want directions, not a destination (are they dishonest or ignorant about what route's best?) this has always worked for me.
_ktx2 4y ago
> They include Travis Kalanick, Uber’s combative co-founder and then chief executive, David Plouffe, a former Barack Obama campaign aide who became a senior vice-president at Uber, and Rachel Whetstone, a British PR executive who has also held senior roles at Google, Facebook and now Netflix. Why is this so common and acceptable? You have these towering technological firms who already possess vast amounts of power who have a pattern of hiring former political elites. Interestingly, apart of a top conservative at Facebook, many of these people have worked for powerful liberals. There's no excuse for this behavior, if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.
- yupper32 4y ago
  > if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant. Wait why? There's already such little incentive to get into public service. The pay is certainly garbage. Hell, the top position in the US government only pays $400k. Who is going to want to work in government if we get rid of the ability for them to transition to private industry afterwards?
  - corrral 4y ago
    What's with the DVs? This is correct. You'd have to raise pay much, much higher to keep decent (for even very bad values of "decent" that we currently have) gov. workers and politicians if you also want to saddle them with a very broad and painful non-compete when they leave. That or they'll turn even more openly to bribery and corruption to make up the difference.
  - gernb 4y ago
    While it's true that you can make more money elsewhere, lots of people take jobs for reasons other than money. As one example, nearly every game programmer I know could be making a ton more outside games but they don't leave game dev. The reason you're supposedly supposed to get into public service is because you want to serve the public. I know it's being naive on top of being fiction but it reminds me of this ep from West Wing where they recruit a press secretary who's making $550k a year in Hollywood and tell her the press secretary job pays $31k a year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM_eeUyOBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM_eeUyOBs
yupper32 4y ago
It's also important to realize that the reason Uber and Lyft were able to crush the taxi industry is in part because the taxi industry was absolutely horrible to consumers. The simple act of being able to know what I'm going to be charged beforehand, and know that the driver has little ability to scam me out of as much money as they can extract from me at my destination made Uber and Lyft SO much better. That should be the bare minimum, and yet the taxi industry couldn't figure that out for the most part. I do not care about them breaking taxi laws or regulations. Their treatment of their "employees" absolutely needs improvement, but my god I do not care about the taxi industry as a whole.
- gamblor956 4y ago
  In LA I've never actually had an issue with taxis. OTOH, I've lost count of the number of Ubers and Lyfts that just never showed up, or cancelled en route, or tried to go the wrong way to pad mileage.
- abirch 4y ago
  I'm old enough to remember calling a taxi company the day before a flight to arrange a pickup at my place for 5:30. Then calling them again 5:00 the day of the flight and them telling me that the one guy didn't come in so now they couldn't pick me up until 7 -- My flight departure time! Then me frantically calling other taxi companies. I had to skip my shower. They seemed to hate their customers
  - mulmen 4y ago
    Uber did exactly this to a friend of mine just a couple months ago. Except they didn't even offer the 7am pickup. They just cancelled the ride 15 minutes before the pickup.
    - agumonkey 4y ago
      Uber, once the taxi killer, soon the exact swap-in replacement :)
theplumber 4y ago
We should reward all the people involved to make sure that the taxi industy is killed for good.
hourago 4y ago
News about a whistleblower. HN comments only about how taxis are bad. I see a problem here. Uber has broken the law to incredible extends, and it has corrupted many politicians. That's the truth, that are the news.
- president 4y ago
  Lesson of life, most people don't really care about anything as long it doesn't inconvenience them (directly)
- piva00 4y ago
  Shocking stuff like this, weaponising drivers against city governments: > MacGann insists that Uber drivers were seen by some at the company as pawns who could be used to put pressure on governments. “And if that meant Uber drivers going on strike, Uber drivers doing a demo in the streets, Uber drivers blocking Barcelona, blocking Berlin, blocking Paris, then that was the way to go,” he said. “In a sense, it was considered beneficial to weaponise Uber drivers in this way.” > The files show MacGann’s fingerprints on this strategy, too. In one email, he praised staffers in Amsterdam who leaked stories to the press about attacks on drivers to “keep the violence narrative” and pressure the Dutch government. And most comments are quasi-whataboutism on the taxi industry vs Uber. Yes, the taxi industry is bad, in lots of places ran by some kind of mob, etc. Still, Uber was weaponising their workers (while fighting as hard as possible to not call them workers and pay for workers' benefits) against local governments, they were behaving like a tech-mafia.
- nofinator 4y ago
  Plus the whistleblower was at the head of Uber's push into Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All the horrible stories I've read are about those markets. But the comments here seem to be about American taxis!
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
> "How can you have a clear conscience if you don’t stand up and own your contribution to how people are being treated today?” What a laudable moral pivot! Good for him, finding a path to redemption. I guess he was just haunted by all of his sins and felt a need to make things rights with the world. > MacGann is understood to have recently reached an out-of-court settlement with Uber after a legal dispute relating to his remuneration. He...acknowledged he had had personal grievances with the company. Ah, there it is.
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
Completely unrelated to Uber but I wish I could hear a similar confession from Bill Gates before I die. The amount of greyish and plain bad things in the 90s and early 20s he is responsible for is enormous. Still, no single "I'm sorry, what we did at that time was wrong."
- bonzini 4y ago
  Oh no, please no more COVID crap...
  - gurchik 4y ago
    > in the 90s and early 20s What about COVID?
    - bonzini 4y ago
      Early 20s fits well with 2020-2021, butil it was apparently a typo for early 2000s.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
    I was refering to his decisions as the CEO of Microsoft only.
    - bonzini 4y ago
      Then you didn't mean early 20s. :) Apologies for the misunderstanding.
  - jer0me 4y ago
    I think they meant early 2000s.
dang 4y ago
Recent and related: Emmanuel Macron aided Uber lobbying drive in France, leak reveals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32054380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32054380 - July 2022 (21 comments) Uber told staff to use ‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32051364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32051364 - July 2022 (35 comments) ‘Hit the kill switch’: Uber used covert tech to thwart government raids - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046559 - July 2022 (8 comments) Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045906 - July 2022 (500 comments)
logicalmonster 4y ago
There are some problems in life that cannot be solved by begging for permission, but by going ahead and then asking for forgiveness. There is no legal way that the taxi cartel could have ever been challenged without some company like Uber just ramming it through regardless of the technical legality of certain actions. Insofar as they didn't steal from customers, them taking down the taxi cartel is arguably a public service that should be forgiven and applauded.
- LionTamer 4y ago
  Well said. I sympathize with their drivers for wanting to get paid more and get better treatment - I think they deserve to be treated better. But I just can’t understand the backlash and controversy in public perception surrounding Uber breaking laws - as though laws dictated morality.
balderdash 4y ago
While I have no sympathy of the taxi industry some of my family lives in/is from a resort destination, and Uber has created a huge problem, while it’s massively improved the availability of rides in the high season, it put many of the cabs out of business, so in the low season there is no capacity, which is especially hard on senior citizens etc. who need transport to doctors appointments etc.
TheMagicHorsey 4y ago
I have no respect for The Guardian. MacGann is an absolute dirtbag, as even a cursory investigation would show. This is not Whistleblowing. This is a disgruntled guy who made a ton of money on Uber stock and is disgruntled he didn't make more. Is he going to give all his Uber money to charity? No? Then he should really not be acting like a whistleblower. Also, what Uber did is what every single corporation does with respect to its interactions with the regulatory states across the world. People have this fantasy that regulations are these perfect bodies of law that really do accomplish their stated goals. WRONG! They are more often counterproductive crap that people work around because they have to. The regulations create incumbents who have an interest in maintaining regulations because it cements their market power. The citizens are bamboozled by useful idiots like The Guardian journalists who just spout the party line without actually investigating how regulations actually work on the ground. Is there a single person at the Guardian who is aware that Private Equity firms and other investors bought up all the taxi medallions in NYC and were extracting monopoly rents to consumers, while simultaneously abusing a pliant population of renter/drivers. The profits were going to the medallion holders. Consumers were being f'ed by a corrupt and inefficient system, and drivers were getting the shaft. Only politicians and the investors were pleased. Yeah Uber busted that wide open. Drivers don't like the situation now? Guess what, if you stay off Uber and use a competitor, you will shrink Uber's dominance over time. There are competitors in every city.
jollybean 4y ago
Unless someone leaks information which points to materially illegal behaviour, I don't see how people are going to get away with this. If you leak private emails of any arbitrary company, there's a 100% chance some things will be taken out of context. I suggest Travis was in some ways a kind of a giant turd, but that's definitely his right, unless it involves something illegal. I'm wary of the press misrepresenting the issue like they did the FB CA scandal, which was actually a scandal, just presented as the wrong kind of scandal.
dogman144 4y ago
I’m tech-fluent and lived pre/post-Uber around NYC. The crime cabs committed was behind the times on tech, the medallion system was wage slavery for drivers, and fleecing tourists sometimes on airport rides. However, cabs were abundant and easy to hail, and prices weren’t much different than Uber. Cabs are about 30% cheaper than uber today. This was replaced by Uber, one of the most destructive influences on cities via the traffic and the “gig worker freedom” wage slavery. Add in its shadow war against public transit. Cabs really weren’t as bad as this thread seems to imply. I hope Uber goes down for this.
mchusma 4y ago
Uber and Lyft did incredible things in the aggregate to improve transportation, including getting horrible laws updated to be less horrible. I don't think they were perfect, but fighting against unjust laws is a very good thing, and I appreciate that they did so. If you are mad at them, it seems analogous to being mad at high quality nonviolent weed dealers, who did nothing other than provide a service which was legal for a long time and is legal again.
greatgib 4y ago
A lot of people are defending Uber against taxi, based on the fact that the service is better. But the important thing to remember is that we were in this situation because the lobbying of Taxi companies was doing the same thing as Uber previously and this is why we are in this situation in the first place. And compared to its beginning, you can see that the service and prices provided by degraded a lot in last years now that they are in a kind of dominant position! So, in my opinion, everyone should reprove such a behavior. Ensuring that our leaders can't be corrupted like that by lobbyist is the only way out of problematic situations like that.

I started taxi driving in early 2012. I'd drive my little 1994 Honda Civic Hatchback to the taxi yard and check out a cab for 12 hours or 24 hours. It was a pretty good deal: the taxi company took care of complying with Arizona's minimal taxi regulations, provided insurance and customers. I could do anything I wanted with their taxi, I just had to pay them at the end of the shift. I always made money, even on my 4th day when the dispatch system went down. On that day I found some people in downtown who'd scheduled a cab to go to the Frank Lloyd Wright museum in Scottsdale. The taxi was free that day. After the 'new driver' $20 off coupon the taxi company actually paid me to drive their taxi around. Uber arrived in Phoenix ... in 2013 or 2014? I remember sitting at the Cardinals' football stadium. Another of the company's drivers had gotten an uber fare. He said something like, "it's not that cheap". We didn't realize at the time that what the driver got was not what the passengers paid (that is, drivers' pay was subsidized). Things started to get bad for us taxi drivers in 2015. I remember sitting in old town Scottsdale. Two ladies were waiting for their ride-share driver to show up. A "gypsy-cab" driver (someone not associated with one of the big taxi companies - who'd gotten a taxi meter and insurance, and complied with Arizona's minimal licensing) asked if they needed a ride. The ladies said, "you're too expensive." A Honda Accord showed up, with two ladies in the front... I figured the female driver didn't feel safe driving around by herself late at night, and recruited her friend to copilot with her. Cars are expensive. I'd made enough to upgrade my old honda civic to a Uber-acceptable Ford Fusion by ... 2013? (Truthfully my father paid for most of the vehicle, I took out a $5,000 loan.) When I did the calculations on driving my Fusion for Uber, the numbers just didn't work. I figured I'd need a transmission sooner or later, and the miles really add up quickly when you're driving. We'd put 100,000 miles a year on our taxi-Priuses. The early years of 'ride sharing' was an exercise in Wall Street tricking people who wanted nice cars into wearing out their personal vehicles for barely minimum wage. I took to blogging about my fares, initially at kuro5hin.org [rip]. Lots of stories... reposted them at https://www.TaxiWars.org/ https://www.TaxiWars.org/ Had this recent comment about the taxi industry get a couple upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31065345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31065345 ("The company had economy of scale in their fleet operations that was hard to beat: mechanics who knew the Prius like the back of their hand, boneyards (for parts), connections in the automotive industry.") On the one hand, Uber's software was better than our 'electronic taxi dispatch v1.0' system [0]. But Arizona's taxi regulations were so incredibly minimal, that it wasn't very fair for Governor Ducey, et al, to throw us under the bus. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmm3kECLxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmm3kECLxw / http://www.taxiwars.org/p/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.html http://www.taxiwars.org/p/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.html

ciguy 4y ago
I am glad the taxi industry worked for you as a driver for a while. But it was unbelievably bad for consumers for so long, I have no sympathy for anyone related to the industry pre Uber at all. You might have been a good driver but most were not and frankly the odds aren't in your favor either. I am sincerely glad that the taxi industry got fucked as hard as it did, it forced them to at least think a little bit about customer experience and improve in some places.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  - ciguy 4y ago
    You're not exactly wrong but your comment isn't really reflective of anything meaningful. Correlation does not always equal causation. And I know a LOT of people with the same experiences. The commonality of these experiences leads me to believe it's a cab thing and not just a me thing. In all other aspects of my life I tend to be pretty easy to get along with and generally have reasonable expectations. I don't have any reason to think my expectations of the cab industry are out of line with my expectations for everything else.
- taxicabjesus 4y ago
  The hn comment I linked told of how the company I drove for became the default cab company for the Phoenix area. One aspect was how passengers could file a complaint, and they'd look into it. I got taken for a ride by a taxi driver in San Jose, cira 2003... That should have been a $20 fare, not a $100 fare, but I was naïve. Sometimes my passengers would watch our route on their phone.
balderdash 4y ago
I’m glad you pointed the driver economics out, I meticulously keep track of my auto costs (hour out to road trip [1]) and am always surprised by what my actual mpg/cost per mile is, as well as how repairs and maintenance add up over time - I honestly don’t think most Uber drivers realize they are just trading deferred maintenance costs, and depreciation expense for cash now. [1]https://apps.apple.com/us/app/road-trip-mpg/id298398207 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/road-trip-mpg/id298398207

treis 4y ago

I don't think this guy deserves the title whistleblower. A whistleblower leaks the crimes as they're happening in order to stop them. Not 6 years after participating in the crimes to settle a grudge.

mulmen 4y ago
It's on brand for Uber. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons in the worst way. Really pushing the limits of the ends justifying the means.
registeredcorn 4y ago
That's actually an interesting point! Other than the term "informant" or "insider" I can't really think of how you would describe this type of thing. There's whistleblowers, and death bed confessions. I suppose someone could simply be called a "tattle tale" or a "former employee", but neither really describes the act of revealing knowledge that was not publicly available. "Leaker" might fit, but that seems to be more for someone who is a current employee, who is trying to disclose information in a secretive manner. Advocate has an equally weird meaning, too. Can anyone else think of a better term?
- _nhynes 4y ago
  Perhaps “disgruntled former employee”? “Disgruntled” is a term that often comes up in mandatory security training and describes people to whom you probably do not want to share production secrets.

fatjokes 4y ago

I have zero sympathy for the yellow cab industry. None. I have a lot of negative feelings about Uber, and I would never work there myself as a SWE, but these feelings pale in comparison to my experiences with yellow cabs (NYC bias here). I've had my partner be threatened (the usual pay cash/credit card machine broken or "better be a good tip"), cabs drive right pass after asking where you're going, scammed. I've had female friends molested by drivers. Sure, all this could happen (and some have) in an Uber. But I'd bet dollars to donuts that Uber can track down the driver must easier than your usual taxi driver. (Who the hell remembers the medallion numbers?) TK is an asshole, and I'm no fan of assholes (e.g., screw Apple products). But if he was the price we have to paid to upend the yellow cab industry, then I for one am willing to pay it.

tensor 4y ago
Man, if you think cabs in NYC are bad, try Toronto some time. Our cabs are beyond awful. At least you have credit card machines in the back of your cabs! Our cabs are probably twice as expensive as NYC cabs, and there is no credit card machine in the back. 90% of the time the driver lies and says "it's broken" to try and force you to pay cash. They'll even drive you to an ATM sometimes to get cash, just don't leave your stuff in the cab because they may just drive off with it instead of waiting. When they DO give you a cash machine there is a high chance of getting your card swiped. And yes, they commonly do the "where are you going?" trick then refuse you a ride because it's not far enough for them, they want the more lucrative fares. Also, the cars are all completely awful quality, just terrible.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > 90% of the time the driver lies and says "it's broken" to try and force you to pay cash Two can play at that game. Despite the practice being illegal, cabbies in the Vancouver area ask if you've got cash before you get in. I always say yes. But, I never carry cash. When we get to the destination, I play dumb, and ask if they've got a machine. They do, because they're required to by law. Or, on the off chance I do have cash, I'll say "oh, but I only have a $10" and sometimes they'd rather knock $5 off my fare than take a card. Also, I live in a burb, so I've taken to lying about where I'm headed until the car's in motion. Since they always want directions, not a destination (are they dishonest or ignorant about what route's best?) this has always worked for me.

_ktx2 4y ago

> They include Travis Kalanick, Uber’s combative co-founder and then chief executive, David Plouffe, a former Barack Obama campaign aide who became a senior vice-president at Uber, and Rachel Whetstone, a British PR executive who has also held senior roles at Google, Facebook and now Netflix. Why is this so common and acceptable? You have these towering technological firms who already possess vast amounts of power who have a pattern of hiring former political elites. Interestingly, apart of a top conservative at Facebook, many of these people have worked for powerful liberals. There's no excuse for this behavior, if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant.

yupper32 4y ago
> if a person has just gotten done working for a candidate or someone in office, they should be barred from private industry until they are politically irrelevant. Wait why? There's already such little incentive to get into public service. The pay is certainly garbage. Hell, the top position in the US government only pays $400k. Who is going to want to work in government if we get rid of the ability for them to transition to private industry afterwards?
- corrral 4y ago
  What's with the DVs? This is correct. You'd have to raise pay much, much higher to keep decent (for even very bad values of "decent" that we currently have) gov. workers and politicians if you also want to saddle them with a very broad and painful non-compete when they leave. That or they'll turn even more openly to bribery and corruption to make up the difference.
- gernb 4y ago
  While it's true that you can make more money elsewhere, lots of people take jobs for reasons other than money. As one example, nearly every game programmer I know could be making a ton more outside games but they don't leave game dev. The reason you're supposedly supposed to get into public service is because you want to serve the public. I know it's being naive on top of being fiction but it reminds me of this ep from West Wing where they recruit a press secretary who's making $550k a year in Hollywood and tell her the press secretary job pays $31k a year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM_eeUyOBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsM_eeUyOBs

yupper32 4y ago

It's also important to realize that the reason Uber and Lyft were able to crush the taxi industry is in part because the taxi industry was absolutely horrible to consumers. The simple act of being able to know what I'm going to be charged beforehand, and know that the driver has little ability to scam me out of as much money as they can extract from me at my destination made Uber and Lyft SO much better. That should be the bare minimum, and yet the taxi industry couldn't figure that out for the most part. I do not care about them breaking taxi laws or regulations. Their treatment of their "employees" absolutely needs improvement, but my god I do not care about the taxi industry as a whole.

gamblor956 4y ago
In LA I've never actually had an issue with taxis. OTOH, I've lost count of the number of Ubers and Lyfts that just never showed up, or cancelled en route, or tried to go the wrong way to pad mileage.
abirch 4y ago
I'm old enough to remember calling a taxi company the day before a flight to arrange a pickup at my place for 5:30. Then calling them again 5:00 the day of the flight and them telling me that the one guy didn't come in so now they couldn't pick me up until 7 -- My flight departure time! Then me frantically calling other taxi companies. I had to skip my shower. They seemed to hate their customers
- mulmen 4y ago
  Uber did exactly this to a friend of mine just a couple months ago. Except they didn't even offer the 7am pickup. They just cancelled the ride 15 minutes before the pickup.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    Uber, once the taxi killer, soon the exact swap-in replacement :)

theplumber 4y ago

We should reward all the people involved to make sure that the taxi industy is killed for good.

hourago 4y ago

News about a whistleblower. HN comments only about how taxis are bad. I see a problem here. Uber has broken the law to incredible extends, and it has corrupted many politicians. That's the truth, that are the news.

president 4y ago
Lesson of life, most people don't really care about anything as long it doesn't inconvenience them (directly)
piva00 4y ago
Shocking stuff like this, weaponising drivers against city governments: > MacGann insists that Uber drivers were seen by some at the company as pawns who could be used to put pressure on governments. “And if that meant Uber drivers going on strike, Uber drivers doing a demo in the streets, Uber drivers blocking Barcelona, blocking Berlin, blocking Paris, then that was the way to go,” he said. “In a sense, it was considered beneficial to weaponise Uber drivers in this way.” > The files show MacGann’s fingerprints on this strategy, too. In one email, he praised staffers in Amsterdam who leaked stories to the press about attacks on drivers to “keep the violence narrative” and pressure the Dutch government. And most comments are quasi-whataboutism on the taxi industry vs Uber. Yes, the taxi industry is bad, in lots of places ran by some kind of mob, etc. Still, Uber was weaponising their workers (while fighting as hard as possible to not call them workers and pay for workers' benefits) against local governments, they were behaving like a tech-mafia.
nofinator 4y ago
Plus the whistleblower was at the head of Uber's push into Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All the horrible stories I've read are about those markets. But the comments here seem to be about American taxis!

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

> "How can you have a clear conscience if you don’t stand up and own your contribution to how people are being treated today?” What a laudable moral pivot! Good for him, finding a path to redemption. I guess he was just haunted by all of his sins and felt a need to make things rights with the world. > MacGann is understood to have recently reached an out-of-court settlement with Uber after a legal dispute relating to his remuneration. He...acknowledged he had had personal grievances with the company. Ah, there it is.

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

Completely unrelated to Uber but I wish I could hear a similar confession from Bill Gates before I die. The amount of greyish and plain bad things in the 90s and early 20s he is responsible for is enormous. Still, no single "I'm sorry, what we did at that time was wrong."

bonzini 4y ago
Oh no, please no more COVID crap...
- gurchik 4y ago
  > in the 90s and early 20s What about COVID?
  - bonzini 4y ago
    Early 20s fits well with 2020-2021, butil it was apparently a typo for early 2000s.
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  I was refering to his decisions as the CEO of Microsoft only.
  - bonzini 4y ago
    Then you didn't mean early 20s. :) Apologies for the misunderstanding.
- jer0me 4y ago
  I think they meant early 2000s.

dang 4y ago

Recent and related: Emmanuel Macron aided Uber lobbying drive in France, leak reveals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32054380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32054380 - July 2022 (21 comments) Uber told staff to use ‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32051364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32051364 - July 2022 (35 comments) ‘Hit the kill switch’: Uber used covert tech to thwart government raids - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046559 - July 2022 (8 comments) Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045906 - July 2022 (500 comments)

logicalmonster 4y ago

There are some problems in life that cannot be solved by begging for permission, but by going ahead and then asking for forgiveness. There is no legal way that the taxi cartel could have ever been challenged without some company like Uber just ramming it through regardless of the technical legality of certain actions. Insofar as they didn't steal from customers, them taking down the taxi cartel is arguably a public service that should be forgiven and applauded.

LionTamer 4y ago
Well said. I sympathize with their drivers for wanting to get paid more and get better treatment - I think they deserve to be treated better. But I just can’t understand the backlash and controversy in public perception surrounding Uber breaking laws - as though laws dictated morality.

balderdash 4y ago

While I have no sympathy of the taxi industry some of my family lives in/is from a resort destination, and Uber has created a huge problem, while it’s massively improved the availability of rides in the high season, it put many of the cabs out of business, so in the low season there is no capacity, which is especially hard on senior citizens etc. who need transport to doctors appointments etc.

TheMagicHorsey 4y ago

I have no respect for The Guardian. MacGann is an absolute dirtbag, as even a cursory investigation would show. This is not Whistleblowing. This is a disgruntled guy who made a ton of money on Uber stock and is disgruntled he didn't make more. Is he going to give all his Uber money to charity? No? Then he should really not be acting like a whistleblower. Also, what Uber did is what every single corporation does with respect to its interactions with the regulatory states across the world. People have this fantasy that regulations are these perfect bodies of law that really do accomplish their stated goals. WRONG! They are more often counterproductive crap that people work around because they have to. The regulations create incumbents who have an interest in maintaining regulations because it cements their market power. The citizens are bamboozled by useful idiots like The Guardian journalists who just spout the party line without actually investigating how regulations actually work on the ground. Is there a single person at the Guardian who is aware that Private Equity firms and other investors bought up all the taxi medallions in NYC and were extracting monopoly rents to consumers, while simultaneously abusing a pliant population of renter/drivers. The profits were going to the medallion holders. Consumers were being f'ed by a corrupt and inefficient system, and drivers were getting the shaft. Only politicians and the investors were pleased. Yeah Uber busted that wide open. Drivers don't like the situation now? Guess what, if you stay off Uber and use a competitor, you will shrink Uber's dominance over time. There are competitors in every city.

jollybean 4y ago

Unless someone leaks information which points to materially illegal behaviour, I don't see how people are going to get away with this. If you leak private emails of any arbitrary company, there's a 100% chance some things will be taken out of context. I suggest Travis was in some ways a kind of a giant turd, but that's definitely his right, unless it involves something illegal. I'm wary of the press misrepresenting the issue like they did the FB CA scandal, which was actually a scandal, just presented as the wrong kind of scandal.

dogman144 4y ago

I’m tech-fluent and lived pre/post-Uber around NYC. The crime cabs committed was behind the times on tech, the medallion system was wage slavery for drivers, and fleecing tourists sometimes on airport rides. However, cabs were abundant and easy to hail, and prices weren’t much different than Uber. Cabs are about 30% cheaper than uber today. This was replaced by Uber, one of the most destructive influences on cities via the traffic and the “gig worker freedom” wage slavery. Add in its shadow war against public transit. Cabs really weren’t as bad as this thread seems to imply. I hope Uber goes down for this.

mchusma 4y ago

Uber and Lyft did incredible things in the aggregate to improve transportation, including getting horrible laws updated to be less horrible. I don't think they were perfect, but fighting against unjust laws is a very good thing, and I appreciate that they did so. If you are mad at them, it seems analogous to being mad at high quality nonviolent weed dealers, who did nothing other than provide a service which was legal for a long time and is legal again.

greatgib 4y ago

A lot of people are defending Uber against taxi, based on the fact that the service is better. But the important thing to remember is that we were in this situation because the lobbying of Taxi companies was doing the same thing as Uber previously and this is why we are in this situation in the first place. And compared to its beginning, you can see that the service and prices provided by degraded a lot in last years now that they are in a kind of dominant position! So, in my opinion, everyone should reprove such a behavior. Ensuring that our leaders can't be corrupted like that by lobbyist is the only way out of problematic situations like that.