Uber are getting shirty
Discussion
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hstewie said:
It is amazing 400k people signed a petition for uber considering what is known about them, people really live in a bubble, just for themselves.hstewie said:Vaud said:
I'm sure they are. That wasn't my point.
My point was that "cash only" is prevalent and yet TFL seem to do nothing about about other than say that they must have card machines and provide a number to complain to.
How about ramping up spot checks with instant removal of licence? Uber might feel that all parties are being treated more evenly.
I take probably 2 or 3 black cabs every day in London and in the last 6 months or so (since whenever the new regulations about card machines in black cabs came into force) I can't recall a single trip in which the machine was actually or allegedly out of order. They do seem to be complying now and cash only is most definitely not "prevalent" anymore.My point was that "cash only" is prevalent and yet TFL seem to do nothing about about other than say that they must have card machines and provide a number to complain to.
How about ramping up spot checks with instant removal of licence? Uber might feel that all parties are being treated more evenly.
Sa Calobra said:
It's not sudden, they've been warned about their licence by tfl but Uber carried on petulently.
Black cabs need reform. For cities to meet emmissions targets the diesel engine needs to go. It can't be soon enough but for a single company to take over the minicab market and ignore rules is a bad thing.
Both need reform.
I visited Birmingham recently and saw lines of black cabs sat with their engines idling. It was disgusting.
We also need to change our ways and stop being soo idle.
TFL have already announced restrictions on black cab emissions for new vehicles and timescales for the current ones to be replaced - a step in the right direction.Black cabs need reform. For cities to meet emmissions targets the diesel engine needs to go. It can't be soon enough but for a single company to take over the minicab market and ignore rules is a bad thing.
Both need reform.
I visited Birmingham recently and saw lines of black cabs sat with their engines idling. It was disgusting.
We also need to change our ways and stop being soo idle.
You keep saying people are lazy and should use the tube or walk? Ever thought why not - I use taxis and Ubers frequently in cities with public transport, but for very sensible reasons. Eg I hate hauling a suitcase up and down steps at almost every underground station.. or I'm travelling with someone who can't walk too far .
Last Uber trip was Tuesday from downtown Atlanta to the airport. I could have taken public transport - 15 minute subway ride, then shuttle bus to international departures (another 15 minutes usually) and spent $2.50. Or I could spend $16, travel for 20 minutes in a 1 year old Camry with my bags in the boot, AC set to 20C, 10 degrees cooler than outside.
The other option was a conventional taxi - these are mainly 5+ year old Voyagers and similar, costing 3 times as much. (And they don't take cards..).
Yes there are problems with Uber's management and processes, but there's a place in the market for the service they offer. The cynic in me wonders how much worse they are than PH and black cabs though and how much of this is political pressure from those groups to put down a rival.
Blaster72 said:
Cold said:
The petition has now topped 500,000. Are they all wrong?
change.org? Toothless waste of time to be honest. Their opinion should probably be balanced based on how informed it is.
Having something that's "cheap and it's convenient" taken away from them may be a reason for people to sign a petition but it has to be balanced against a regulator finding them "not fit and proper" given all of the things that the regulator looks into when deciding whether to renew their license.
Having something that's "cheap and it's convenient" taken away from them may be a reason for people to sign a petition but it has to be balanced against a regulator finding them "not fit and proper" given all of the things that the regulator looks into when deciding whether to renew their license.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: Their opinion should probably be balanced based on how informed it is.
Having something that's "cheap and it's convenient" taken away from them may be a reason for people to sign a petition but it has to be balanced against a regulator finding them "not fit and proper" given all of the things that the regulator looks into when deciding whether to renew their license.
Some are complaining because they risk losing the "cheap and convenient" option but I'm sure others feel the rules seem to be somewhat more stringently applied to Uber than others in the same marketplace.Having something that's "cheap and it's convenient" taken away from them may be a reason for people to sign a petition but it has to be balanced against a regulator finding them "not fit and proper" given all of the things that the regulator looks into when deciding whether to renew their license.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: Their opinion should probably be balanced based on how informed it is.
Having something that's "cheap and it's convenient" taken away from them may be a reason for people to sign a petition but it has to be balanced against a regulator finding them "not fit and proper" given all of the things that the regulator looks into when deciding whether to renew their license.
So we're clear, it is Uber themselves who have spammed everyone about this. The email is entitled "Save your Uber in London" and reads:Having something that's "cheap and it's convenient" taken away from them may be a reason for people to sign a petition but it has to be balanced against a regulator finding them "not fit and proper" given all of the things that the regulator looks into when deciding whether to renew their license.
Uber said:
As you may have heard, the Mayor and Transport for London have announced they will not be renewing Uber’s licence to operate in our city when it expires on 30 September.
We are sure Londoners will be as astounded as we are by this decision. By trying to ban the app from the capital, the Mayor and Transport for London have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.
Not only will this decision deprive you of the choice of a convenient way of getting about town, it will also put more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on our app out of work.
We will be immediately challenging this decision in court.
If you want to continue using the Uber app in London - and to defend the livelihoods of 40,000 licensed drivers - please sign this petition urging the Mayor to think again.
Tom Elvidge,
Uber London
and has a call to action button to sign the petition.We are sure Londoners will be as astounded as we are by this decision. By trying to ban the app from the capital, the Mayor and Transport for London have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.
Not only will this decision deprive you of the choice of a convenient way of getting about town, it will also put more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on our app out of work.
We will be immediately challenging this decision in court.
If you want to continue using the Uber app in London - and to defend the livelihoods of 40,000 licensed drivers - please sign this petition urging the Mayor to think again.
Tom Elvidge,
Uber London
It is well-written. It presses all of the right buttons to achieve a result (even if it is, at best, economical with the truth).
I hate that it works. But I admire that they know how to make it work.
if the ban on uber holds, won't a large percentage of the 40k drivers go back to working for local taxi firms?
All taxi drivers are on borrowed time employment wise anyway and the first company to start eliminating their drivers will actually be Uber themselves.
A whiff of hypocrisy about Ubers messaging.
All taxi drivers are on borrowed time employment wise anyway and the first company to start eliminating their drivers will actually be Uber themselves.
A whiff of hypocrisy about Ubers messaging.
Carl_Manchester said:
if the ban on uber holds, won't a large percentage of the 40k drivers go back to working for local taxi firms?
They could get private hire licenses issued by other authorities in the UK and carry on working for Uber in London.Could be a nice revenue stream for Orkney, for example :-)
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: I'd be surprised.
When you pull st like stopping regulators being able to use your service by developing a fake app specifically to fool them that probably doesn't go down too well and that's before you get into the "really serious" stuff around driver screening.
It is a brilliant concept, just seems to have been done by a company with very very bad ethics.
I don't know how much all the stuff about Uber's company culture gets out beyond IT/tech websites but it's worth a 5 minute dig.
In Ubers defence it has to have bad etihcs to revolutionise an industry.When you pull s
t like stopping regulators being able to use your service by developing a fake app specifically to fool them that probably doesn't go down too well and that's before you get into the "really serious" stuff around driver screening.It is a brilliant concept, just seems to have been done by a company with very very bad ethics.
I don't know how much all the stuff about Uber's company culture gets out beyond IT/tech websites but it's worth a 5 minute dig.
It has to stick two fingers up at regulators to be able to show an alternative way of doing things.
W124 said:
What's happened is that the hipster capitalist has spread from California to everywhere else. These dudes regard morality as an embarrassing delusion.
They have made headway by offering colossal returns on investor money only manageable by exploiting the worker, the supplier and the data generated to the extent the a downward spiral is created. Other hipster capitalists can only get started by offering more extreme versions of the same.
This has made waves and these immoral bds have popped up everywhere - gaming positions in previously rational capitalist bastions. They have driven and overseen a gigantic change and the relationship between the amount of profits reinvested in companies and the amount removed by shareholders and simply squandered.
That's all well and good - people can take from their possession what they will. But it has consequences. especially in Western democracies where underfunded, once effective, public services are being propped up by private money which must offer the greatest return to shareholders irrelevant of the impact on future efficiency.
If you combine that with a drop in real wages made up by cheap credit derived from fiat currency then you kind of have what we have now.
Capitalism is a great system but it has to be self regulating to a degree. There is a link between the shareholder and the customer of a company in which those shares are held. And the workers within that company who buy and use services provided by other companies. Uber and its ilk represent the severing of that link.
Careful what you wish for. Sooner or later it will be you, your livelihood and your life that the hipsters come for.
You are describing software and automation taking away jobsThey have made headway by offering colossal returns on investor money only manageable by exploiting the worker, the supplier and the data generated to the extent the a downward spiral is created. Other hipster capitalists can only get started by offering more extreme versions of the same.
This has made waves and these immoral b
ds have popped up everywhere - gaming positions in previously rational capitalist bastions. They have driven and overseen a gigantic change and the relationship between the amount of profits reinvested in companies and the amount removed by shareholders and simply squandered.That's all well and good - people can take from their possession what they will. But it has consequences. especially in Western democracies where underfunded, once effective, public services are being propped up by private money which must offer the greatest return to shareholders irrelevant of the impact on future efficiency.
If you combine that with a drop in real wages made up by cheap credit derived from fiat currency then you kind of have what we have now.
Capitalism is a great system but it has to be self regulating to a degree. There is a link between the shareholder and the customer of a company in which those shares are held. And the workers within that company who buy and use services provided by other companies. Uber and its ilk represent the severing of that link.
Careful what you wish for. Sooner or later it will be you, your livelihood and your life that the hipsters come for.
jamoor said:
In Ubers defence it has to have bad etihcs to revolutionise an industry.
It has to stick two fingers up at regulators to be able to show an alternative way of doing things.
Not really, they could have just done what the regulator wanted and they'd have had their license renewed.It has to stick two fingers up at regulators to be able to show an alternative way of doing things.
They chose not to do so.
Uber only have themselves to blame, but oddly their email didn't mention this.
I think it will all end up for the best. Uber will make some concessions, win their appeal and life will go on. Safety will improve (or at least that will be the perception), no one will lose their job, customers will be happy and of course black cabbies will carry on whining about it.
bhstewie said:
hstewie said: Not really, they could have just done what the regulator wanted and they'd have had their license renewed.
They chose not to do so.
Uber only have themselves to blame, but oddly their email didn't mention this.
They've always been legal in the UK, other countries they've been entirely illegall.They chose not to do so.
Uber only have themselves to blame, but oddly their email didn't mention this.
There must be more to this.
We don't know how long the dispute has been going on, what steps have been taken.
I heard on the radio that one issue was with Police history checks on the drivers. This appears one of the main issues in being "not fit and proper", but a caller also said that Uber had been doing this and had told drivers to use an agency to do this, in agreement with TfL. But then it turned out it was not quite the official one or some process issue.
It is hard to work out where there is bad faith, poor regulation enforcement or a mixture of both.
It should all be solveable by both sides.
It will be interesting to see if this is just an escalation to make Uber comply via the appeals process (i.e. TfL really mean business) - that seems the most likely outcome - I guess if they appeal they don't shut down next week?
We don't know how long the dispute has been going on, what steps have been taken.
I heard on the radio that one issue was with Police history checks on the drivers. This appears one of the main issues in being "not fit and proper", but a caller also said that Uber had been doing this and had told drivers to use an agency to do this, in agreement with TfL. But then it turned out it was not quite the official one or some process issue.
It is hard to work out where there is bad faith, poor regulation enforcement or a mixture of both.
It should all be solveable by both sides.
It will be interesting to see if this is just an escalation to make Uber comply via the appeals process (i.e. TfL really mean business) - that seems the most likely outcome - I guess if they appeal they don't shut down next week?
///ajd said:
There must be more to this.
We don't know how long the dispute has been going on, what steps have been taken.
I heard on the radio that one issue was with Police history checks on the drivers. This appears one of the main issues in being "not fit and proper", but a caller also said that Uber had been doing this and had told drivers to use an agency to do this, in agreement with TfL. But then it turned out it was not quite the official one or some process issue.
It is hard to work out where there is bad faith, poor regulation enforcement or a mixture of both.
It should all be solveable by both sides.
It will be interesting to see if this is just an escalation to make Uber comply via the appeals process (i.e. TfL really mean business) - that seems the most likely outcome - I guess if they appeal they don't shut down next week?
I thought tfl were responsible for thatWe don't know how long the dispute has been going on, what steps have been taken.
I heard on the radio that one issue was with Police history checks on the drivers. This appears one of the main issues in being "not fit and proper", but a caller also said that Uber had been doing this and had told drivers to use an agency to do this, in agreement with TfL. But then it turned out it was not quite the official one or some process issue.
It is hard to work out where there is bad faith, poor regulation enforcement or a mixture of both.
It should all be solveable by both sides.
It will be interesting to see if this is just an escalation to make Uber comply via the appeals process (i.e. TfL really mean business) - that seems the most likely outcome - I guess if they appeal they don't shut down next week?
///ajd said:
There must be more to this.
We don't know how long the dispute has been going on, what steps have been taken.
I heard on the radio that one issue was with Police history checks on the drivers. This appears one of the main issues in being "not fit and proper", but a caller also said that Uber had been doing this and had told drivers to use an agency to do this, in agreement with TfL. But then it turned out it was not quite the official one or some process issue.
It is hard to work out where there is bad faith, poor regulation enforcement or a mixture of both.
It should all be solveable by both sides.
It will be interesting to see if this is just an escalation to make Uber comply via the appeals process (i.e. TfL really mean business) - that seems the most likely outcome - I guess if they appeal they don't shut down next week?
It seems the agency some drivers were using was, perhaps, a little less diligent than others. The documents it issued were valid though.We don't know how long the dispute has been going on, what steps have been taken.
I heard on the radio that one issue was with Police history checks on the drivers. This appears one of the main issues in being "not fit and proper", but a caller also said that Uber had been doing this and had told drivers to use an agency to do this, in agreement with TfL. But then it turned out it was not quite the official one or some process issue.
It is hard to work out where there is bad faith, poor regulation enforcement or a mixture of both.
It should all be solveable by both sides.
It will be interesting to see if this is just an escalation to make Uber comply via the appeals process (i.e. TfL really mean business) - that seems the most likely outcome - I guess if they appeal they don't shut down next week?
Now TFL have decided that only a specific list of agencies can be used and that any Uber drivers not vetted by those will need rechecking.
Seems fair enough to me, but have TFL also insisted that any non Uber private hire or black cab drivers who used the same agency are also rechecked? If not, I can imagine Uber's legal team using that as an example of discriminatory practices.
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