I love products like these. Slices right through all the promotional noise like "fun drivers," "fast pick-up times," "clean cars," etc and gets right to chase -- price.
At the end of the day, they are all taxi services in my book. Whichever gets me from point A to point B the cheapest wins my dollars. Fast pick-up times, a sexy functional app, and other common sense differentiators are expectations now, not selling points.
> At the end of the day, they are all taxi services in my book.
Unless you live in New York, and are trying to get from Manhattan to one of the outer boroughs, in which case getting a yellow cab is a total crapshoot.
It shouldn't matter one bit. They're legally obligated to take you anywhere in the five boroughs.
Just get in before telling them your destination. If they give you flak (and you feel like fighting them), just take note of their medallion # and state clearly that you will report them if they fail to fulfill their obligation.
There are even fewer regulations preventing Uber drivers from declining a fare based on ___location - or race, or gender, or they don't like your sports team, or anything.
You're absolutely right, but it's still a crapshoot. You being right doesn't mean that the cabbie won't argue with you, and won't just flat out refuse to take you anyway, despite the risk of being reported.
While there are places that have fewer open taxis to hail, I never tell them where I'm going till I'm in the cab (it's against the rules to turn down a valid fair because of ___location IIRC). Easy enough to get a ride to most places you'd want to pay a taxi to go from there.
the quality of the car actually matters to me. in my experience Uber cars tend to be clean and well-maintained internally. i've only tried one Lyft and it was fine, but just not as pleasant to ride in. I'm not saying that's always the case with them, but I still consider that more than cost when deciding which one to use.
"You may not use the Uber API in any manner that is competitive to Uber or the Uber Services, including in connection with any application, website or other product or service that also includes, features, endorses, or otherwise supports in any way a third party that provides services competitive to Uber’s products and services, as determined in our sole discretion."
Here's one angle. If this app becomes popular and Uber sends a C&D, then Uber results will no longer show up in this app, meaning Lyft would get all the bookings from people who use it.
IMO that kind of term is anti-competitive and should not be legal. Uber markets itself as a free market alternative to the old cab monopolies, so why are they doing things like this?
I get the impression from the site that they have the fare rates, but are calculating distance and drive time using google maps and estimating the cost of the service. If this is true, they wouldn't need to use the API to run the site.
This how you know when something becomes a commodity. Uber/Lyft/Taxi/Sidecar they will just be competing on price in the long run, since they all compete in a commoditized market, and the player with better ubiquity and infrastructure will ultimately win, because they will be able to cut prices in a way that smaller players won't be able to afford.
This is a problem. If one of them gains a monopoly they will be able to lower service quality, raise prices and still be able to kill/buy off any new small competitor.
Taxi rate in NYC seems too low. I tried a couple of trips that I have taken dozens of times, and they have never, ever been as low as whats being calculated. I like the idea though.
This is brilliant and one of the many reasons I love this site. Simple Bootstrap interface that cuts through the crap, the fancy user interfaces of ride sharing and taxi apps and gives me the information that I really want: the cost.
Now this has hit the homepage, it'll be interesting to see if Uber, Lyft and other providers cut you off from their API's. Presumably, some of these services don't want you to be able to compare estimated costs between competing offerings, but it also means that everyone is being kept honest and as a consumer, I think that is the most important thing of all.
Which is kind of a funny way for Uber to say "we don't do tipping."
I mean, I guess you could say that my salary "includes a tip," and that it's really 20% lower but then there's a 20% tip on top of that, but obviously I wouldn't actually say that.
Uber says that their fare "includes a tip" because people are used to tipping cabbies. But tips are only tips when they are optional amounts that customers can vary the size of.
I don't think that rides-for-hire should really be a tipping industry anyhow.
I don't know where you are from, but North America tipping is not optional in certain situations. A waitress in a restaurant does not get payed a salary, but lives solely from tips. I don't know if the same is true for taxi drivers (who are not the owner of the car).
Yes, I've seen Reservoir Dogs too. Without engaging the extremely shopworn discussion about how much tipping is appropriate, the fact remains that if you choose, you can tip a waiter nothing. It may be a dick move, but you can do it.
You can't "tip" an Uber driver nothing. It doesn't matter how bad your service was. It doesn't matter how much you don't care about being labeled a dick. You just can't do it.
For NYC to New Jersey the fare estimate does not take into account bridge and tunnel tolls. I was getting $19, $23 and $23 for Taxi, Uber and Lyft respectively, which is very low for all of those services. A typical taxi will cost $45-$55 from Manhattan to Jersey City or Hoboken.
Great app! Would be great to estimate "regular" price, right now it's surging and I'd like to know what the price would be for e.g. tomorrow. Hopefully Uber wont shut you off, seems like a breach of ToS to me (I'm not a legal expert).
I don't know the addresses you're looking at, but it's about $20 from Mill Rd in Alexandria to DCA (I've taken the route a ton of times), which is a much shorter distance than to NE D.C. I don't know if $71 is entirely accurate, but it's definitely more than you're quoting.
EDIT: Just quoted it. It's about $42 in light traffic, about $69 in heavy traffic (from the hotel I stay in Alexandria to an address on Oglethorpe St in NE D.C.). So they're providing the worst possible fare, whereas they should probably provide the median.
I just looked up the ride I took this morning and it doesn't seem to include any add-on charges, like the toll I was charged, the Uber Safety Fee or the Seattle Accessible Driving Fund.
edit: oh yea, it says that in small print at the bottom of the page.
It would be nice for completeness, if either start or end is an airport (e.g. "SFO", "LAX") to include an estimate of a shared-ride van such as supershuttle.
How long is this going to last before one of the services shuts it down, claiming some kind of EULA noncompliance (or some other flimsy excuse to avoid competition)?
Unfortunately (in my limited experience with Lyft) the quality of UberX drivers are far better than Lyft drivers. Half the time in Lyft cars I've been worried about crashing! I'd rather pay that extra dollar or two and have a comfortable ride.
Uber has an API, but I looked into Uber's TOU a week a two ago and they explicitly disallowed this sort of thing (comparison shopping). Maybe it's just an estimate?
This is probably just violating the TOU. As a consumer, I think lack of comparison shopping is absolutely the worst thing about lyft/uber, and that they should be required to publish pricing data in a manner accessible to this sort of thing, just like taxis are required to use certified meters and post rates on their doors.
At the end of the day, they are all taxi services in my book. Whichever gets me from point A to point B the cheapest wins my dollars. Fast pick-up times, a sexy functional app, and other common sense differentiators are expectations now, not selling points.