I've been thinking recently that I could drive Uber on the weekends and make a little extra cash. I don't party or drink, and often my wife and I are home early enough that I could go back out and just make money. Does anyone here have any experience with Uber or friends that drive Uber?
Today all Taxi companies and startups ready to turn their business like uber.
I have a couple friends that are Uber drivers for some extra cash. It's not too bad of a gig apparently. There are also other services like Lyft and some other startups that may be paying more / giving bonuses that Uber doesn't do anymore. I would check around. If you don't get the 2am Saturday crowd, I assume people will be relatively well behaved. Invest in a couple things though: a multi USB car charger (one with the cigarette lighter on one end and 2-3 USB holes on the other) and an iPhone 4, iPhone 5, and microUSB charger. Get the 5-6 foot ones and keep them plugged into the front so they don't go disappearing on you. Also, figure out what the kids are listening to these days and have it. Or have a long aux cable so your passengers can put their own music on. Make sure to have the classic karaokes (Afternoon Delight, Don't Stop Believing, etc). Those two things will shoot your reviews through the roof for the party crowd. For the non-partiers just be nice, respectful, and if the passenger feels like talking, talk, and if they don't, put on some music quietly and shut up. Man I hate when I'm feeling antisocial and my drivers are like "so where are you going? why? where are you from?" etc.
This should be illegal. Best part of taking cabs in foreign countries is you can't really have conversations. Worst part of course is having no idea where they're taking you.I hate when I'm feeling antisocial and my drivers are like "so where are you going? why? where are you from?" etc.
When I was in Virginia on business trips this summer I always felt like my cab driver got bothered when I was silent at him. Not non-conversational, just - "when I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed." Numsayin'? I had to use a different guy once and he was asking me how to get to the train station. I was like "dude, I don't know, I clearly neither live here nor drive to the train station myself."
I took Amtrak from Seattle to Vancouver once. BNSF said "double eagles, bitchez, this be our track today" so my train turned into a chartered bus. The bus driver got lost in Vancouver on the way to the train station. And all of us were American with no Canadian data plan. And none of us wanted to pay $1.42/MB to fire up Google Maps. We ended up voting on where to go. Somehow, crowdsourcing navigation worked in the end, albeit not very efficiently.
Here's what I know about Uber: 1) Pando hates them. 2) Salon hates them. 3) Everybody under 30 uses them to go everywhere. 4) Be careful about the airport. LAX has been issuing fines like they're a moneymaker or something.
They get off on disrupting a shitty industry by ignoring its regulations and acting like there's a distinction between flagging a car at the curb and flagging a car with your phone. People who like to play by the law hate them for not playing by the law. People who are fed up with taxis love them for offering a more luxurious (maybe not the best word?) ride. AFAIK, that's also all confounded with the fact that the pricing structures aren't really mature or easily comparable due to price subsidies and the recent surge pricing. Also, add BOS to that mix, too.
Makes sense. A taxi medallion is big business... I mean, look at this shit. You're talking about an industry being so heavily "disintermediated" that we're going from "I need $800k in order to drive people who hate me a few blocks" to "I've been thinking about picking up some beer money in my slack evenings." There will be blood, the only question is how much.
Uber’s current business model has reduced fares, through enabling the lower rates to passengers, yet require payments to the drivers. These subsidies are considerably the reason why Uber is losing money today, with the increase in ride volume. Uber faced a loss of $2 billion in 2015 and a collective $4 billion loss since inception. At some point, Uber will need to make changes to ensure a profit-generating business model. cabstartup.com/how-e-hailing-applications-improved-the-taxi-industry/
maybe I'll spend $10-30k on one of these ideas http://gbksoft.com/blog/category/startup-app-ideas/. in our city this will be news.
There are many taxi companies around the world started a protest against Uber. The reason behind is mobile app makes customer to book taxis easier but, sucks the effort of drivers and doesn't ready to provide more bucks for riding their taxis. Now traditional taxis also decided to build an app like uber for their business to get more jobs rather raising against on-demand taxi service like uber.