Hollywood Dave's ex-girlfriend, Mary Beth, stuck with aggressive sexual predator during Uber ride

[ErickAA]

The difference is that getting a taxi medallion is a pain in the ass and requires a good deal of effort, whereas any asshole can sign up to drive Uber.

So the quality of the average taxi driver is higher than the average Uber driver..

Taxis are over all more filthy, more expensive, driven by worse people and are less safe (just ask Mark Summers https://www.phillymag.com/news/2012/...taxi-accident/)

Uber/Lyft = No cash needed, no tip, everything tracked (some would say too much tracked), you literally don't need to speak a word to the driver. They def do some shady shit though and I doubt they'll get away with it much longer.

Im a pretty experienced lyft/uber. Here is what I've learned:

(90% of my rides are around Manhattan, but I've also used the service in pretty much all east coast cities)

- They totally collude with each other to trigger surge pricing. (Say there's 20 drivers circling a major airport, if they are all marked 'available' then it will be base price - high supply/low demand. If they work together, only one guy at a time is 'available' which will trigger 2x-5x the normal price bc supply and demand) If you see surge pricing, switch apps or wait 10 minutes and try again.

- If a driver ever calls you and tries to get you to tell them where you're going, don't tell them. They dont know where you're going till you actually get in the car. They aren't allowed to cherry pick, and will not only try to convince you to cancel the ride (which will hurt your overall score) they will also tell all the other drivers around where you're going so might end up getting a string of cancels in a row which is a pain.

- This could be bullshit, but I think ratings are huge for them. If they don't maintain a decent overall rating, they will get banned. (I think it was ~4.5 stars for lyft and 4.0 for uber)

- If you are taking regular rides from the same area make an offer to a good driver and get their number. Then you can just shoot them a text in advance and see if they're available. I've actually made some friends this way and also saved some money and made life easier if you need to make a couple stops. They are risking absolutely nothing by working 'off app'.

In regards to the first quote turning off your app to induce surge pricing is true and pretty obvious. I figured it out on my own by like my 3rd day. I have never heard of drivers calling each other to agree to all do it. You don't know who the other drivers are in the area. Everyone just independently works together to raise the price. I don't know about Manhattan, but in LA circa 2015 if you were taking rides at base you were losing money. You pretty much had to be at 2X surge to make any money on a ride. But yeah, it is a game of cat and mouse, because not accepting rides is bad (and can get you banned if you do it too much) so you have to be quick to turn off the app when the surge turns off and all the passengers who are waiting for the surge to turn off start firing.

In regards to the second bold, Uber determines a community standard threshold for rating that you have to meet. Different cities have different standards based mainly on the culture of the passengers. In some cities most passengers automatically give 5s almost all the time and in other cities they are more critical.

To those saying this sounds like a good reason to call a taxi, when I was driving Taxis were so much more expensive the surge had to basically be 3.5X for a taxi to be cheaper, and that was without factoring in the tip (this was when Uber was actually discouraging passengers to tip so barely any did). So even if you got caught in 2X surge, it was still way cheaper than a taxi.

I never personally called riders to see if they were doing a short trip and then try to get them to cancel, but I do know that other drivers used to do it. That was a little too shady for me. I will say LAX runs are a major pain in the ass because it burns a lot of time getting in and out of the airport, so if the ride is short it sucks big time and is a big money loss. One thing you learn to do is not to accept rides in certain areas because the ride is almost always going to be short. For example you learn real quick not to turn on your app in Westchester, Hawthorne, El Segundo (cities right around the airport) because a lot of people park their car on a residential street and then call an Uber for the last 1-2 miles to the airport.