theflyingexecutive posted:

most people can walk more than five blocks without calling a cab

Smythe posted:

most people can make a decent post once in their entire life

Beast of Bourbon posted:

I doubt it. I'm a fat white dude gentrifying SF.

mishaq posted:

or you know...uber could go back to its original design, providing a convenient way for people to book properly licensed/insured idle livery and limousine drivers with an app and charging a fair rate that is slightly pricer than a cab but a much better servi....hahahahaha what am I saying

mishaq posted:

or you know...uber could go back to its original design, providing a convenient way for people to book properly licensed/insured idle livery and limousine drivers with an app and charging a fair rate that is slightly pricer than a cab but a much better servi....hahahahaha what am I saying

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

uber is doing ok in nyc, while complying with the law

rides are somewhat more expensive than calling a fixed-rate car service (point A to point B will cost you $X dollars, determined in advance) and they're a teeny bit cheaper than a standard cab ($X for pickup, $Y dollars for each minute/mile). all the cars are licensed/insured livery cars, mostly working for those fixed-rate car services.

the advantage to using uber over just calling a service directly is you don't have to know which service is good in a given neighborhood. uber aggregates capacity and weeds out assholes for you. in exchange, you pay more and uber takes a cut.

a profitable, legal business model was always an option. but it's more profitable to break the law and put hundreds of thousands of underpaid gypsy cab drivers on the road

Main Paineframe posted:

they can't maintain a 19 billion or whatever valuation with that, and it's not disruptive enough to keep the vc money flowing.

like i said, some companies might withstand that transition, but there's no way uber can. they've gone all-in on the tech bubble bullshit, no way their business model and culture can withstand transitioning to being a normal, profitable company that obeys laws

Main Paineframe posted:

they can't maintain a 19 billion or whatever valuation with that, and it's not disruptive enough to keep the vc money flowing.

like i said, some companies might withstand that transition, but there's no way uber can. they've gone all-in on the tech bubble bullshit, no way their business model and culture can withstand transitioning to being a normal, profitable company that obeys laws

Pinterest Mom posted:

41 billion

quote:

Uber’s paper valuation is now higher than the following household-name companies:

Kraft Foods Group
Delta Air Lines
General Mills
CBS
Rite Aid
Macy’s
Viacom
Dollar General
Kellogg
KKR
Nordstrom
Halliburton Company
Archer-Daniels Midland Company
Omnicom Group
Charles Schwab Corporation
YUM! Brands
DISH Network
Aetna
Estee Lauder
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Kroger
Cardinal Health
Aflac Incorporated
Hilton Worldwide Holdings
L Brands
Hershey Company
ConAgra Foods
Whole Foods Market
Boston Scientific Corporation
Harley Davidson
Hormel Foods
Dollar Tree
Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Dr Pepper Snapple Group
Campbell Soup Company
Best Buy
Clorox
Hertz Global Holdings
MGM Resorts
Mattel

Main Paineframe posted:

only an absolute genius could have come up with a service like ubertaxi, where uber calls a regular cab for you

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

uber is doing ok in nyc, while complying with the law

rides are somewhat more expensive than calling a fixed-rate car service (point A to point B will cost you $X dollars, determined in advance) and they're a teeny bit cheaper than a standard cab ($X for pickup, $Y dollars for each minute/mile). all the cars are licensed/insured livery cars, mostly working for those fixed-rate car services.

the advantage to using uber over just calling a service directly is you don't have to know which service is good in a given neighborhood. uber aggregates capacity and weeds out assholes for you. in exchange, you pay more and uber takes a cut.

a profitable, legal business model was always an option. but it's more profitable to break the law and put hundreds of thousands of underpaid gypsy cab drivers on the road

Shifty Pony posted:

ok now figure if they lose their 1099 fig leaf and have to pay for driver's fuel, maintenance, unemployment, social security + Medicare match, minimum wage + overtime during lulls, and perhaps (if they hit the threshold of enough full time workers) health care conforming to the ACA.

Shifty Pony posted:

ok now figure if they lose their 1099 fig leaf and have to pay for driver's fuel, maintenance, unemployment, social security + Medicare match, minimum wage + overtime during lulls, and perhaps (if they hit the threshold of enough full time workers) health care conforming to the ACA.

theflyingexecutive posted:

"do" is different than "maintain 40bn headroom"

MacPac posted:

http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2z16wa/nsfw_there_is_currently_a_karaoke_app_out_there/ karaoke app uploads peoples bad singing to youtube by default D:

Main Paineframe posted:

so it automatically records video of everyone who uses it and then automatically uploads them to youtube as public videos, all without notifying the user

how could anyone possibly have thought that was a good idea

quote:

have you noticed an increased usage from parents who uber their kids around?

curious because ive been reading some articles that say more and more parents let their kids use their account and then track their whereabouts.

quote:

Sunday evenings are the times I've most often encountered this. I've whisked away many young teenagers from one divorced parent's home in DC to the other parent's home in the 'burbs. Taking pairs of kids as passengers is a lot more common than singletons.

13+ I'm cool with. Any younger than that and I may be a little wary as a driver.

quote:

I pick up kids in Miami all the time and take them from one parents house to the other or to the movies and such. Had one parent call the car for there 14yo daughter and her friend and to take them to the movies the mother then called to explain who I was picking up and asked if I would be willing to go to the movie with them and leave the app running as well as give me $20 cash. I really wasn't interested being that it was Friday night so I gave her an excuse that I was at my time limit for the day and was about to be logged off the system and I had to return home before that happened.

quote:

"Are you 18? Say yes."
"Yes."

You have no obligation to verify further. And probably no right to, anyway.

quote:

Yeah prompt a minor to lie. That'd look good on the accident report.

Entitled little Miss or Master Private Schooler is just going to ride with the next Uber driver. Sad but once I'm all the way out there, I can't afford not to take the trip.
One kid was 6'7"! He claimed he was 15 at the end of the ride. There is no way I would have known. I thought he was the older 20ish brother of the other two kids, which is within limits. Seriously, we are given no mandate to check ID. There is nothing we can do if someone says they are 18. We have asked, that's all there is to it.

quote:

On occasion I've had pax request to stop at a grocery store and leave their kid(s) in the cab. Now I trust myself, but I wouldn't expect someone to leave their kids in the car with a stranger.

quote:

As the oldest of three kids, Baily Deeter was often the last to be picked up from school by his mother. Then Uber Technologies Inc. came along.

When Baily started ninth grade in August, his parents gave him an account for the mobile car-booking application, under his dad’s name and credit card. Now rather than wait for his mom, the 14-year-old taps on his iPhone to order an Uber car for the seven-mile ride home from school in Atherton, California.

“I’m very happy to have an Uber account,” said the teen. “It shows the trust that my parents have placed in me and it allows me to get from place to place in a flash.” His father, Byron Deeter, is a venture capitalist at Bessemer Venture Partners, who said he regrets not having invested in Uber.

Like the Deeters, parents in cities from Los Angeles to New York who can’t make the drive themselves are also starting to use car-booking and ride-sharing apps to ferry their kids around. Parents are particularly turning to the apps for teenagers’ transportation needs to sports events and parties, said Brian Solis, an analyst at Altimeter Group, a San Mateo, California-based firm that researches the impact of new technologies. The apps let parents monitor where their children are during rides, something taxis and other modes of transport still don’t offer.

“Having an Uber account is a growing trend, especially among high schoolers, reflective of the trust-based sharing economy,” said Solis, who also pays for an Uber account for his 17-year-old son.
Widening Use

While data on the trend are scarce -- Uber and Lyft Inc. don’t let minors open accounts so parents arrange kids’ rides, which makes tracking the demographics difficult -- interviews with more than a dozen families and drivers show Uber usage is increasingly widespread.

Baily said his friends use Uber too, adding that he only takes the service when his parents can’t pick him up. The Deeters have spent about $100 on Uber rides for Baily since August, said his father.

Uber is helping to foster usage by families, paving the way for growth with a new generation. In May, the company rolled out a service called UberFamily in New York City, which gives parents the option to request a car equipped with a child seat. The service was broadened to Philadelphia and Washington D.C. in July.

A representative for San Francisco-based Uber, which operates in more than 210 cities worldwide and is valued at $17 billion, declined to comment.

“For most consumer companies, reaching teenagers -- the customers of the future -- remains a challenge,” Solis said. Young riders “can only multiply Uber’s potential growth.”
Car Ownership

The use of Uber and other transportation apps by families also has implications for how young people choose to drive later. Already fewer youth are driving, with the percentage of U.S. high school seniors between 17 and 18 years old who have a drivers license declining to 73 percent in 2010 from 85 percent in 1996, according to data cited by a study from consumer group U.S. Pirg.

Susan Shaheen, co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley, said young people are owning cars at a lesser rate than before, partly because of vehicles’ lack of affordability and the rise of ride-sharing apps. Millennials “prefer to stay connected and regard driving as a distraction,” she added.

“This trend and youth indifference to car ownership happen to be coincidental and very positive for Uber,” said Bill Gurley, a partner at venture capital firm Benchmark, which is an investor in Uber.
Safety Questions

Safety, of course, remains a hurdle for some parents. A year ago, Borge Hald and Amy Pressman, a couple in Palo Alto, California, decided to let their 17-year-old and 13-year-old sons use Uber when they go to music lessons in the evening. Yet they don’t feel it’s safe for their 11-year-old daughter.

“We used to spend the weekends driving the kids around,” said Hald, a technology entrepreneur who co-founded Medallia Inc., a software startup, with his wife. “We decided to use Uber to save some personal time.”

Byron Deeter, Baily’s dad, said he and his wife, Alli, spent three months discussing whether to give their son an Uber account.

“Alli doesn’t work and I travel a lot for work and I can’t help her with picking up the kids,” Deeter said. “She was anxious at first about safety, but now she’s fine.”

Baily is only allowed to use UberX, the cheapest of Uber’s services. The teen has to text his mom the name and phone number of the driver. His parents then monitor the ride on “Find My Friends” or on Life360, two GPS-based tracking apps.
‘Ubering’ Home

Other parents request rides for their children on their own smartphones so that they can keep an eye on the trip, said Michael Goldman, an Uber driver in New York. He carries passengers who are between 10 to 14 years old by themselves at least twice a day, he said.

For some parents, Uber has become a verb, said Mychael Love, an Uber driver in Los Angeles.

“I often hear passengers making plans to ‘Uber’ the kids somewhere,” he said. “At least 1 percent of my rides are about taking kids to school or teenagers to parties.”

For Claire Danese, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, letting her son Rocco, 13, use the app through her account “was a no brainer,” she said.

While Danese doesn’t want her 11-year-old daughter to take an Uber by herself, she lets Rocco use the app once or twice a week if his soccer practice in Manhattan ends late. Danese, a pilates instructor, said she requests the Uber ride on her phone when her son is ready to come home.
Taxi Rides

Rocco, who takes the subway to school, previously took taxis to return home after dusk, “but we feel safer with Uber because you can see who the driver is and track the ride,” Danese said. Rocco started using UberX about two months ago and spends $150 a month on the service, less than what the family paid for for taxi rides.

Rocco said he feels safe in an Uber car, especially since “the drivers are really nice, they help you to carry bags and give you drinks and candies.”

Both Rocco and Baily said they know Uber will be their go-to car-booking app in the future.

“I can envision Uber being my top choice, when I’ll need quick transportation to be on time, say, for a meeting,” said Baily.

Rocco said he’s looking forward to driving himself in a few years, “but I’m not going to feel so comfortable initially and I know I’ll prefer to use Uber for the first two years to avoid crashes.”

quote:

Sorry for the late replay but I got a day job that makes most of my income and takes most of my time.
Anyway.
The demand is there but not like it used to be before uberxl, but I must say uberxl filters out most of the lovely customers.
But it comes with the price of getting the demand cut to 50%.
If I known that uber would become this poo poo show of a company, adjusting fears as they please with no notice to the partners. (writh down all your rides and you will see, your getting short changed every time).
I would have never invested in a suv or a tcp that im stuck with for at least 5 years.
Yeah I could try to sale the car but on one is gonna pay for a car that has been used as a car service as mutch as I owe on it.
So now im stuck with a $40k loan plus annual taxes and bearly making any profit.
Now if something major braks on the car I will be screwed.
You think uber cares?

Condiv posted:

Main Paineframe posted:

also have some schadenfreude

crusader_complex posted:

i mean, i was secretly shocked that my bay dwelling aunt and uncle let their kids take public transit as early as age 13 i think, but on reflection at least theres presumably some other normal people, during commute hours, there with the kids on the bus.

who pays for the accidents?

Beast of Bourbon posted:

living in nyc you see middle school students or younger taking the subway every day