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A hotel raising their rates because people are willing to pay a premium to be close to a convention is not price gouging. A natural disaster happening and losing water service so the local markets charge $100/gallon for bottled water is price gouging.
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Dec 18, 2014 19:48
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Not really. You can still take a normal cab if you want. For a hotel, you'd have to find a hotel a significant drive away to even get a somewhat normal rate.
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Dec 18, 2014 19:49
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TLG James posted:Not really. You can still take a normal cab if you want. If you are talking less than 5 miles then yes it is a significant ways away.
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Dec 18, 2014 20:02
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posh spaz posted:I don't really want to argue semantics, but IMO a $1k uber ride on Halloween is gougier than a $500 hotel room during a convention. Dear god, if there weren't enough people willing to pay for it, then they obviously mispriced it. Someone was a dumbass and elected to agree to the surge pricing instead of waiting for a price controlled cab then decided to complain about it. Besides, the highest price I've found was $550 where he hosed up and chose the black car service, where's this $1k you found? The problems with uber have nothing to do with their automated surge pricing, which is really a pretty basic business practice. It's a business not a charity, the point is to make money and charge as much as they can get away with. If anything is really hurting them, it's their lovely reputation with how they treat their drivers or their lovely competitive practices. They should've responded better when they found out that there was a terrorist attack, and pre-emptively refunded the surge, yes. But that doesn't have to do with the automated surge pricing in and of itself.
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Dec 18, 2014 20:21
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An Uber driver in Boston was accused of kidnapping and raping a female passenger. Who could have ever foreseen this?!
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Dec 18, 2014 22:54
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TLG James posted:Not really. You can still take a normal cab if you want. Wrong they also gouge at times of peak demand ("to bring more drivers online") which would also mean regular taxis are experiencing peak demand. You wouldn't have a choice
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Dec 18, 2014 23:56
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canyoneer posted:An Uber driver in Boston was accused of kidnapping and raping a female passenger. Who could have ever foreseen this?! Typed in "Taxi kidnapping and raping a female passenger" into Google. Boston Uber is the first result. Next Fort Lauderdale cab driver, New York, Capitola Village, New orleans, Columbus. What I'm saying is that apparently some people who drive cars for a living are complete poo poo heads. Uber vs. Taxi doesn't seem to enter into it.
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Dec 19, 2014 00:00
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FunOne posted:Typed in "Taxi kidnapping and raping a female passenger" into Google. Boston Uber is the first result. Next Fort Lauderdale cab driver, New York, Capitola Village, New orleans, Columbus. The difference is right in their agreement Uber denies any responsibility for their driver's actions, but taxi companies are liable for their employees, and for companies where they are not employees, there are dedicated police teams for the taxi industry anyway. No such thing exists to police Uber, and they would fight tooth and nail to stop it if anyone tried to hold them more accountable, their business model depends on being as hands off as possible.
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Dec 19, 2014 00:05
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a posting ghost posted:Wrong they also gouge at times of peak demand ("to bring more drivers online") which would also mean regular taxis are experiencing peak demand. You wouldn't have a choice Don't have a choice? You can wait for the taxi to show up. I've never seen a taxi dispatcher say that they can't send a cab your way. It'll just take a while. You can also schedule a taxi in advanced, something that you can't do with Uber. TLG James fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 00:10
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TLG James posted:Don't have a choice? You can wait for the taxi to show up. I've never seen a taxi dispatcher say that they can't send a cab your way. It'll just take a while. When I want a cab, I want it now!!!
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Dec 19, 2014 00:20
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If you build a good relationship with a cabbie they'll really take care of you.
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Dec 24, 2014 05:40
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jabro posted:A hotel raising their rates because people are willing to pay a premium to be close to a convention is not price gouging. Even that type of gouging has benefits that people poo poo on. Ever lived in a Hurricane path? The water in every store sells out and so does all of the gas. People load down their cars with cases of water because once a state of emergency is declared stores can not alter prices. Demand rises, prices fixed, shortage. This is only a problem because no one will bring more water in to resupply; if there was more flexibility in pricing, there'd be better supply response to the demand, because every store within 100 miles would love to sell their water at 500% markup. So yeah, both the $1000 cab and the $500 hotel are good for people, generally. Sure, they can be bad, but neither of your examples are cases where they are. No one is arguing semantics. There's zero difference between price gouging and surge pricing. I literally just use surge pricing because when you say gouging idiots say "THAT'S A BAD WORD" and salivate or something, so I avoid using it since it's a loaded term that misrepresents that a resource is in high demand and short supply in a temporary flux in the market, and the absolute sole reason that prices exist is to be a nexus of information between suppliers and consumers regarding the relative scarcity of goods. The fact that we're having this conversation with someone who has an MBA is loving astounding. FunOne posted:Typed in "Taxi kidnapping and raping a female passenger" into Google. Boston Uber is the first result. Next Fort Lauderdale cab driver, New York, Capitola Village, New orleans, Columbus. Whoa whoa that New Orleans' cabbie totally claims he was innocent and was just involved in a mutually consensual fling with an insanely drunk woman that he observed get into a fight and leave her boyfriend. I own a cab in New Orleans, so I'm pretty sure I read that article to quickly make sure it a) wasn't my driver/cab and b) wasn't my company. I'm not sure to what extent the liability extends to the companies, though, depending on their business model. In New Orleans, our company is actually an umbrella brand for a lot of companies that each "own" their own CPNCs such that I'm not sure who gets left holding the bag. The amount of poo poo that cab drivers do and the continued existence of the companies leads me to believe they tend to never get held liable for anything, however.
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Dec 24, 2014 08:24
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drat, who would have thought that charging astronomical sums for basic goods during disasters could actually improve the situation. The free market really thinks of everything! I initially thought that the promise of temporary greater profits would likely be unable to cure the limited and relatively inelastic nature of the local supplies during unpredictable events and would instead result only in a windfall for the few current holders of the goods, but hell, plucky entrepreneurs could assuredly figure something out for the right price. And if the poorer families can't afford the water, the market will probably sort that out appropriately as well.
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Dec 30, 2014 11:50
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All price gouging during a shortage does is shift the allocation of goods from those who happen to show up first to those who have the most money. Whether or not this is an improvement is more of an ethical question than an economic one.
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Dec 30, 2014 16:11
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Vox Nihili posted:drat, who would have thought that charging astronomical sums for basic goods during disasters could actually improve the situation. The free market really thinks of everything! I initially thought that the promise of temporary greater profits would likely be unable to cure the limited and relatively inelastic nature of the local supplies during unpredictable events and would instead result only in a windfall for the few current holders of the goods, but hell, plucky entrepreneurs could assuredly figure something out for the right price. And if the poorer families can't afford the water, the market will probably sort that out appropriately as well. I guess we are talking about how the free market deals with disaster pricing now, but if there is a shortage of bottled water after a storm someone is going without, no matter how you do it. You could fix the price and have panic buying and have the first 3 people buy everything at the normal price. You could say that no one is allowed to buy more than 4 bottles, in which case everyone will buy 4 bottles, even if they really only needed 2. Or you could make everyone wait in line for an hour, which favors those who don't have anything else to do. Or you let the market set the price for whatever it will bear. Maybe $20 for a gallon of water. No one is going to hoard water at that price, no one will stock up. Everyone will buy as little as possible, more people will get a drink, and other sellers will soon swarm the area smelling profit and drive the price back down. But if the price is fixed, no one has an incentive to deliver water and more people will go without for longer. This isn't moral. It's not immoral, it's pretty much amoral.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:49
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Flexible pricing benefits the rich and the poor since the water they loot is worth more.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:57
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Dangit Ronpaul posted:All price gouging during a shortage does is shift the allocation of goods from those who happen to show up first to those who have the most money. Whether or not this is an improvement is more of an ethical question than an economic one. It also tends to discourage hoarding by making it too expensive to buy more than one absolutely needs, but just limiting the amount each person can buy would probably be more effective at doing that, although it would also be much less profitable for the seller. But if you can't or don't want to directly limit purchase amounts, price gouging provides a free markety (and more profitable) disincentive to overbuying. There's also an argument that in a genuine emergency where it is difficult to supply certain good or services, the prospect of price gouging provides an incentive to commit extra effort and resources to supplying that market, rather than just abandoning it until conditions improve.
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Jan 6, 2015 17:19
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I live in NYC, down on my luck, broke as hell college student in dire need of a good job with good pays. My best friend have been doing Uber for several months now and all I hear from him are praises about the pay, getting paid $1000 and just over it per week. He rents a car from his friend. So I decided I wanted in on Uber to which my friend explained everything to me, but I want second opinions about Uber from you guys. Especially because I am broke as it is and I would hate to waste money on getting TLC license when I could possibly opt for better alternatives, but I am told to get TLC because working in New York City has a far better advantages than sitting my rear end down waiting for a customer coming out of Newark Airport in NJ and having to pay tolls out of my pockets, wasting gas. Do I have a far better chance at working for uber because of the nature of New York City? Should I take this opportunity? What can you tell me about Uber?
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Jan 17, 2015 19:55
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Hingehead posted:I live in NYC, down on my luck, broke as hell college student in dire need of a good job with good pays. My best friend have been doing Uber for several months now and all I hear from him are praises about the pay, getting paid $1000 and just over it per week. He rents a car from his friend. So I decided I wanted in on Uber to which my friend explained everything to me, but I want second opinions about Uber from you guys. Especially because I am broke as it is and I would hate to waste money on getting TLC license when I could possibly opt for better alternatives, but I am told to get TLC because working in New York City has a far better advantages than sitting my rear end down waiting for a customer coming out of Newark Airport in NJ and having to pay tolls out of my pockets, wasting gas. Ever see the commercials on TV for reverse mortgages? Reverse mortgages pay out the equity as cash to the owner over time, which eventually ends when the owner dies or runs out of equity. Converting the value of a fixed asset into cash. Driving for Uber is like that, but for your car. You shred your car for some cash back. So "renting" a car from another friend sounds like a great deal, because the other friend is probably not renting it at anything close to a market rate. And then you drive a gypsy taxi without commercial car insurance, and your insurance is going to tell you to jump off a bridge when you get in an accident.
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Jan 17, 2015 20:26
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canyoneer posted:And then you drive a gypsy taxi without commercial car insurance, and your insurance is going to tell you to jump off a bridge when you get in an accident. Yeah, insurance is already a big problem with Uber, let alone making it even more complicated by renting the car.
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Jan 17, 2015 21:52
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Hingehead posted:I live in NYC, down on my luck, broke as hell college student in dire need of a good job with good pays. My best friend have been doing Uber for several months now and all I hear from him are praises about the pay, getting paid $1000 and just over it per week. He rents a car from his friend. So I decided I wanted in on Uber to which my friend explained everything to me, but I want second opinions about Uber from you guys. Especially because I am broke as it is and I would hate to waste money on getting TLC license when I could possibly opt for better alternatives, but I am told to get TLC because working in New York City has a far better advantages than sitting my rear end down waiting for a customer coming out of Newark Airport in NJ and having to pay tolls out of my pockets, wasting gas. To begin, $1000 per week isn't that much money. It might sound like it when you are broke, but it really isn't. I doubt your friend just did his taxes, completed his Schedule C, and realized he is making $1000/week profit. He is doing the worst kind of stop and go driving, hundreds of miles a week, idling for long periods of time,k paying hundreds of dollars on gas. He is grinding that car into the ground. Once you keep track of the miles I doubt your friend is showing much profit, which is good because he needs to pay self employment and income taxes on everything. If you literally have nothing and want to roll the dice, there are worse things you can do. But even then like canyoneer said, you are taking on risks and sucking money out of your car. It needs to be short term while you keep looking for a job or more sustainable self employment ideas. It can't even be a mid-term thing while you are in school. Uber makes sense until you need a new transmission.
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Jan 17, 2015 23:01
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Zeta Taskforce posted:To begin, $1000 per week isn't that much money. It might sound like it when you are broke, but it really isn't. I doubt your friend just did his taxes, completed his Schedule C, and realized he is making $1000/week profit. He is doing the worst kind of stop and go driving, hundreds of miles a week, idling for long periods of time,k paying hundreds of dollars on gas. He is grinding that car into the ground. Once you keep track of the miles I doubt your friend is showing much profit, which is good because he needs to pay self employment and income taxes on everything. The idea is that once my friend buys a car soon in a few month from now, I'd rent the car from him for $300, assuming I'd make $1000 a week, with a net loss of $300. I don't plan on doing this for the rest of my life, it is something I am thinking of doing just to give me a boost so I can head in the right financial direction again. My friend however wants to do this for the rest of his life as a permanent career. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks.
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Jan 18, 2015 06:56
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Hingehead posted:The idea is that once my friend buys a car soon in a few month from now, I'd rent the car from him for $300, assuming I'd make $1000 a week, with a net loss of $300. I don't plan on doing this for the rest of my life, it is something I am thinking of doing just to give me a boost so I can head in the right financial direction again. My friend however wants to do this for the rest of his life as a permanent career. Seriously? First, there's no guarantee you'll make $1000 a week, or even the $300 to pay rent on the car. Secondly, if you have an accident in your friends car (that I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess won't have full commercial insurance that includes having any Joe Blow drive it), his insurance won't cover jack poo poo, Uber won't cover you for jack poo poo, and you'll most likely end up paying off his totaled car, and someone (or multiple peoples) medical expenses. You're just setting yourself to get hosed over. EDIT: If you do go ahead with it, make sure you gently caress over your friend and have the rental contract explicitly state that he pays for all repairs and maintenance, or that $1000 a week will disappear pretty quickly Rudager fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 07:34
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Hingehead posted:The idea is that once my friend buys a car soon in a few month from now, I'd rent the car from him for $300, assuming I'd make $1000 a week, with a net loss of $300. I don't plan on doing this for the rest of my life, it is something I am thinking of doing just to give me a boost so I can head in the right financial direction again. My friend however wants to do this for the rest of his life as a permanent career. Your friend is hitching his wagon to the wrong company, one whose CEO went on record saying he's thrilled at the prospect of replacing all the Uber drivers with driverless cars
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Jan 18, 2015 08:19
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Hingehead posted:The idea is that once my friend buys a car soon in a few month from now, I'd rent the car from him for $300, assuming I'd make $1000 a week, with a net loss of $300. I don't plan on doing this for the rest of my life, it is something I am thinking of doing just to give me a boost so I can head in the right financial direction again. My friend however wants to do this for the rest of his life as a permanent career. Is that thousand bucks a week before or after taxes?
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Jan 18, 2015 08:48
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FrozenVent posted:Is that thousand bucks a week before or after taxes? I am not sure if he pays taxes, I am assuming he is, so before taxes. Then he loses $300 on renting the car from his friend.
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Jan 18, 2015 11:53
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The $300 would be tax deductible, for what it's worth. $700 a week works out to $2800 a month, about $33,000 a year if we assume you'll miss some days. That's before fuel, insurance and whatnot.
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Jan 18, 2015 14:01
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canyoneer posted:Your friend is hitching his wagon to the wrong company, one whose CEO went on record saying he's thrilled at the prospect of replacing all the Uber drivers with driverless cars Ha, Uber would then throw away the key to its success: displacing the costs of purchasing/maintaining/gassing vehicles onto the drivers. Uber would have to own and maintain its own fleet, which would fundamentally alter the structure of the company. They would have to get at least some actual, real-life employees and infrastructure to refuel, house their fleet, etc.
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Jan 22, 2015 11:46
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Vox Nihili posted:Ha, Uber would then throw away the key to its success: displacing the costs of purchasing/maintaining/gassing vehicles onto the drivers. Uber would have to own and maintain its own fleet, which would fundamentally alter the structure of the company. They would have to get at least some actual, real-life employees and infrastructure to refuel, house their fleet, etc. Very good point
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Jan 22, 2015 12:09
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Future legislation will happen -- robots can own property (and pay taxes too!) A little self driving car apartment
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Jan 22, 2015 12:10
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Hingehead posted:The idea is that once my friend buys a car soon in a few month from now, I'd rent the car from him for $300, assuming I'd make $1000 a week, with a net loss of $300. I don't plan on doing this for the rest of my life, it is something I am thinking of doing just to give me a boost so I can head in the right financial direction again. My friend however wants to do this for the rest of his life as a permanent career. $300 a week is more than $1200/mo, what kind of car is this?
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Jan 22, 2015 14:19
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Vox Nihili posted:Ha, Uber would then throw away the key to its success: displacing the costs of purchasing/maintaining/gassing vehicles onto the drivers. Uber would have to own and maintain its own fleet, which would fundamentally alter the structure of the company. They would have to get at least some actual, real-life employees and infrastructure to refuel, house their fleet, etc. To go from taking 20% of the fare to 100%? Or they could still have "drivers". They just don't drive, they own their cars, gas them up, and then unleash them onto the streets to earn uber fares. They take 50%, Uber takes 50%.
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Jan 23, 2015 03:17
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Blackjack2000 posted:To go from taking 20% of the fare to 100%? Or they could still have "drivers". They just don't drive, they own their cars, gas them up, and then unleash them onto the streets to earn uber fares. They take 50%, Uber takes 50%. And it pushes all the expensive maintenance and risk onto the "drivers", which sounds like the Uber way.
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Jan 23, 2015 03:34
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Lol if you think taxis and stuff like uber will be even necessary when everyone has driverless cars.
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Jan 25, 2015 23:34
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pathetic little tramp posted:Lol if you think taxis and stuff like uber will be even necessary when everyone has driverless cars. But..everyone won't have a driverless car.
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Jan 26, 2015 02:17
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I signed up with Lyft to be a driver in my city, and as I was getting to the "Meet your mentor" phase, my city shut the service down. That was August 1st, 2014. I spoke with the mentor person on the phone, and she said she was told it would only take 2 weeks for them to resolve it. It's now January, and not a single news article or mention of it ever coming back. Are they giving up on the legal battles? I still got emails for a few months telling me to complete my application. Thanks automated system for rubbing it in.
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Jan 26, 2015 04:44
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Binge posted:I signed up with Lyft to be a driver in my city, and as I was getting to the "Meet your mentor" phase, my city shut the service down. That was August 1st, 2014. I spoke with the mentor person on the phone, and she said she was told it would only take 2 weeks for them to resolve it. It's now January, and not a single news article or mention of it ever coming back. Did you already have commercial vehicle insurance? If not, this is a good thing that has happened in your life.
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Jan 26, 2015 06:08
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canyoneer posted:Did you already have commercial vehicle insurance? Damned if you do, damned if you don't..lol Uber (Mistakenly?) Suspends Drivers for Registering Commercial Vehicles
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Jan 26, 2015 06:29
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Vox Nihili posted:Ha, Uber would then throw away the key to its success: displacing the costs of purchasing/maintaining/gassing vehicles onto the drivers. Uber would have to own and maintain its own fleet, which would fundamentally alter the structure of the company. They would have to get at least some actual, real-life employees and infrastructure to refuel, house their fleet, etc. Not necessarily! Some techno-utopianists and techno-libertarians think that the endgame of self-driving cars is people's own private self-driving cars acting as taxis when their owner isn't using them - dropping you off at work, then running off to transport people around all day until you finish work, at which point it returns to act as your car for a while; once you're done and go home for the night, it ventures off into the dark to go haul drunks around. A few of the craziest ones even think it'll replace public transport. It sounds stupid as hell, but it's basically exactly Uber's business model, except that the owner doesn't have to be in the car, and it's done while the owner is busy rather than during their free time. That's almost certainly Uber's goal - rather than maintaining their own fleet of robot cars, they'll market a robo-Uber service to driverless car owners, serenading them with sweet talk about their car going out and earning them some bonus cash all on its own while they're working or sleeping.
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Feb 6, 2015 03:39
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canyoneer posted:Your friend is hitching his wagon to the wrong company, one whose CEO went on record saying he's thrilled at the prospect of replacing all the Uber drivers with driverless cars Tautologicus posted:But..everyone won't have a driverless car.  Here's how I think it'll go down. Self-driving cars, the kind that can go from point A to point B with no user intervention 99%+ of the time, will be just entering the mainstream on non-luxury car models. Someone's highly photogenic child will get run down by a driver who's drunk, or texting, or drunk texting. The kid's parents will get on national TV and tearfully lament that if only all cars were self-driving, little Sammy would still be alive. Cue a big national debate and a bill that mandates all cars be self-driving within 5 years, with subsidies to cover converting existing cars for poor people. Cicero fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Feb 6, 2015 |
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