Used to happen to me constantly trying to go across the bay bridge in either direction when I lived in Oakland. I didn’t even mind the cancelations so much but the worst was when they would try and hide around the block, close enough to say they’ve “arrived” to try to get me marked as a no show and pocket the fee.

They have a cancellation rate metric on their end that they are trying to avoid.

I have similar problems when I dated someone across the bridge.

They also lose a ton of money leaving SF at prime time / etc.

Ironically it is the very problem taxis had that allowed Uber and Lyft to grow in popularity. Funny how that works!

Yeah, drivers want to maximize their hourly revenue, and this is frequently at odds with the wants of passengers. For a while, VC subsidies meant Uber and Lyft could pretend they were fundamentally different somehow, but that's all over now that they're public, and the classic misaligned incentives between drivers and passengers are back in play.

The cars are increasingly beat-up too, another thing we incorrectly believed was Uber being fundamentally different from and better than yellow cabs.

> For a while, VC subsidies meant Uber and Lyft could pretend they were fundamentally different somehow

You must have very rosy glasses because calling a tired/rude Taxi operator at 1am and not knowing whether your cab was coming in 5 or 20min was a major drag, so you always had to plan for 20min+ and sit patiently without social media to fill the void.

Having 2 ubers cancel before you get a 3rd commitment, within a short time frame, and only at the airport or a busy concert isn't that bad at all. Modern entitlement IMO

> The cars are increasingly beat-up too

Regular taxis never had an anonymous review system and they often just bought old police cars, used by 2 drivers across 2 day/night shifts . Good chance the night driver drank on the job too

Uber requires them to have a newish car which in my experience is usually a decent hybrid. A big improvement IMO (although I do love old crown Vic's from back in the pre Uber days).

If anything the biggest issue is Uber not strictly enforcing reuse of other authorized drivers accounts, usually by immigrants without official company clearance

I frequently have to wait 20-30 minutes for an Uber or Lyft pickup at my apartment in south Brooklyn. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm usually going somewhere like Bay Ridge if I'm ordering an Uber and not somewhere popular. If it's after 1am I just open both Lyft and Uber and book both because at least one of them will just park the car and not come and wait out the timer before it assigns a new driver. I wish the situation is them just canceling, but drivers get penalized for that but apparently don't get penalized for parking at a gas station waiting for you to cancel and pay the fee or sit out the 10 minutes.

One time the guy was just 3 blocks away so I walked to where his icon was, found the car, and banged on his window.

During a weekend trip to Orlando trying to get from our hotel to Disney it took 6 drivers until someone finally came to pick us up.

At least the price is given ahead of time and paid through the app. I once had a cab driver charge my card for $300 when I was borderline blackout drunk in Miami Beach trying to get back to mainland Miami. Didn't use the card reader in the cab either, he used something like a Square reader on his phone. Not exactly sure which one, I didn't piece together what he was doing was fishy until the next afternoon when some blurry memories started coming back and I called my bank.

Book Uber Black and 99% of those issues go away. Have taken more Ubers than I'd like to admit, so I'm comfortable calling this a large enough sample size to qualify as anecdata.

Remember back when Uber was basically 100% Uber Black? That was nice.

Yep, I used it back when it first rolled out in SF in 2010 or 2011. All black crown vics.

Expecting a taxi you've booked to actually pick you up is entitlement?

What kind of terrible service do you put up with for this to seem reasonable to you?

Not sure how old you are but I spent half my adult life dealing with a government regulated Taxi medallion system and the other half using Uber in multiple countries and I’d 100% take “post-VC” Uber over old taxis every single time.

FWIW they both still exist so you’re free to choose, which is the nice thing about competition.

Pre booked airport black car taxis have always been a niche within the wider system for a good reason. Uber’s fluid system is not perfect at every scenario.

53, and I live in Edinburgh, where the taxis are well regulated and if one takes a rider then they have to fulfil it.

I don't know what it is but in basically every major airport I have struggled to get an uber/lyft. I expect at minimum one cancellation...

In many cities this is solved with the "Uber rank" system, where you simply get in the first car in line, give the driver a code, and then it loads up your journey. Fast and avoids any hassles with drivers rejecting your destination.

Oh they reinvented taxi stands. The code for a pre programmed destination in the app is actually a nice touch.

Wait, shit, that's amazing. How did they do that? I mean, not how did they write the code to match when given the code (obviously the driver should scan the rider's QR code), but how did Uber get laws changed to allow them to do this obvious reimplementation of a taxi stand when it's technically illegal under taxi laws.

Trying to find a specific ride hail driver at the airport seems like a huge waste of time. Just go to the taxi stand.

True, but then you'll be in a taxi.

Same. I assume it depends on the destination

Person wants to go somewhat far from airport? That's more time on this single ride and less time pocketing peak demand money

I once got stuck at the vista point at the north end of Golden Gate, because it turns out it's nearly impossible to approach from the Marin side even though that's closer. So like ~4 drivers in a row tried, got lost on the way and canceled.