Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics
money.cnn.comWow. This is low.
The statement is absolute bullshit too: "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics."
No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that".
I live in NYC. The Uber app has now been banished from my phone. It's too bad the Gett app is kind of an unpolished turd.
I wonder if what they did could be considered criminal. Back in highschool a friend of mine did the "order a dozen pizzas to someone's house" prank and he got caught doing it. Though nothing came of it, a police officer told him he could have been charged under a crime called "Defrauding an innkeeper" for ordering a service/product under false pretenses.
TFA: "If Uber employees intentionally diverted Gett drivers from legitimate business by making phony calls, that is an unfair business practice, illegal under California law," he said. "It is also an intentional interference with Gett's business which makes them liable for money damages."
Except the incident occurred in New York state and they consulted someone about California state law? I'd guess most states have similar laws so it is a bit of a moot point.
Uber is based in San Francisco, which may be why they asked a San Francisco-based attorney.
I am not a lawyer but if anyone out there is...
If the criminal/fraudulent activity which occurred in New York was directed from management based in California, wouldn't the crime become a federal one? What if the e-mail trail reveals similar activity in multiple states directed by managers in San Francisco?
Not necessarily.
Charges can brought in multiple states at the same time, for the same crime which doesn't violate fifth amendment protection of double jeopardy. It's known as the dual sovereignty doctrine.
The FBI only gets involved in the most serious of cases such as organized crime, drugs, gangs, terrorism, cyber crime, etc.
What the FBI investigates: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/what_we_investigate
Info on the dual sovereignty doctrine: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-rights/charged-twice-in...
> If the criminal/fraudulent activity which occurred in New York was directed from management based in California, wouldn't the crime become a federal one?
No, though that may make it so that a federal crime (e.g., wire fraud) was committed in addition to any state crime that was committed.
Well, I assume they only had a California lawyer handy and he could only speak to California's laws for reference.
It's pretty clear they were doing this to harvest phone numbers of drivers (why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?) rather than any attempt to actually disrupt Gett's business. I would be rather hesitant to call this "fraud", as that's a very serious allegation.
They were booking rides without the intent of actually taking or paying for those rides. How is that not fraud? The fact that they were doing it to mine for phone numbers doesn't make it less fraudulent. That'd be like saying it's ok to order a bunch of pizzas from Pizza Hut without the intent of paying for them because you were simply trying to figure out who the drivers are.
They're paying cancellation fees. If I order a bunch of pizzas from Pizza Hut in order to find out who the drivers were, and paid for them, then there's no issue. Even though I don't intend on eating the pizzas, I still paid for the service. In this case, Uber is paying the cancellation fees for the privilege of booking, then cancelling, a Gett ride.
If you order pizzas and pay for them, you're completely the transaction as expected. If you order a car from a car service and then cancel it, you're not. The fact that a cancellation fee exists doesn't give you the right to use the system in such an unintended manner.
A better analogy than the pizza analogy might be a "customer" repeatedly buying clothes with the intent to wear and then return them. Despite the fact that there is a return policy in place, the fact that the customer never intended on keeping any of the clothes makes his behavior fraudulent.
There is nothing illegal about repeatedly buying clothes, then returning. If I do that enough the store may bar me from the premises for being exceedingly annoying, but they certainly can't charge me with anything.
Another example is a cafe.
Get a bunch of people to repeatedly queue up but when they get to the counter decide they don't want to order anything.
Just the sight of a long queue outside the door is going to put off legit customers
Clearly Uber are engaging in activities to disrupt and cause harm to the business of their competitor.
I said it was fraudulent, which it definitely is. Whether or not it fits the legal definition of fraud is debatable.
Some localities do have laws forbidding buying something with the intent to return it.
With the intent to disrupt business. They can be easily sued for this practice. This isn't a consumer doing so, this is a company having their employees vehemently attack a competitor.
Exactly.
Legit customers can't book cars because they're busy and when they do the drivers might bail because they think its yet another fake order.
Screw Uber. Theyre not a tech start-up, they're an illegal car service masquerading as a tech company.
Thank you for making it clear why this practice is bad corporate practice for those who are not as moral in their perspective. Uber seems hell bent on becoming the only game in town and then raping their customers during peak periods.
It's not fraud to order a bunch of pizzas and then cancel the order 30 seconds later before they even put anything on the first piece of dough.
It's dickish, but no actual harm is done.
And if it cost $1 per cancelled pizza they would actually profit off of it.
"It's dickish, but no actual harm is done."
In the case of a real restaurant, yes there is harm done. The cost of taking an order is not zero for people: it cost people time and real customers may not be served in time. Maybe not for this particular case with Gett since they're automated.
It's still not fraud to call someone and waste their time for a while. See also: telemarketers
Fraud is only one type of harm. The bigger question is whether there is harm, regardless of type. In the restaurant case, there is harm even though it's not fraud. In Gett's case it's not really fraud either but one can argue there was harm done as well. Information can confer competitive advantage. The question that remains is who's fault it is. It's kind of dumb on Gett's part to leave themselves wide open. I'm not experienced enough in jurisprudence to really determine that.
Wasting their time via deception might be though.
What you describe is a hoax, contrasted to fraud in that there was no intent of gain on the perpetrator's part and that no harm was caused (debatable in your example). What Uber did, and in my example, there was both intent of gain and harm.
You could argue that there was no harm to Gett because of the cancellation fees, but that's only true if the cancellation fees are greater than the cost they incurred which may or may not be true.
It hinges on whether there was harm done. I strongly doubt there was harm.
Or at least intentional harm. Such as if they meant to cancel immediately but didn't.
> It hinges on whether there was harm done.
Are you a lawyer familiar with fraud related laws in New York?
IANAL. However, in the UK I suspect it would hinge on whether you gained or whether there was harm. Fraud by false representation is - IRC - defined in those sorts of terms in the Fraud Act 2006.
Point being this stuff varies and doesn't necessarily align with what we might intuit it does.
I don't feel like the fact that they defrauded the drivers/service because they wanted their information from them makes this any less fraudulent...
> I would be rather hesitant to call this "fraud"
How exactly is this not fraud?
I'd say it's more of "tortious interference." If true, this was -- to paraphrase Fouché -- worse than a crime, it was stupid. It seems that Uber is so blasé about the tidal flood of lawsuits it's facing that it is willing to court more.
(why does Gett give out their drivers' phone numbers?)
Presumably so that the customer can contact the driver if they need to pass on instructions about a specific place to be picked up, etc.
Uber handles this by having a button in their app that initiates the phone call. You can't find out a driver's number without actually calling them. Similarly, they can't find out yours without actually calling you.
Theoretically, if the company can get a bunch of phone #s, they could even completely anonymize it by assigning two temporary numbers (one to driver, one to passenger) and call-forwarding them for the duration of the trip. I havent' checked but I doubt anybody actually does this. And in the absence of this level of anonymity, I would at the very least expect a car service app to require you to place the call before giving you the phone # of the other person.
I work for Flywheel, an Uber competitor. We do not expose driver or passenger phone numbers to either party at all (the exact mechanism is a little different than what you propose, but the effect is the same). Driver can call passenger and passenger can call driver and neither will ever see the other person's actual number.
Good for you. Since you're doing this, and according to yid, Uber is also doing something similar, I'm even more surprised that Gett is not only exposing real phone #'s, but doing so without even requiring a phone call to be placed.
> Uber handles this by having a button in their app that initiaates the phone call. You can't find out a driver's number without actually calling them. Similarly, they can't find out yours without actually calling you.
Actually, I think they use some sort of phone proxy service. I once looked at my driver's phone and he had a totally different number listed for me that I did not recognize (same area code though).
Oh? So it sounds like Uber is doing something similar to what I proposed then. That's good.
If you don't mind sharing, I would love to know what sort of thing is used for this. Normally I would think Twilio but that's more of create your own number and pay per minute.
Theoretically, if the company can get a bunch of phone #s, they could even completely anonymize it by assigning two temporary numbers (one to driver, one to passenger) and call-forwarding them for the duration of the trip.
You wouldn't even need a bunch of phone numbers. Assuming caller ID works correctly, you can use that to decide where to route the call. Customer A is calling? Route to Driver X? Driver Y is calling? Route to Customer B.
Well, that just cuts it down from 2 numbers to 1, and it assumes that the caller ID hasn't been futzed with. Certainly plausible, just perhaps slightly less reliable.
No, it cuts it down from many many numbers (2 numbers per driver/passenger pair) to 1.
I haven't seen an instance of caller ID being 'futzed' with in domestic calls from domestic mobile phone numbers, but I agree it could happen for people roaming internationally.
And they paid cancellation fees.
If drivers keep getting requests cancelled, they will be less prompt and enthusiastic about actual ones. The cancellation fee is calculated on the assumption that frequent orders will not be deliberately placed to be subsequently cancelled.
I agree that they may have violated the spirit of the contract. But the contract specifically handles the case of cancelling an order (including some restitution), so I would hardly consider it fraud.
Running into the path of a moving car isn't fraud? End result is the same for when it's an accident.
Running into the path of a moving car is only fraud if you claim the driver is at fault. If you admit responsibility and pay for any damages then it is not fraud.
They claim they paid cancellation fees. Gett claims the charges are pending. At this point it would be stupid of them to not let those charges through though.
If Uber wasn't a douche, they would have just booked rides in the cars and personally talked to the drivers. Absolutely no harm in that. What they did shows an utter lack of tact.
good point.. lack of class
...after what they were doing was exposed.
No, they paid cancellation fees because you get charged when you cancel. This wasn't "Oh, sorry, here's $10."
The fact that it said "they ultimately paid the fees...some of which are still pending" made me feel like these weren't immediate, automatic charges.
It's not automatic. I've had to legitimately cancel before and have never been charged a fee.
Have you cancelled on the day of or within just a few hours of the scheduled pickup time?
These rideshare apps usually have you schedule for ASAP rather than for some future time, so chances are if you cancel it would be much sooner.
Not sure about this company, but for Uber the cancellation fee should only happen if you cancel after five minutes of scheduling a ride. I've seen Lyft and other rideshare companies have similar policies.
What is Gett's cancellation policy?
I assume there's something in Gett's terms of service prohibiting what Uber was doing. If so, they're liable under the CFAA.
> No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that".
If you're suggesting that they should be prosecuted, then we can argue that, but Uber is not able to prosecute members of its team. What do you expect Uber to do, other than to stop the behavior?
Uber is fully within their rights to levy punishments (up to and including firing) for members of its team.
In this forum we talk constantly about onerous government regulations and the long arm of the law. There are many perfectly legal ways companies can punish or sanction its employees, and IMO it's an eminently good idea to do so.
If you don't want to the government getting all up in your face you're going to have to self-regulate to some degree. Punishing employees who behave unethically is a part of this.
Another commenter below said he knows an Uber employee in Boston where they not only employ the same tactics with other competitors but also have names for it such as ShopLyfting and SideSwiping.
It looks like this is Uber's culture and not just a few employees in one office behaving unethically. The article also mentions that everyone from the General Manager down were involved in this. The GM is basically the head for a given city. That tells you how far up the chain the lack of ethics goes.
Well Uber can dismiss the employees.
But Gett can take Uber to court, and possibly make a criminal complaint.
I can't believe they haven't fired the employees that did it and the management that allowed it.
Fire people?
Well, they say you can't make an omelette without breaking some legs.
There are consequences larger than "hey, stop that."
Even Uber's legal representation said they could be liable for damages:
If Uber employees intentionally diverted Gett drivers from legitimate business by making phony calls, that is an unfair business practice, illegal under California law," he said. "It is also an intentional interference with Gett's business which makes them liable for money damages.
That's not Uber's legal representation, it's "San Francisco-based attorney Drexel Bradshaw." Nowhere does it suggest that Bradshaw is associated with Uber. Here is Mr. Bradshaw's profile page from his law firm (from a cursory Google search): http://www.bradshawassociates.com/Bio/DrexelBradshaw.php
You hire a sales team to sell your product. They're the least invested in the overall business, they have the highest turnover rate of any other department. Typically, they're young, inexperienced, right out of college. Typically, this isn't their only job. Most care less about the overall viability of the company or the company image then they do about making a sale and a commission.
The balance between sales and the long-term vision of a business is hard. You need people that are driven but are interested in sticking it out. Sales has a high-level of burn out so it's hard to get someone driven and interested in staying long-term at a company.
This Uber thing is salespeople doing whatever it takes to get that commission. Uber maybe needs to reinvent their sales incentive structure the same way they've reinvented ridesharing.
When the Uber NYC General Manager is doing it I would hardly put it on sales.
"Uber maybe needs to reinvent their sales incentive structure the same way they've reinvented ridesharing."
They don't need to reinvent anything here. Lots of companies have salespeople with no experience and a high turnover rate. Yet they rarely directly sabotage their competitors.
Same here, good bye Uber.
That is not only morally wrong but it is flat out stupid. Uber is the leading firm in a growing market with network effects. They should be worried about growing as fast as possible first and above all and not about competition. The network effects will take care of the competition.
The worst thing a company in a leadership position like Uber can do is take actions that acknowledge their competition. Even if they are trying to screw over their competition they are doing them a big favor by acknowledging them.
It seems that Uber may lose their first mover's advantage by their greed and small mindedness.
I had not heard of Gett before this story.
Right? This is the best part of the story...that their actions were what made me aware of their competitor.
> "... their actions were what made me aware ..."
Point of pedantry: You're aware because someone wrote an article and someone else posted it here. I wonder how many other locations have tried similar tactics but not been widely exposed.
He is also aware because he owns a computer, has access to the internet, is in a profession or hobby that led him to this site, is in a specific place where he thought to check this site.
At a certain point, you go overboard with pedantry.
He is aware because of all those things, including his brain processing the words he read, but the only thing controlled by Uber is their actions.
I don't think this is very good pedantry, though. This is really straining pedantry ...
Do you live in NYC
The network effects will take care of the competition.
Will it? Why? Unlike social networks, I don't see why would Uber benefit particularly from network effects; it doesn't even have switching costs, since the consumer can use both concurrently.
Each Uber user benefits when there are more Uber drivers. They can get rides faster and more conveniently. Each Uber driver benefits when there are more Uber users. They can get clients faster and closer to their current position and thus make more money with less downtime. These are the network effects.
A consumer can use Uber and a competitor. This, however, is not unlike social networks, it is entirely like social networks. A consumer can use two social networks as well. However, in practice if one car service or social network does a good enough job the consumer is unlikely to use another.
Each Uber user benefits when there are more Uber drivers. They can get rides faster and more conveniently. Each Uber driver benefits when there are more Uber users. They can get clients faster and closer to their current position and thus make more money with less downtime. These are the network effects.
As nickpinkston said, those are economies of scale, which is a related concept, but not the same.
A consumer can use two social networks as well.
Yes, but this is where the difference highlighted above kicks in: in a social network, the total number of users is not as relevant as the number of connections the user has, so the user can be "stuck" even if he feels the product is not good enough. In a product like Uber, there's no such effect; people can switch as soon as they feel like trying the alternatives.
>As nickpinkston said, those are economies of scale, which is a related concept, but not the same.
This is still network effects, just with two different parts. The drivers benefit when there are more users, and the users benefit when there are more drivers. It falls clearly into the definition of network externalities when you take the drivers into account.
This is not true. Users and drivers benefit when the number of drivers and the number of users are in a good enough balance, such that there are enough free drivers on the road to be able to have one near to each prospective user, but not so much as to be wasteful.
But the absolute numbers of each do not matter. Adding more drivers does not benefit existing users if more users are added as well to cause those drivers to be active on trips whenever a new user tries to book a trip. And adding more users without adding more drivers is, of course, bad for the users, because it produces a scarcity of cars.
This is pretty much wholly unrelated to the idea of network effects.
Even if the drivers/users ratio is constant, raw #drivers does matter, given a fixed amount of space. As you get more drivers in the same amount of space, the minimum average distance from a user to a driver decreases.
Any driver that has a passenger is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent when it comes to new passengers placing calls. You could have one million drivers in SF, but if 999,999 of them are on an active trip, and only 1 driver is free, then the fact that there's a million drivers makes no difference whatsoever.
And that's true for the riders and the drivers - the opposite of network effects. I think he meant economies of scale.
But the drivers might not. There is likely an exclusivity clause if you want to be an Uber driver.
If all the calls are going to Uber, the drivers will too. If Gett/others have no drivers, they won't be able to build a base of customers.
I believe this is what the OP was referring to with network effects.
Could these be sales people giving a per driver incentive? Or was it from the direction of a manager? If it was sales people, fire all of them. If it was a manager, fire him or her. Then issue a press release.
I sincerely doubt that a company as unethical to the bones as Uber would ever consider firing them.
Shitty company employing shitty people.
"Uber Driver Allegedly Locks Passenger In Car, Gives Himself Five-Star Rating"
http://laist.com/2014/01/21/uber_driver_locks_passenger_in_c...
I had not heard of this before, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Uber said they're looking into the matter. I would assume that, if this story is actually true (I'm inclined to believe it is, but sometimes people do make things up), then the driver will be fired. I don't know what else you're expecting them to do.
Uber is the leading firm in a growing market with network effects.
MySpace was also the leading firm in its industry.
In Houston I've seen a lot of cabs with some app advertised on them - Hail a Cab or something like that. Actually painted (or maybe long-term decal lettering) so it's obviously embedded somehow in the industry. Eventually you'll see firms with pre-existing relationship take advantage of the business model.
It's interesting that all these ride services are so aggressive about recruiting drivers. I looked into driving for them to make a few extra bucks and the one thing they could do to get a leg up on their competition is clarify the insurance situation.
They all essentially claim that a driver's personal auto insurance is good enough and combined with the companies umbrella policy provides sufficient coverage. But then if you go and read their fine print that really isn't the case and if you were to be involved in an accident while driving for them there is a good chance no insurance would cover damage to yourself as the driver or your car.
I would make a 99% bet that your personal auto insurance explicitly denies covering you if you are driving a vehicle for money.
I'd make a 100% bet. These services try to muddy the waters though from what would otherwise be clear cut.
Lyft for example brands themselves as a "friends giving friends" rides type of arrangement and they call the money exchanged a "donation" so they tell drivers, "who is your insurance company to say you can't do that"!
Uber acts like personal insurance will cover it as well if you are an UberX driver but then in the fine print it says it is the drivers responsibility to confirm driving for a "P2P" ride service is ok with their insurance company. Of course if you call any of the major insurance carriers and ask them they will tell you, "hell no that isn't covered".
If you look at the taxi insurance market it is made up of a bunch of dinky little companies no one has ever heard of or in some cases taxi's are insured by quasi government insurers of last resort or by verifying you have the minimum insurance requirement on hand in cash. None of these options is cheap so it isn't surprising that ride sharing services would want to avoid them because they would have to end up paying the drivers a lot more and they would no longer be 30% cheaper than taxi's
Anyone driving for Uber should not use their personal vehicle until they receive a signed copy of Uber's ACORD certificate with:
1) Checked "Automotive Liability" section
2) One or more of the following checked boxes underneath the "Automotive Liability": - "Any Autos" - "Hired Autos" - "Non-Owned Autos"
3) Your name listed as a "named insured" in the "CERTIFICATE HOLDER" area at the bottom
I'll raise it to 100%. When I used to deliver pizzas as a teenager the company made me take out insurance, which they never paid for.
Maybe this will be resolved in a court of law.
Just in the past few weeks...
"Uber Driver Arrested in San Francisco Crash That Killed Girl"
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Uber-Driver-Arrested-in...
"Lyft Driver Hits Elderly Woman in San Francisco Crosswalk"
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Lyft-Driver-Hits-Elderl...
Interesting, an Uber driver hits someone (while not even on a trip), they release a blog post that starts with condolences to the family, and apparently a lot of people (i.e. hacker news commenters) get upset at Uber.
A Lyft driver hits someone (while active on a trip), Lyft doesn't issue a blog post (a news story contained a paraphrased "statement from Lyft", but I see nothing on Lyft's own blog), and hacker news doesn't seem to care.
This strikes me as pretty strange.
An accident that kills someone vs. an accident that I'm surprised got an article written about it.
You're right, Lyft's accident was much more minor. It's clear it was only in the news because of the connection to a car service. My point was basically just that hacker news these days always seems intent on painting Uber in the worst possible light, even when they issue a public statement that starts with condolences to the victim's family, but they don't seem to care about what happens with other car services. It seems only recently that everyone was in love with Uber, but I guess now it's the goliath that needs to be taken down?
Statistically, this was bound to happen. What's the surprise?
Both links are the same story.
No it's not, they're different stories about different services' off-duty drivers being involved in accidents.
I am also curious about personal property tax issues. In my county, the rate differs based on % of reimbursed business use. If reimbursed business use is over 50%, the tax is 2.7x higher.
Between this and how they handled the girl who was killed by an Uber driver on New Year's Eve in San Francisco...my opinion of them has taken a decided turn for the worse in the past few weeks. And for both, I can't help but think that company culture is set from the top.
I hadn't heard of this before, so I just googled it and read the top half-dozen news stories in addition to Uber's own blog. And honestly, I don't see that Uber did anything wrong. They opened with a statement offering condolences to the family. They then confirmed that the accident did not involve an active driver ("a vehicle or provider doing a trip on the Uber system"). They followed this up by urging the police to release information on the driver. So it sounds like they could confirm no active trips were involved in the accident, but had no way to find out if a driver without a trip was involved.
Then later (I think on Jan 2nd?) they updated their blog post, presumably in response to details of the driver being released, to confirm that the driver was an Uber driver (just not one on an active trip), and that he has been deactivated.
Then it closes by repeating the condolences to the family.
I agree that it would have been nice if Uber could have confirmed that the driver worked for them initially, but it's not obvious that they were even in a position to find that out before details on the driver were released.
Desperate attempts to wash themselves of liability.
If a Yellow Cab driver killed someone do you think they would deny, admit and then caveat with 'but he doesnt really work for us because he didnt have a passenger in the car and his lunch break was coming up blah blah blah'
>If a Yellow Cab driver killed someone do you think they would deny, admit and then caveat with
Yes, if a yellow cab driver hit someone with his own car while he was not working (which is what happened here), yellow cab would very much deny any liability.
Sophia Liu. 6 years old. Killed by Uber driver.
At first Uber denied the driver worked for them. Then they admitted the driver was with them but he wasn't "working" because he didn't have a passenger.
In constrast, some news reports claim that the driver believes he was working for Uber because he was searching for fares at the time of the accident.
I hadn't heard of this before. But I'm a bit confused, how does an uber driver hit someone while searching for fares? Searching for fares in Uber means sitting in your car waiting for your phone to ding. The only reason to be moving around without a passenger is if you think that a different neighborhood is a better place to be to find passengers (as distance to the prospective passenger is important), but driving to another neighborhood certainly doesn't qualify as "searching" for anything.
I would imagine that a large number of the drivers actually do drive around while searching as some areas are just awful to find parking in. Really the safest thing that Uber could do is to make it policy to only search over drivers that aren't in transit. Might hurt their buisness, but it is technically possible and most likely would give them a pretty strong defense against their product causing harm.
Note their sloppy job of hiding the livefyre comments only for this post (hint: they forgot to remove the comment count).
To play devil's advocate; how would you have had them handle the New Year's Eve situation better?
Did you read their statement?
They were more worried about being associated with the accident than the accident itself. Lots of weasel words and excuses in trying to claim that the driver didn't work for them, or that the driver wasn't active or doing a trip.
If I worked for Uber, I would have posted something simple and left it at that e.g.
"We have been informed by law enforcement that there has been a traffic accident in San Francisco involving an Uber driver. We send our deepest condolences to the family and victims of this tragic accident."
The end.
Just to play devil's advocate, would you apply the same standard to Musk's handling of the Tesla fires? His primary concern there seemed to be to disavow responsibility and blame the driver. While it's true that the fires were driver error, that doesn't change how combative he is about criticism (see: top gear).
No one died/was seriously injured in the Tesla fires. That makes it a completely different situation.
There are tens of thousands of traffic deaths per year.
Of course they care more about being associated with this particular incident than about the singular victim.
Are you going to call them out for not expressing condolences for the other hundred people that died to cars that day?
They could acknowledge the driver was working for them. That would be a start.
As I said in another comment, that even assumes they were capable of knowing the driver was working for them. In their blog post they asked police to release details of the driver, with a statement saying that any driver involved in a serious law enforcement issue would be deactivated (i.e. fired). Then in the update, they confirmed that the driver (whose details were presumably released at that point) did work for them and was in fact deactivated as a result.
To my reading, it sounds like they simply had no way of knowing that the driver worked for them without the police giving them details on the driver.
One man's dirty tricks is another man's free market - http://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/
Who needs pesky Taxi and Limousine Commission busybodies to ensure people aren't arbitrarily blacklisted from being able to call a cab?
You're egregiously misunderstanding your opponents' viewpoints. I'm one of them. Probably on your ideological antipode even.
I support (!) regulation prohibiting retaliatory blacklists.
I support criminal prosecution of fraud, like the accusation of Uber's fake orders to rivals.
I support background inspections for taxi drivers.
I support regulation that demands a high level of driving skill from taxi drivers. And any supporting regulation, such as mandatory courses, tests, and inspections.
I do not support taxi commissions as creators of privileged monopolies.
I do not support taxi licenses priced above $1 million per car as a tool to enforce monopolies.
I do not support price controls on economic services, including taxis.
I do not support supply quotas on the number of taxi sales.
I do not support any similar attempt at centralized command & control economics.
Those are the reasons I criticize taxi commissions (that and the extreme corruption). Can you accept that this is the position of most of your opponents? Don't strawmen us.
I agree with all your statements. I don't have any opponents in the sense of people I oppose. There are some people who think any regulation is defacto bad and a 'free' market will solve anything, and I think they are misguided. In particular, they forget that 'free' markets are complex institutions and standards and conventions and rules about things like what constitutes fraud that have evolved over centuries.
No one; higher fees due to state-enforced limited supply are more than enough to keep the poor from riding taxis.
"Nearly half of [NYC taxi] passengers have a household income of $100,000 or more a year." (2014 Taxicab Fact Book)
I'm not sure if that fact implies what you think it implies. There are many effects in NYC in particular that keep the poor from riding taxis:
- A highly effective and heavily taxpayer-supported mass transit system (aka the subway) that gets people around marginally slower than taxis, and actually faster than taxis during peak hours. Rides are $2.50, less when purchased in bulk.
- A restricted supply of taxis has meant supply concentrates in the southern portion of Manhattan where fares are frequent and relatively short (maximizing profitability as there is a $3.50 meter drop immediately when taking a new passenger). Taxi drivers strongly avoid areas where fares are less frequent, and rides are longer - and surprise, that's where poor people are.
These have nothing to do with higher fees - enforced supply has resulted in lack of taxi availability to the poor, but not because of high fees. Cab drivers are incentivized to min-max their fares, regardless of how much their medallions cost.
There is actually a program out right now: boro taxis, which are only allowed to operate in the outer boroughs - away from the wealthy parts of Manhattan. This program was specifically started to offset the supply crowding and allow people in more far-flung neighborhoods (read: poorer) accessibility to cabs. They charge the same rates as every other taxi in the city.
Quite honestly, I'm surprised it's that low. 37% of households in Manhattan make over 100k/year[1]. Take into account that taxis are mainly concentrated in the high income areas (read: not Harlem) and the "nearly half" works out to basically the demographic split of the area, not the result of trying to keep poor people out of cabs.
Also, before anyone points out that the limited supply is keeping taxis out of the poorer areas, there recently introduced boro cabs[2] are meant to solve this specifically, with limited areas where they can pick up passengers and a much cheaper medallion ($500/year instead of ~$200k/year).
[1] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
I don't have an article to cite at this moment but one positive outcome of past cab fare hikes is that total subway ridership increased. Higher ridership spreads the cost and reduces the rate subway fare increases.
Overall, keeping cabs expensive is probably a net benefit to the overall city transportation/livability ecosystem.
That's why Uber came along, the service for the common man, dedicated to reducing the price of taxis. Right?
I'm not defending Uber.
But who will watch the watchers?
I'm sure it's not a popular opinion, but when Uber itself is a business that seems to exist on the border of legality, this type of stuff isn't that much of a surprise to me. Uber et al. specifically skirt around regulations that cab companies have to abide by, which, at least in my opinion, sets the tone at the top that legality and ethics are somewhat secondary to the mission of the company.
IMPORTANT: I've used Uber, and the experience has been great. All I'm saying is that I don't love the cavalier attitude towards city regulations on taxis, and that I think that attitude flows down the chain.
I think it is important to draw a distinction between challenging local regulations like million dollar medallions that hurt both drivers and riders and laws that prevent companies from hurting their competitors to steal their supply, the way it happened here.
There are many companies challenging the first kind of regulation that wouldn't indulge in the breaking the second kind of law. Disclaimer: I started one of them - InstantCab, which competes directly with Uber and Gett.
>million dollar medallions
As far as I understand, the only thing that medallions offer as an advantage in New York City (where they cost a million dollars) is the ability to pick up people who hail a cab off the street. Other car services exist for prearranged rides, and are called car services, not taxis.
That's the way startups work - you have to move fast, break stuff, work on the edge of the rules, and disrupt the stagnant markets, man.
I'm not even sure that 'accuses' should be in the title given that Uber have already admitted that they did it. Pretty shady, IMO.
Lots of bantering about whether or not it's ethical / low. tl;dr: It probably is; Travis probably doesn't care.
Honestly, since all that really matters to Uber is $$ and being forced to deal with the law (and even then only barely), Gett should just sue them. It's clearly illegal (putting aside differences between NY/CA law) and it proves the point in a way they'll be forced to notice.
Is it actually illegal? That seems to be very much a question, not a matter of fact. It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business. They were trying to harvest driver phone #s (so they could later try to hire away the drivers; while ethically dubious, this part does not seem illegal). Furthermore, they paid cancellation fees to Gett for doing this. It does not seem clear-cut to me at all that you could label this as fraud, which I believe is the only way to claim this is illegal.
> It's obvious Uber was not intentionally trying to disrupt Gett's business.
That's certainly Uber's stance, but it's not "obvious" at all :
> [OP] "In some cases, Herman said the Uber employees waited until the cars had showed up to cancel the order. Uber said the orders were all canceled immediately."
Deliberately waiting until the last minute to cancel a ride would certainly indicate intent to disrupt. That Uber is denying having done this should not exactly come as a surprise.
> Deliberately waiting until the last minute to cancel a ride would certainly indicate intent to disrupt.
Sure, if they actually did that. At the moment this just seems to be Gett's word against Uber's, and since doing that would not in any way aid Uber's goal of harvesting phone numbers, I'm not inclined to believe Gett just on their word. The most benign explanation is that the drivers simply didn't check their phone to see that it was cancelled until they'd arrived at the address.
> since doing that would not in any way aid Uber's goal of harvesting phone numbers
You're just making assumptions about Uber's goal.
It's Gett's word against Uber's, and the latter is the one who has admitted engaging in immoral and possibly fraudulent activity.
Does intent matter all that much when seeking damages like this? The damages happened, and Uber admitted to being the cause of the damages. If the law weren't some complex beast (and we know it really is, so this could be false), all Gett would have to do is prove damages, and prove that Uber did it, and that'd be that.
Can Gett actually prove there were any damages at all? Not only was Uber paying cancellation fees, but unless Gett can prove that this caused at least one "real" Gett customer to not be able to book a ride, then it's hard to say that there actually were damages.
I agree, that's the real question here, not, "Did Uber mean to hurt Gett?"
I love the doublespeak in the statement: "Our local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers"
"opens up new economic opportunities" is that what we are calling "sales" now?
To me it says they open new economic opportunities by bringing black car service to the masses and fairly cheaply (I compared Uber to a cab for a trip I'm taking soon, UberX was much cheaper). AFAIK, black car services weren't very accessible by the public not that long ago. Services like Uber or Gett let the drivers make money in a new way, which sounds about spot on to me.
"opens up new economic opportunities for drivers". It's not sales. It's part-time job openings. Their phrasing sounds about right.
At least he didn't call it growth hacking.
Order forms provided to CNNMoney show that more than a dozen Uber employees were involved, including community managers, operations managers, Uber's general manager, and the company's social media strategist. So much for blaming "our New York team".
Why does the bit at the end discuss California law? This happened in New York.
Because for whatever reason CNN decided to call a CA based law firm to interview them and of course a CA lawyer is going to know first and foremost about CA law.
Could it be because Uber is a CA company? I don't know how the jurisdictions are supposed to work though.
Gett probably should sue Uber, but what sucks is they (Gett) would have to divert precious money, time, and resources to fight a much bigger company with deeper products and better lawyers, which takes focus away from product and growth, which decreases their probability of success long-term.
Very shitty, lose-lose situation for Gett. The fact that they got "free PR" out of this CNN article is probably small consolation.
Really scummy behaviour. Warrants a much stronger response than: ""Our local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers," Uber said in a statement. "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics.""
This type of behavior is often swept under the rug in the startup world, eg. Airbnb hijacking Craigslist:
Until the link above is fixed, try this article for an overview:
How AirBnB Became a Billion Dollar Company http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...
TLDR: Dave Gooden setup a honeypot on Craigslist to test whether AirBnB staff were creating fake Gmail accounts to spam Craigslist users & suggest they should post their vacation house listings on AirBnB instead.
Ha, copy + paste fail caused no doubt at least in part by my (self)righteous indignation!
You linked to European Common Lisp Meeting 2008...
wrong link? (European Common Lisp Meeting 2008)
Shhhh ... AirBnB and Uber are "Disrupters."
Just this morning there was a story on NPR about how Uber has price-gouging built into their system: during a snowstorm you may pay something like 5x the normal fare.
I don't know the specifics of that story, or whether they actually have built the factor of 5X into their system, but note that some "price-gouging" is simply built into the system of supply and demand. If drivers are more scarce during bad weather, it's natural (in some sense) that the price would rise.
Here's another NPR story about price gouging: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/29/163861383/why-econ...
If you're going to call it "price-gouging", let's at least admit it's a natural part of business. Take a look at hotel rates when there's a near-by convention, air-line ticket prices over the Christmas holidays or even the prices quoted by corporate sales at businesses like Cisco, Oracle, etc.
There's not a law that says you have to charge everyone the same rate - just that you can't base it on certain types of discrimination.
Note: I'm okay with calling all those practices "price-gouging".
It's not my term, it's defined by the statutes of many states, including NY: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/GBS/26/396-r
The idea is that jacking up prices to take advantage of adverse conditions or emergencies is not the same as normal supply-and-demand based pricing in response to seasonal variations, etc. I don't know if Uber's practice fits the definition in the statute or if they're being investigated for it.
Uber has stated that their pricing is based on the number of people requesting rides (within some time slot if I remember correctly). So a snow storm might be deemed a natural disaster, but it might also lead to more people requesting rides (also triggering the price increases).
Yes, if there's not an increased demand during that snow-storm but they're caught with 5X prices, I think they'll be in trouble under those "price-gouging" laws.
The idea is that it warns you first and you agree to the increased price because you really want the car. This makes them more money (obviously) but it also incentivizes more drivers to get on the road when demand far outstrips supply.
I personally feel like that's not price gouging, so long as it isn't your only method of transportation. If you were very price conscious, you would probably be using a cheaper Uber competitor to begin with.
You mean the encourage more drivers to go out despite the bad conditions by providing higher incentives?
In a world where you generally only get one chance with a new customer, I wonder how many people decided not to use Gett because there wasn't availability at the time that they wanted to try it.
As much as I love über I think these tactics aren't going to win them fans. Competition in the market should be a good thing, right ?
This is one of the reasons traditional cab services are heavily regulated: to avoid these sorts of battles. It's in the interest of a municipality to have stable, predictable, reliable public transportation. Price wars, selective service, and tactics like these disrupt that stability.
Uber mostly found traction in SF where they started because regulation did not deliver reliable transportation. Street hails mostly worked if you could find one and didn't need them to accept a credit card, but if you called a cab company for a ride, you could easily waste an hour waiting for a cab that never shows up at all.
One benefit of removing regulations is that we get to relearn why we needed them in the first place.
I'm sure it was a "local" decision, but from everything I read and hear, lack of ethics is part of Uber's DNA as much as lack of hierarchy is part of Steam's or Github's.
Calling it "a bit too ambitious" is just further proof of Uber's structural lack of values.
I think there is an interesting contrast between this recruiting approach and the Google/Apple/Intel/Intuit non-recruiting agreements people were complaining about yesterday. Yet here, the weight of opinion is on the other side, while I see them as roughly equivalent.
I don't thin the issue is Uber recruiting drivers. The issue is DOSing their competitor to do so.
Yes, the lawyer mixed in the bonus offer into the complaint, but that would appear to be a good thing for drivers, if not for Gett.
I guess the question is whether sending requests and cancellations to 100 different drivers over 3 days (about 33 different drivers per day, maybe 4-5 per hour in a workday) really constitutes a denial of service. It seems exaggerated, but it is working as Gett is getting attention.
Definitely a bad idea though.
A friend who works at a different Uber competitor is banned from using Uber. I think now I know why...
Dear Uber,
I guess I shouldn't have expected much from a company that was founded on the principle of giving their customers the experience of being a baller.
I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.
I'll be looking to find a boring company that just shows up, doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period and has respect for other organizations.
I once loved you, but now I'm leaving you.
Sincerely, Brian McDonough
Some of what you wrote is unfair to Uber.
>I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.
You can use the Uber app to get cabs or lower cost UberX. UberX is actually cheaper than most cabs while providing the convenience of ordering electronically, knowing roughly how long to wait, and paying electronically (with receipts.)
>doesn't try and and cheat me during peak period
There have been some interesting discussion about this on Travis Kalanick's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/traviskal?fref=ts, December 24, 2013) which basically say that the alternative to surge pricing would be not being able to get a ride at all. Some people on that thread suggested that the Uber client could be improved to let people get notified when the rate goes back down and other UX improvements and Travis said the team would consider those changes.
What a dirty act. It's unfortunate that these type of tactics likely do succeed and furthermore go unpunished. But that's the cutthroat nature of business in today's world.
So I guess I say this with a disgusted sense of admiration - kudos to them for figuring out a new way to beat the competition.
"Gould's railroads began to cut down Western Union connections and replace them with American Union's. (This was pure vandalism, and directly violated the 'no exclusivity' court decision Gould had celebrated.)"
- p. 146, The Tycoons, Charles R. Morris, ISBN:1429935022
I almost remember when Uber was the good guy. Stories like this keep popping up everywhere.
It's a competitive market, but there's better ways to grow than attacking competitors and banning developers (earlier story) who try to do interesting things to extend your service.
This makes me really angry as a happy Uber customer. I wish there were a way to express my displeasure to Uber without having to give up a great car-on-demand service.
Just thinking out loud, but couldn't this be interpreted as falling under that nebulous 'unauthorized access of a computer system' law?
If Gett isn't taking legal action against Uber, then this just sounds like a good marketing ploy to get attention.
Seems like the offline equivalent of a misguided 'Growth Hack' gone wrong.
Fraud is a felony.
"Fraud" isn't a singular thing. The Penal Law of New York State defines around 40 separate types of fraud, most of which are misdemeanors.
Unqualified, unreferenced legal advice is a no-no.
why Gett can't sue Uber in this case ?
I love it, great scrappiness from the local team. As CEO i'd have a good chuckle, and tell them to tone it down a bit.
Generous of the article to refer to Gett as a "rival" and not a clone.
Generous of the article to refer to Gett as a "rival" and not a clone.
Because Uber is so crazily innovative that no-one else would ever think about doing it? Come on. It's a car service with a smartphone app. There's a reason there are at least a dozen companies doing it.
Because they saw the success Uber has experienced and wanted some of the pie?
Non-taxi on-call cars have existed for many, many decades before Uber. Especially in NYC where this article is relevant, car services are a dime a dozen and have been a regular part of city life for decades.
The difference is between picking up your phone to get one vs. using your smartphone. Uber was first to market, but it's silly to pretend that without them it wouldn't have happened. That's like calling the Pizza Hut app a clone of the Domino's app, because they both order pizzas and Domino's came out first. Ultimately Uber is a newfangled (and more convenient) front-end to a service that has pre-dates itself by a wide, wide margin.
The extension from "call the car company to get a car" to "use an app to get a car" is a pretty obvious innovation, particularly in NYC.
So what? You can say that about any large tech companies.
Google wasn't the first search engine. Apple didn't make the first music player. Facebook wasn't the first social network.
Being unique doesn't matter a single bit. Only thing that matters is that people are using them. And that's the case with Uber. Judge however you will their shady tactics, but it's ridiculous to downplay their success based on that.
Who is downplaying their success? The point is that it's not ridiculous to call Gett a rival instead of a clone.
>The extension from "call the car company to get a car" to "use an app to get a car" is a pretty obvious innovation, particularly in NYC.
Sounds like downplaying success to me. Everything is obvious once it's done.
You're reading dismissiveness into my post that was not intended. Uber has done something remarkable, but it is not so novel as to justify calling everyone doing the same thing a "clone".
Not to mention Uber is not the first GPS-based car-hailing app. They were the first ones that were able to gain mass traction - which is an achievement in and of itself, to be certain, but also makes claims that "X cloned Uber" somewhat laughable. If we're going to split hairs about who copied whom, Uber is on the wrong end of that statement.
But it's precisely because Uber was able to get such traction, that other companies followed into the field. Lyft and Gettit may not be "clones", but I'd wager the followed the industry leader (Uber) in the the field.
Gettit is as much a clone of Uber as Androids a clone of iPhone. Not an exact copy, but probably wouldn't be existing without the other paving the path.
I'd wager that people in ancient Athens would send a messenger to the local chariot service when they needed to get around on short notice. The idea that Uber is somehow doing something new is ludicrous.
Was Uber really the 'first'? Lyft a similar service came out of zimride.com which was doing ride sharing as early as 2007 though perhaps not through a smart phone in real time.
No, the idea of matching riders to driver using a GPS enabled phone is at least as old as 2001: http://www.google.com/patents/US6697730
Zimride did indeed launch in 2007 as a Facebook based carpooling app. It wasn't real-time at that time. Don't know if/when Zimride built an iPhone app but I built a real-time ridesharing iPhone app in 2008: http://ridecell.com/gt/
Uber started in 2009.
Disclaimer: The company I started, InstantCab, competes directly with Uber.
A few requests/cancellations to get the cell # would be scrappiness. 100+ is sleazy and if I were Travis or Ryan I would be removing the NYC GM if this story is accurate.
I'm curious, do you think all of those "X but on the internet" patents are good inventions worthy of 17 years of government protection? Because this is basically the same thing. Uber provides a service that has been around for centuries, it's just "on smartphones". Is that really sufficiently unique to call other people who do it "a clone"?
To be fair, integrating the Ebay-style rating of sellers/drivers does stand out as an important distinction - making that a core part of their app is a bit disruptive. Not a huge deal and not all their competitors do it, but that's something you don't usually expect in that kind of car service.
I agree, and I don't want to make it sound like Uber isn't doing anything interesting or innovative. I just don't think that what they're doing is interesting or innovative enough that we should consider it all an original idea that others could "clone".
Taking smartphones and eBay-style ratings and integrating it into a smartphone app is great! But imitators, if they are "cloning" anything, are cloning eBay and car services, not Uber. The combination is extremely useful but ultimately nothing special.