Uber = supply and demand

[thirdcrank]

I can't sympathise here. In the recent snow when demand was high, the offer price went up. (Offer being the key.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bi ... m-42311505

[Si]

And in their other story they are talking about how many people with 4wds have volunteered to take hospital staff to work FOC...no doubt this anaesthetist would have found fault with that! Sorry....having a bad day WRT to anaesthetists who are making my life a pain at the mo.

[Bonefishblues]

I paid a snow premium for oil yesterday

[mjr]

Yeah, I think it's unsurprising. In NY, cab demand spikes on rainy days, which is a strange combination of more people wanting them and cabbies knocking off early once they've made their daily target because they don't like driving in the rain. This seems like a continuation of that effect.

[Cunobelin]

And in their other story they are talking about how many people with 4wds have volunteered to take hospital staff to work FOC...no doubt this anaesthetist would have found fault with that! Sorry....having a bad day WRT to anaesthetists who are making my life a pain at the mo.

When I worked in the West Country there was a girl who drove a 4x4 but never made it in during bad weather. I used to cycle past her house on my way in, and she would phone saying that it was too dangerous to drive!



This does highlight another issue about "unregulated" Taxis. There is an argument that they operate below the fixed prices of many regulated journeys. However in cases like this, you will find the opposite

[thirdcrank]

... This does highlight another issue about "unregulated" Taxis. There is an argument that they operate below the fixed prices of many regulated journeys. However in cases like this, you will find the opposite

I'm uninformed here, but I believe that using Uber involves getting their app. I presume, therefore, that the originator of this report has been happy to use the company's service when the price was right.

[mjr]

Not necessarily. He may just have installed it now out of desperation to try it for this journey after getting silly waiting times from hackney carriages and long phone queues from minicabs.

[kwackers]

Looks like a good system to me.

During periods of self employment I dynamically adjust my quotes based on how much potential work I have (and whether I really want the job).

[PH]

I don't see the problem with this, taxis/private hire are not part of the public transport network, why wouldn't they operate on a market forces principle? It worked here, the complainant rejected the offer and used another supplier at a fraction of the cost.

[mjr]

Looks like a good system to me.

During periods of self employment I dynamically adjust my quotes based on how much potential work I have (and whether I really want the job).

As I understand it, major problems with Uber are the marketplace owner taking a fairly high fee and interfering with the market in various ways, such as alledgedly placing fake orders with other operators like Gett and Lyft then cancelling them shortly before pickup, investigating and revealing personal information on traffic commisioners who sanction it and showing "ghost cars" to users it suspects are licensing officers to try to avoid being checked without notice. Then you've got the sadly-common zero-hours exploitation of its workers and attempting to class them as self-employed, plus using offshore tax-avoiding revealed in the Paradise Papers.

[kwackers]

Looks like a good system to me.

During periods of self employment I dynamically adjust my quotes based on how much potential work I have (and whether I really want the job).

As I understand it, major problems with Uber are the marketplace owner taking a fairly high fee and interfering with the market in various ways, such as alledgedly placing fake orders with other operators like Gett and Lyft then cancelling them shortly before pickup, investigating and revealing personal information on traffic commisioners who sanction it and showing "ghost cars" to users it suspects are licensing officers to try to avoid being checked without notice. Then you've got the sadly-common zero-hours exploitation of its workers and attempting to class them as self-employed, plus using offshore tax-avoiding revealed in the Paradise Papers.

Which are all things that need sorting out. But the point in the OP was that the app dynamically adjusts prices according to demand which seems like a good idea.

[mjr]

Sure, but Uber = supply + demand + top slicing + dodgy supply- altering methods would seem a fairer description.

[thirdcrank]

Uber as an organisation may get up to all sorts, but a couple of significant things they have done are to introduce de-skilling ie The Knowledge of London Black Cab drivers and local knowledge more generally are no longer so important; then, offering the customer a price in advance, which they can accept or reject.

I fear things like zero hours contracts will be more widespread, post brexit.

[kwackers]

Uber as an organisation may get up to all sorts, but a couple of significant things they have done are to introduce de-skilling ie The Knowledge of London Black Cab drivers and local knowledge more generally are no longer so important; then, offering the customer a price in advance, which they can accept or reject.

I fear things like zero hours contracts will be more widespread, post brexit.

"The Knowledge" is still required though for a black cab? Uber is a private taxi, in theory not in competition with black cabs. (Although I think "the knowledge" is archaic and I fail to see the point).
Offering the customer a price in advance is a good thing.

Worth adding that this mechanism now exists for lots of private taxi firms. I can order my normal local taxi via an app and see where the car is, when it arrives outside my door etc and with the price and payment agreed in advance.

In fact I struggle to see what's so special about Uber, in theory any group of licenced taxi drivers can achieve the same thing, it should empower rather than hinder them.

[thirdcrank]

AFAIK, nothing has changed with regard to Black Cabs, which is why I chose my words carefully, if not very well. The internet has pretty much reduced the need for memorised knowledge although it remains very useful to know the significance of it all: how it works and fits together.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.
— Samuel Johnson (Boswell's Life of Johnson)

Now, we can just google.

I don't know if anything is special about Uber but they manage to generate a lot of publicity and somebody else is supposed to have said "There's no such thing as bad publicity" (but I'd have to google to find out who that was. )