I’m old enough to remember the heavenly times before people repeated phrases like “the taxi cartel” as if they were original thoughts vs. cooked up by Uber’s comms team.
you'd pay through your fucking nose and get a long tour of the entire city to inflate your bill. at least with uber you get a refund when the driver does this bullshit.
Years before Uber arrived here local taxi companies already had an iPhone app with geo-location, up-front digital payment, and receipts I could directly import into the company ledger app. Taxis were regulated and forced to give cost up-front in the app and in the window of the vehicle. That is what taking a taxi was here before Uber arrived. That company changed nothing other than to dilute the meaning of worker versus contractor and Uber made it easier for registered sex offenders to become drivers because that company had less stringent requirements.
This is heavily dependent on where we are talking about.
I live in a fairly rich place and here, taxis were fine, too. When Uber came, they mostly just eroded salaries and protections for taxi drivers, while lowering the quality of service for customers (though also, for a short while, the price). The best I can say about it is that it accelerated the digital transformation of the industry a bit.
On the other hand, I heard from several people from other places in the world that the arrival of Uber meant that they could finally get a safe and reliable ride.
