re: Birmingham City Council Voting To Ban Uber Tommorow.

(Posted on TD)

First off they do not hire drivers they have partners, which takes all legality away from them. What UBER does not tell anyone is the fine print of how they work. First off Uber Min is $5.00. Yellow Cab is $4.00. UBER BASE FARE $2.50 $0.35 PER MINUTE $1.60 PER MIL. Yellow cab is $4.00 start $2.00 mile and $.25 a min. Now to the bitty gritty. Uber takes 20% of every fare. They charge you$40.00 a month for that phone. You can't call or text your customer from it you have to use yours for that. Also you have to furnish your own GPS. Now that is what you pay UBER. Now you have to pay 33% to uncle SAM. Then your gas that is about $40.00 a night. Then add in your veh cost and deprecation that is about $30.00 a day.

Now insurance and wrecks. Uber will only cover the customer in your car god forbid you get in a accident. They leave your car for you to take care of. No big deal you got full coverage insurance. When you call your insurance then begin to tell them how and what you were doing they will then tell you sir you have a personal ins policy not commercial. We will no longer be covering you as of this moment. So with all this and breakdown in the end you will drive around destroying your car/truck for about $8.50 an hour.

That was all on the drivers end. Now for the consumer end. Background checks those are a joke for that click this link LINK.
Now with yellow cab limos and buses we all have to go to BRPD headquarters once a year to have background and driver lic checked. Uber once your approved they never check again. Next item $ the one everyone is worried with. Yes they may flat rate you but just hope they don't hit you with surge price that $20.00 trip will now be $125.00. Better yet let someone take your UBER car you requested you just paid for their ride. Yes it will happen cab drivers do it all the time its called scooping. When this happens you wanna pick up the phone and call UBER to get this resolved. You can't there is no standing # to call them at. You have to email them and correspond that way. Oh and time after time customers are getting random charges on their credit card on file.

The taxi problem in baton rouge as everyone claims that is prob 20% yellow cab fault and 80% public. I drive for yellow cab and let me tell ya I waste more time going to pick someone up who called for a cab but went back in the bar and didn't hear their phone ringing. We have to do a call out from our terminal in the cab wait 3 minutes then call dispatch if no one showed. Dispatch then call cust 3-5 times if no answer they leave message. The biggest problem is honesty. When the driver takes a call form dispatch all the info is sent to us pickup location name and destination. Never fails if driver pulls up and your not outside then the person that is will walk to that driver and ask who he is there to get. Drivers says name and person will say oh yea that's me. You just lost your cab. The other thing is you call for cab your buddy says just come ride with us and that person doesn't call back and cancel. Now if I do this 6 times in one night that is a min 30 min I have wasted on running around for nothing.

I do have regular customers though. The reason that is they learned that good tips lead to being picked up a more sure thing. I will work with other drivers to ensure that either i get you or they will but that you are picked up within reasonable time. Only time this really gets tricky is between 1:30-2:00 everyone seems to need a cab at this time. There is not enough cabs UBER and buses to get everyone at that time.