Uber Duper?

Plenty of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are get­ting excited about the arrival of the rap­idly-grow­ing quasi-taxi ser­vice Uber. They offer the con­veni­ence of a smart­phone app, the poten­tial for bet­ter ser­vice and flex­ib­il­ity, a prom­ise to dis­rupt what is often seen as a mono­pol­ist­ic industry, plus fancy cars and All Blacks. For that, they’ve been rewar­ded with bil­lions of dol­lars of ven­ture cap­it­al, mak­ing them darlings of the star­tup scene.

One Wellin­gonista signed up to see what they’re offer­ing dur­ing their “secret test mode” peri­od. Sign­ing up requires your cred­it card details up front, but they’re offer­ing free rides through to 21st Septem­ber. At the moment, they appear to have four cars in Wel­ling­ton, but expect that to grow. Once they start char­ging, they’re cur­rently talk­ing about a min­im­um fare of $5, with ongo­ing charges of $0.50 per minute and $1.85 per km. I say “cur­rently char­ging”, since one aspect of their dynam­ic new mod­el is surge pri­cing, which raises the fares accord­ing to the laws of sup­ply and demand, some­times hit­ting users hard.

That’s not the only poten­tial fish hook in this shiny new ser­vice. As well as the praise from some parts of the busi­ness and tech world, there have been many ser­i­ous cri­ti­cisms.

For a start, there’s the mat­ter of pas­sen­ger safety with a busi­ness mod­el that sidesteps the reg­u­la­tions of the taxi industry. New Zeal­and’s already lightly reg­u­lated taxi industry has prob­lems with shady drivers to start with, but there have been hor­ror stor­ies com­ing out of the US. Worse, the com­pany tried to alle­vi­ate those con­cerns by offer­ing a “$1 Safe Ride Fee”: yes, pas­sen­gers had to actu­ally pay extra not to get assaul­ted.

On top of that, Uber have fought against insur­ance and safety legis­la­tion, been accused by their drivers of exploit­a­tion, and used what seem to be extremely under­hand anti-com­pet­it­ive meas­ures. While we would­n’t sug­gest boy­cot­ting a com­pany because of its CEO’s polit­ics, it would seem that Trav­is Kalan­ick makes Camer­on Slater look like Laila Har­ré, and his liber­tari­an­ism mani­fests itself in the com­pany’s anti-uni­on­ism and con­tempt for pub­lic safety legis­la­tion. As any­one who remem­bers the Green Cabs Wars on the Wel­ling­tonista will know, the Wel­ling­ton taxi industry isn’t exactly a host of angels. But in a city that is already over­run with cabs, is there much need for an even less reg­u­lated altern­at­ive?

We do hope that Uber will spur the loc­al com­pan­ies into mak­ing bet­ter use of tech­no­logy to improve their cus­tom­ers’ exper­i­ence, and there are advant­ages in hav­ing elec­tron­ic records of every fare. It may be that in New Zea­l­and, Uber won’t make the same ques­tion­able busi­ness moves that it has done in the US, and the innov­at­ive aspects of their ser­vice could actu­ally bene­fit Wel­ling­to­ni­ans. We will watch with interest.