Posts by BenWilson
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Will be very interesting to hear the full details of this crash. Bears all the hallmarks of a driver falling asleep at the wheel.
Will also be very interesting to hear whether the 3 cars that got smashed up will be covered, and by whom. A driver without commercial insurance is swinging in the wind, and Uber's "contingent liability policy" that no one has ever actually seen may be called into question here.
But who you gonna sue? If these guys are distancing themselves from operating in NZ for real, and our systems are allowing that, that puts it all on the driver. I suggest the insurance companies themselves might want to test that one in court. They're free to contact me for detail on how to get that under way.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
None of the disputes are about deactivation. They're about arbitrary change and misleading inducement into contract.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Ben are they still side steping that court action of yours.
I can't speak in too much detail, since the cases are sub judice, but so far there have been 3 adjournments. Uber sought the first one at the last minute, and the drivers sought their own ones in the second two cases.
In the first case, it was because of a total lack of disclosure on Uber's part - the driver was unwilling to argue against an unknown case, unknown evidence, and unknown parties that would attend.
In the second case, a lengthy pre-hearing was held (they were in there for several hours). Uber sent Richard Menzies and a lawyer they had flown over from Sydney, who trundled in an actual suitcase full of files. This was into the Disputes Tribunal, in which lawyers may not actually be present. Uber laid their hand of cards on the table, finally. It was revealed that they have spent a great deal of time taking the NZUDA very seriously, and at great cost. They argued that the adjournments had cost them a lot of money, but I expect the referee was not impressed since they are in a small claims court over small amounts of money, so the ridiculousness of the situation must have been manifest. For what reason is a lengthy legal preparation and flying in a lawyer from overseas necessary in a matter of a few thousand dollars? That the NZUDA has never received any contact whatsoever from Uber was also unlikely to have been lost on the referee.
It's worth noting that there are significant differences in all the cases that have so far gone forward, so each one will need to be addressed individually. Uber's one silver bullet is the claim that the complainants are going after the wrong party, that the NZ operation is not responsible, despite being a wholly owned subsidiary of the operation they would like to refer the case to, employing the only people that Uber even has in NZ. For this reason, they are seeking to not even have the cases heard at all. However, of course, it could be argued that this IS the main defense, and that therefore a hearing is the place for the evidence either way to actually be heard.
My understanding is that where the claim is over contract breach, the question is about who the contract the driver had is actually with. I think that if it is ever pinned on the NZ operation, it will be by virtue of an oral contract.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to David Hood,
Naturally, as with every complaint to Uber, there is no way to ascertain whether their claim to have disciplined the human driver even happened at all. And if it did happen, there is no way that the person being disciplined got any kind of natural justice. Their method of distancing themselves from all responsibility, whilst retaining all power and control, is literally going to have to kill someone before it is ever pulled apart. Even then, I think it's going to be difficult when regulators are craven enough to simply use the excuse that they "don't want to stand in the way of innovation". It would seem that no law breaking is egregious enough to justify halting the mighty god Innovation. But the Innovation defence is, unfortunately, not any defence for the drivers themselves. As agents of Innovation, they find themselves to be legal cannon fodder.
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Disengagement
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why would the standard of safety for a drug you expect people to take be different depending on their reasons for taking it?
I'm going to break with tradition and not explain why. I weighed up the cons and found that there were only cons. It felt like something was missing, but ....
Seriously, I wonder who goes into a course of chemotherapy without once consulting their reasons for taking it.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Cameras? I'm convinced they would be of great benefit to drivers. Therein probably lies the reason that Uber is against them.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
I could only presume that the author was basing that on a considerably higher driver income than what has become normal. Which would be nice.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
That seems highly plausible to me. It's already about half the price of the cheapest alternative except Zoomy, which is running the same model. Which will crack first is the only question. Zoomy have deep pockets behind them too.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
I wonder if the Uber model would have expanded rapidly and been accepted by the public as a cheap option as it has.
I'll go out on a limb and say absolutely no way. Its business model is buying market share using speculative capital and then pretending to be a sound business by using 19th century labour practices, and an innovative business by inventing their own laws.
There's desperation in their latest moves here. The huge commissions for new drivers ($750 if you sign up under my code!), the offer of guaranteed $45/hour for people who have not been driving much (not offered to all drivers, probably because it's completely unaffordable), and the repeated attempts and entreaties to get even people who have been prohibited from driving and have faced charges in court over this back on the road for their exploitative job, and the fact that drive times to rides is pushing as high as 30 mins now.
They can't find drivers. Of course they can get riders, the elasticity of demand makes that a no-brainer. Keep buying riders and you'll get them. But they don't seem to have realized that to get the other side of the business really cranking you actually have to pay the workers well too. And if the payments coming in are less than those going out, you're actually losing money. Some kind of basic math fail....