Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I've never met any staff. They don't have an office that you could do that in. They have a place where they sign people up, manned by people who are almost always clearly not from NZ (by their accents), and who never last long. These people are meant to handle day-to-day parts of the operation too, which is extremely inefficient, since the location of the office is somewhere that it is nearly impossible to park a vehicle, and you have to take a number to see them at all, and often wait while they sign drivers up, a lengthy process. That's all there is.
Oh and there's the security guard, a recent addition. He opens the door for you. Or not, presumably, sometimes. Also deals with the drivers who come in to deal with some operational matter and get stonewalled, become angry, and raise their voices.
Invitations to meet with them, given directly by hand by association members who have been hand picked for special meetings have met no responses. There is no phone number to call, nor any email address to write to. They're basically deliberately unreachable. It's not even clear whether there is any NZ based infrastructure of any note at all. They could actually close down their offices, move everyone overseas, and still operate as efficiently. Probably more efficiently, since the signup center is really a sham front. I think that might even be their game plan.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to oga,
I would not be surprised if drivers were actually killed over this.
Scary stuff. I would also not be surprised if the mob latches onto Uber as the absolutely perfect criminal gateway, if they drop compliance to licensing laws. There are few devices more perfectly invented for kidnapping people than a taxi.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
It's hard to work for them for any length of time and not be struck by quite how unpleasant their business practices are. I turned a personal corner when one of the NZUDA members served a notice of a simple dispute on them, and the staff behaved in a way that our professional advocate said was entirely outside his experience. They backed away as if the document was poison, and cried out that they didn't work for Uber. When he pressed it upon one of them, that person ran to the big locked door that keeps drivers from ever coming into contact with Uber staff, and screamed for the guy it was addressed to. But he had fled out a back door.
At that point I realized that this organization is not going to last. It's not designed to last. The people in it don't even believe that. They all see that the writing is on the wall and are just hoping they won't be there when the hammer falls. Since their internal staff churn even faster than their drivers, this is not unlikely. I would not be surprised if there is not even one single legitimate employee of Uber in this country at all.
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I'm likely to be on the 6 o'clock bulletin on TV3 tonight if you want to put a face to a name.
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Probably better to ask that one on our Facebook page - others are more over GST than I am. https://www.facebook.com/groups/nzuda/
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
Yes, it's safer for both parties. Hard to get away with some kind of sexual abuse, and hard to falsely claim it either. At $450, it's kind of a no brainer. At least for anyone working at night, which is most Ubers. Uber's added safety of automatic route tracking should be an as-well thing, not an instead-of.
That price include installation?
ETA: When I say it's a no-brainer, I mean that anyone who has done more than a few hundred trips will realize the value of it. Most customers are great, but the ones who aren't can be real stinkers.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Yup, the latter. It's got to be permanently mounted and the storage has to be hidden away where it can't easily be tampered with. Presumably in this day and age of wifi, that's not really as expensive as it used to be.
I think some of the problem is the devices formed in a period where they were seen more as a protection for the rider. But in reality, it's been the other way around.
But I guess ideally it should be both.
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It seems like in vehicle security cameras are here to stay, too. The cost of that will be a hard sell to Uber drivers, but I think in the long run it's a sound idea, and almost entirely for the benefit of the drivers. I get so many reports of drivers getting into disputes with passengers that are very one-sided because of the power of passengers to fuck with the driver's life, and very little power in the other direction.
I think being even able to simply refer to the camera as evidence will cut down on quite a lot of the complaints of outright verbal abuse that drivers receive, not to mention the more serious altercations with passengers. There's not a lot of people in employment who have to put up with customers giving them prolonged racial abuse. I probably wouldn't have had one rider endlessly asking if he could see my dick.
Then there would also be the power to pull out the recordings the day Uber arbitrarily disconnects you for a low rating, to go through some of the 1 star ratings and see whether or not they're just passengers who are basically arseholes.
This is all predicated, of course, on Uber remaining in business in NZ. I don't think that is certain. It's got a Donald Trump doubling down feeling about it recently. All or nothing at whatever cost. Which usually means nothing in the long run. And the short run, but sometimes people get lucky for a while.
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The removal of the Braille identification information is a bit of a worry. Not sure what's replacing it. I don't know how well that kind of law protected the sight impaired before. Perhaps the thinking is that app based services do protect them better due to the vehicle route being recorded, and the automatic handling of payments. But that's not mandated in law, just a feature provided by various app services. And it's not going to help them with an ordinary taxi on the side of the road.
But I'm not entirely sure if these law changes aren't actually completely getting rid of the concept of a taxi altogether. I guess the devil in that detail is on if/how the Operator Licensing rules change.
Prior to April, all Ubers considered themselves to be Private Hire Services, but they broke one of the rules:
6.1(6) A driver of a private hire vehicle may only charge a set fare or an hourly rate agreed with the prospective passenger at the time of booking.
Because that's not how an Uber (or any of the other app based services) works. This rule would need to be amended for such services to be fully legitimate.
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Yes. in other words they have to be reachable. Currently, that is in doubt for Uber.
It's fairly certain Uber would not fall under the category of "cost sharing". That does not allow for time metering.