Taxi Driver Online

Could have added it to the other Leeds strike thread, but thought it deserved one of it's own.

Uber prices double as company takes advantage of Leeds taxi driver strike

Uber are taking advantage of the ongoing Leeds taxi strike by upping their prices on standard fairs.

Standard fairs into the city centre have doubled in some places.

A simple fare rate from Morley to Leeds railway station usually in the region of £10-13 now stands at £23.

Similar fares have surged at peak times across the day.

It came as taxi drivers across the city took to the streets to protest new laws, including the council's Suitability and Convictions policy introduced in 2020.

Drivers feel they are being "taken for granted" while being held to unfair standards that stand opposed to rules for drivers coming in from outside the city limits.

The strike, led by representatives of Leeds Private Hire Drivers Organisation, is to run until the early hours of Tuesday morning.

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IDFIMH

Does anyone actually proofread or sub-edit these things?

And, I mean, it's not even a consistent error, or occuring randomly in a huge article - the words above are in four short, consecutive paragraphs.

But at least it suggests the PH strike was pretty solid. Unless, of course, Uber is counted as PH

But proof reading and the strength of the strike come together neatly in the thread title - according to that, only one driver took part in the strike

Although Uber can be accused of many things their surge pricing is one thing they have got right.

The problem is as far as I can tell is that many private firms are still stuck in the middle ages with regards to their pricing structure.

Hotels, airlines & commodity sellers to name a few all raise prices when demand is high. It's basic supply and demand.

You maximise profits where demand is high and supply is low to compensate for low demand and high supply in other times which in the current climate is more frequent than in previous years.

And some of the owners of these companies wonder where all the drivers have gone and bemoan the fact that they are struggling to satisfy their customers due to a shortage.

Well. They are not coming back. Not even if you raise prices now will many come back into the trade.

They can make just as much and perhaps more doing food deliveries and other like jobs.

Without the hassle of business insurance, over regulation by the councils and their absurd rules such as livery requirements and low emission vehicle standards and the rest.

Only 1 MOT per year. The choice of using any vehicle they decide to use be it a 20 year old one or a 1 year old one.

Maybe the business owners will get it eventually. Maybe the councils will too.

Assuming they ever do it will probably be too late, anyway. The damage will already have been done.

The trade will probably never get back to what it was. For those that stay the course the driver numbers might get so small over the coming years that the prices will go a lot higher as a necessity which may permanantly change the pricing structure of the industry permanently to a situation like in Japan where taxi fares are very high above the global average.

To be honest, I think that is what is needed. The consumers have had it so good over the years at the expense of many low paid and over worked self-employed drivers all in a race to the bottom.

Many drivers have had enough and bailed.

To work as a food delivery driver, you need to have both Social, Domestic & Pleasure (SD&P) and Hire & Reward (H&R) insurance in place. Your SD&P covers your personal use of your vehicle and H&R is the specific type of cover that protects you for carrying food or parcels in exchange for payment.

That is not what is required at Dominos. You are employed by Dominoes and as long as you have SD&P then Dominoes have the business insurance to cover you whilst delivering. They pay above the minimum wage and also pay you for each delivery and pay for your fuel. Our hire and reward insurance does not cover this work at all.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

in my 30+ years of experience I have found that regular customers want and expect a guaranteed fixed fare irrespective of whether it is rush hour or not

if one firm is doing surge and the others are not they will get little of the work and only the customers who are not prepared to wait (or too drunk to notice the higher fare)will use the higher cost pseudo PH charging surge

Uber may not be as permanent or popular as everyone thinks they are and in 10 years time I suspect Uber will have withdraw from the PH market and be concentrating on food deliveries or maybe have transmogrified into a shipping or parcels delivery company

If they can't get the PH model producing a profit they will have to find another way to make money or their investors will start to get nervous and they are too big to fail despite people quoting other dot coms as examples

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

There's good and bad publicity for Uber because of the strike


Leeds people 'switching to Uber' after 24-hour taxi strike as passengers say they'll 'never go back'

https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds ... r-22787276

Users of Uber say the service is efficient, easy, clean and the drivers are polite

Taxi users across Leeds have pledged to use Uber in future after cabbies go on a 24 hour strike across the city.

Leeds Private Hire Driver Organisation (LPHDO) organised a 24 hour strike starting from 6am on January 17 to 6am on January 18 with cabbies protesting against the council's Suitability and Convictions Policy, which has been in place since February 2020.

Some regular taxi users have claimed LPHDO's one day of striking have lost them a "lifetime" of custom after realising how efficient and easy Uber were in comparison.

Some users took the discussion to Facebook community group, Leedsplace.

Liam James said: "I've learnt one thing Uber is fast, efficient and easy to use with polite drivers.

"15 years of using the same company, well this has swayed me. One day of striking for a lifetime loss of custom."

Karen Naylor added: "I was reluctant to use Uber after hearing bad things but they are brilliant, reliable, spotlessly clean and polite drivers."

Delyth Moyles agreed: "Always use Uber. Never had an issue except from one boy racer who was " told" and got a low rating."

Frank Charles said: "Uber is great. You know where they are and when they arrive. I’ll never go back."

Mark Fletcher added: "I have started to use Uber, as been let down by local taxis. Plus local ones don't run after 10pm."

However some regular users have seen a difference in the rise in use of Uber during the taxi strike - the higher the demand means the surge price will rise, people who use the service daily have seen their fairs double or even triple in peak times.

Mark Gregson said: "Quoted the daughter £36 for a £7 trip yesterday morning."

Samantha Wilson added: "Uber was a rip off today £17 to get home that normally cost 4-5 joke cashing in on the strike."

Dave Hammill said: "The only thing is the surge charge my mate got charged 8 pound one way and 18 back, bit of a rip off if you ask me."

Kayti Oddy agreed: "My taxi is usually £10-11 from st james to Armley, this morning Uber were saying £30."

Too big to fail?

Wishful thinking. Lehman brothers, pan am, Kodak, and dozens of others, convinced themselves they were to big to fail, and yet did. And Uber will crash and burn, it’s inevitable.

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Former taxi driver

Grandad, can you point out where I stated “Our hire and reward covers this work” ???
I merely stated that you NEED separate insurance, other than Social, domestic and pleasure (whether that’s paid for by a company or by yourself)

100% agree.

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IDFIMH

What folks want is one thing, what they will accept under certain circumstances is another.

I would gladly pay double fare to get a cab in 10 minutes if the alternative was to pay normal and wait an hour.

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IDFIMH

Depends on which company you work with/for and other aspects.

It's a bit more complicated as all the insurance companies have different pricing structures and their own specific business models.

Some companies charge very little extra for the cover of food delivery insurance. I know someone who pays very little.

Myself also included. There are also loopholes you can easily exploit which I am sure many drivers take advantage of.

You also need to consider that many delivery drivers have cheap vehicles so the risk all around is less compared to the taxi business.

A point I was trying to make and perhaps I did not express myself clearly is that the taxi business fare structure generally does not reflect the risk and labour of all drivers especially when you compare it to food deliveries which is more lucrative when you factor in costs and labour etc.

Obviously customers expect and want a guaranteed fixed fare at all times. It's why when you go to your local shop or supermarket every few days or every week that your receipt will show very little price fluctuations on individual items not taking into account inflation.

Bus fares too.

It's the customers incentive to get the cheapest price possible. They never like any nasty surprises from a price spike at any given time. Nobody does.

You're missing the point. At peak times ALL taxi companies can increase their prices. It's basic supply and demand. Perhaps not to the level of percentage increases that Uber charges but you must take into account their system seems to be fairly sophisticated just like with airline firms.

They charge what they can get away with. It's as simple as that. If nobody orders a cab with them on the increase the price gets lowered until an equilibrium is met. That is how business works in almost all industries where there is competition. If you have a monopoly there will be an exception to this rule.

The fact that there is a major shortage of taxi drivers up and down the country tells you all you need to know. The business owners should be increasing the prices to reflect that shortage if their phone is ringing non-stop and they can't fulfil their customer demands as they seem to be saying.

You increase your prices until you have just about enough demand to keep your drivers working/busy. If they are busy a lot of the time and customers are getting turned away and others getting their cabs late then your prices are too low.

They will get the work if their prices are surging because the reason they are surging is due to a shortage of drivers and high demand with that company. That's how their system is programmed to work. It doesn't raise prices randomly.

You may be correct about Uber not being around in 10 years or so.

However, that will not be as a consequence of their surge pricing should they do disappear.

It will be due to the fact that operating a global, state of the art technological cab service provider business is mighty expensive. They are and always have burned a lot of cash. They do have many flaws in their business model.

Eventually, the local cab services in their areas of operation will catch up technologically especially with the big 100 driver + companies.

I don't think I was suggesting that you did say that. I was just quoting what Dominos do.

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Grandad,
To support my charity text MAYORWALK to 70085 to donate £5

Interesting posts, RTB, but you seem to be agreeing that customers should be placated by a consistent and predictable pricing structure, but then say that taxi firms should just charge what the market will bear in the short-term, so are you being a tad contradictory, or am I just misreading you?