Taxi Driver Online

Uber Reserve launches in the UK, you can pre-book cars in London, Manchester and Bristol

Previously launched in the US, the new service enables customers to pre-book an Uber Exec or Uber Lux car up to 30 days in advance.

A booked car will turn up 15 minutes before the allotted time and wait until 15 minutes after, in case.

There is a reservation fee of £5 and a minimum fare for all Uber Reserve bookings - which depends on the location.

Uber Reserve is currently available in London, Manchester, and Bristol and Bath. The minimum fares are £25, £17 and £20 respectively. The final fare is shown upfront before the booking is made.

After a ride, passengers can add drivers to a favourites list and those drivers will be offered future bookings first.

The new service does not impact on UberX journeys, which can still be ordered without notice or reservation fee.

"As the UK emerges from lockdown, we’re launching more features and products to help make everyday life easier," said Uber's European general manager, Jamie Heywood.

"We have listened to riders who have told us they want the peace of mind of being able to book trips in advance and know that their driver will arrive early and wait for them, which is why we are launching Uber Reserve."

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IDFIMH

Should reduce no shows.

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IDFIMH

Interesting.

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IDFIMH

Surely that infringes EQUALITY ACT.

Not if everyone is paying that rate.

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IDFIMH

and presumably you are pressing a button to ACCEPT the fare which effectively ties you into a legal contract to pay it

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

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

All our fares are fixed when the booking is made.

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

So, if you book an Uber from the mecure hotel to temple meads in Bristol, which you might, with luggage, a journey of 300 yards, it will cost £20? Still, accepting advance bookings, what a brilliant idea. Why has no one thought of that before?

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Former taxi driver

Not referring to fares but feeding of drivers is not treating everyone equal.

Fair enough, but it depends on the nature of the feeding.

If it's based on customer choice then I can't see a problem.

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IDFIMH

Can't be bothered looking it up, but presumablythe Equality Act only protects against discrimination on the grounds of a 'protected characteristic', or whatever the wording is.

So it would have to be discrimination on the basis of something like race or religion, rather than preferring drivers because they're polite and helpful, say, or brooming drivers because of their dodgy driving, or because they smell of BO

Of course, in practice that's almost impossible to police. I mean, if someone didn't like black or Asian drivers, for example, they're not going to say send me John Smith because he's white, they're going to say send John Smith because he always uses his indicators or his aftershave smells nice

(Not sure why the word aftershave came into my head - must be thirty or even forty years since I used it, and I wouldn't even know if it's still sold, although I'm sure it must be.)

I always wondered if the reason Uber didn't accept advance bookings was because this would entail rotaed drivers for early morning airport runs, say, which would be inconsistent with their self-employment model.

So the Supreme Court ruling is maybe why they're proposing pre-bookings - it doesn't matter now if they rota drivers.

To be fair, though, this was I think first proposed several years ago, so employment status may have been a factor in how they've approached this, but maybe not the only one