Confession: I have only been in an Uber as a guest of a rider once.
Just once.
I have never basically, Uber’d.
Initially since I never had to, as I have always had the privilege of riding in town cars and the like whenever I need a ride, and primarily because well, LA.
Friends who lived in highly urban areas such as London, Silly Valley, New York etc., loved them.
Uber provided a service, and it both exposed, and disintermediated the municipal scams we know as taxi medallion licensing.
In all, Uber was a Good Thing!
Initially.
As they got more successful, they got a lot more nasty, more despicable, and finally – just before Kalanick got run – went completely cray-cray!
I mean, they checked all the boxes: they were nasty to customers – “surge pricing” during natural disasters; utterly disrespectful to their employees/drivers/’contractors’, stupidly an unnecessarily combatant with regulatory authorities, and more. They veered into criminality by developing a virtual environment overlay for city officials charged with possibly regulating them.
They openly yearned for the day when they’d finally be rid of the very factor that got them to success: their drivers. They talked up their foray into autonomous vehicles, thoroughly discounting current employees.
But, they stepped on the live wire of the Otto buy, which came with supposedly fraudulent proprietary IP belonging to Google.
When the merde hit the aerator, Uber realized it had no friends.
Every few days seemed to bring another revelation of dubious criminal, or outright unethical behavior.
So much so, that sometime last year, I started using the hashtag #YearOfLivingDangerously to describe Uber’s failings, and predicting an implosion.
I also made the decision never to use Uber.
Neither personally, nor professionally.
Uber’s co-founder Travis Kalanick was replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi who seems to be a more level-headed guy.
He smartly helped resolve Uber’s London mess, and adroitly steered Uber through the autonomous vehicle fatality disaster in Tempe. I seriously shudder to think of how Travis would have reacted to that!
While Uber’s future still looks bright, I am still a skeptic.
As a result, I will leave them in my NEVER List until I am convinced.
I want Uber’s good works and corporate citizenship to show me.
Once Uber presents as a company with good ethics as part of its corporate DNA, I’ll reconsider.
Then, and only then, will I be a Belieber!
My tweets about Uber, from January 1, 2017 to now can be found here.
© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
Follow @johnobeto