They are selling a commodity.<p>When you are in a commodities market only price matters.<p>The article also mentions a series of issues with traditionally taxi.<p>> Furthermore there are some taxis who will cut costs by not providing a good service. This may be by promising to arrive at a certain time but then regularly turning up late. Sometimes late enough for you to miss your flight or your train at the station. They may arrive looking scruffy, unshaven or badly dressed. They may take you on a longer route than you expected and hike the fares up that way.<p>All these were pretty much fixed by Uber. At a lower price than legacy taxi operators.
> The fact of the matter is that there is a set minimum cost to doing business in the taxi trade. This cost includes such items as hourly rates for drivers, servicing costs for vehicles, insurance, licence fees etc.<p>I think the "license fees" for taxis has evolved [1] into a suboptimal market system that is difficult to unwind:<p>> The medallion system is a government-created intentional constraint on the supply of taxicabs, and since historically cities have increased the number of medallions much more slowly than the growth in demand for taxis, medallions have generally been considered a great investment; though recently the increased supply of cars for hire created by ridesharing companies has been eroding the value of medallions.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion</a>
It sounds nice in principle. But often low quality services will lie about being high quality services, and there's not much recourse once you've paid.<p>Thus I have found myself participating in the race to the bottom, not because I'm per se unwilling to pay for quality, but because I am required to trust that the quality difference exists, while the money saved is certain.
The points they make are interesting. Imagine if Uber/Lyft/your-preferred-method-of-transportation showed you those particular details for that trip i.e. number of hours driven preceding this trip, vehicle condition, etc. Yes, a lot of riders no doubt consider the trip to be a commodity such that only the lowest price matters, but some people did/do pick Lyft over Uber when Uber had the better price for reasons other than price.
99% of the Ubers/lyfts I've been in are trips to the airport - and most of those cars had worn out suspension, bald tires, or raw wheel bearings. Some even to the point where I wasn't sure the vehicle was going to get me where I was going. It doesn't help that in the midwest the roads are 3rd world quality.<p>The business model is flawed and I would rather use a company that maintains a vehicle fleet where a mechanic is involved and knows if a vehicle should not be on the road.
Some people complain about companies charging too much.<p>Some people complain companies don't pay their workers enough.<p>Sometime these are the same people. They don't realize it.
Meta: This ... actually works pretty well as an analysis of the tradeoffs in using the cheapest service. But, it's also a self-serving statement (an ad in all put positioning) from the very provider claiming to have a good reason to charge you more, and so it feels too close to spam to put on HN, you know?
>With Hart Taxis you get:<p>- Smart drivers who have been working a maximum of 12 hours in a single shift and a maximum of 6 shifts per week.<p>- Smart, washed and valeted cars<p>- Road legal vehicles with full service history.<p>- Vehicle tracking services so you can see where your driver is from when they accept your job to when they arrive.<p>- Text information detailing the make, colour and registration of the vehicle that will be picking you up.<p>- Meet and greet service at the airport where we monitor your incoming flight and only send the driver at the appropriate time.<p>- Bottled water on arrival at our airport jobs.<p>- Automated booking via our Oliviar booking system with the industry’s leading booking and despatch software<p>- Full E-receipt provided on completion of job, if required.<p>If I understand things correctly, then the only difference between this and Uber/Lyft is primarily item 1 (although I'm not sure why it matters that the driver is "smart"). Items 2 and the bottled water could probably be gotten through Uber Black which also costs more.<p>So it seems one pays a premium to help certain drivers earn a living wage, and support an ethical company; more cynically, to not feel like one is participating in Uber-style exploitation. I imagine that some in the effective altruism community[1] would consider this and other sorts of ethical consumption to be "ineffective", and would recommend people just donate the price difference to needier people, or to an organization better equipped to create structural change. But I'm not an effective altruist so I may be misrepresenting that perspective.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2015/1228/Forget-Fairtrade-just-give-cash-to-the-poorest-philosopher-says" rel="nofollow">https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-A...</a>
Woah. Didn't expect to see my local town appear on HN today. One thing they don't talk about is the customer service. I find Uber drivers are typically way more friendly and accommodating than the local firms. Not specifically Hart taxis, but one of their competitors in the area - Rushmoor Taxis - have been atrocious. Drivers making racist comments about brown people - their co-workers, drivers huffing and complaining bitterly if I dare use a debit card to pay, driver not even turning up and claiming it's my fault I "didn't see them" when I am standing out in the open. Our local cab firms need to up their game. It's not just about price.
My overly simplistic theory on why everything turns into a race-to-the-bottom is that cost is easily measurable and all the other things that Hart mentions, while important, are not easy to measure.
Uber Select is a lot nicer than UberX, for sure.<p>Uber Black is an even higher tier that I've only used once and don't really see the difference from Select unless it's a super long ride. However, the longer the ride, the larger the price differential.
Hart Taxis boasts higher driving safety, but what are the statistics for being involved in a road accident with a taxi really like? If the odds of an accident are already minuscule with the cheap taxi services, and only marginally more minuscule with Hart Taxis, then I imagine many passengers would go with the £15 cheaper option.<p>With regard to their drivers earning a "living wage", I would rather let the workers themselves speak about that – you can’t really trust anything an employer says here unless it has been vetted through collective bargaining.