Uber CEO responds to concern that Uber's SF service is decreasing in quality

&gt; All of Uber&#x27;s old school power users have gotten used to Uber and simply expect our service as a baseline at this point. What I mean is that as you have gotten used to Uber, your expectations of basic fundamental service have risen.<p>Yeah ... no. I got fed up with taxi service in SF about 2 years ago and started using Uber. At first I was astounded: very clean cars, very nice drivers who were accommodating and pleasant (all I want is a quiet ride without the radio blaring or the driver shouting into his phone the whole way). Best of all, the drivers were knowledgable about the city and didn&#x27;t need me to tell them turn-by-turn how to do something basic like get across town. It was what I always wanted, and totally worth the extra cost vs. a regular taxi.<p>It&#x27;s hard to put my finger on exactly when it started, but in the last few months the &quot;black car&quot; service has degraded to the point where it feels like the old taxi days. Usually the car is dirty, smells bad, the driver has the radio blasting loud (and doesn&#x27;t exactly react all that well if I ask to turn it down or off), and the driver&#x27;s attitude is frequently incredibly grouchy (I&#x27;ve had to listen to them complain about their jobs quite a bit lately), and worst of all, they don&#x27;t know their way around the city at all.<p>Just to make sure I wasn&#x27;t experiencing what Mr. Kalanick is suggesting in terms my expectations being calibrated differently, I have made it a point to take regular taxis a few times lately. Instead of a categorically different experience (which is how I would have described the difference between Uber and a taxi in the past), the only differences now between the taxi and the Uber &quot;black car&quot; service seem to be the price and the color of the outside of the car. Oh, and in some cases the regular taxi drivers actually know the city better than the Uber drivers.<p>I don&#x27;t really blame Uber for all this, as I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s really hard to maintain that level of quality while growing at double-digit rates. But I do think they need to take a good hard look at the &quot;black car&quot; service and make sure the drivers know what kind of experience they are supposed to provide. It really should not feel like a taxi with a different coat of paint on the outside.

We started using Uber this year to get to the airport. Though we are happy with the price, and very happy with the ease of scheduling, every single ride has made me uncomfortable with the safety and comfort of the service.<p>Over four rides to the airport this year, these things have happened:<p>1) Three of the times the drivers claimed the AC wasn&#x27;t working, and we had to drive on the interstate with the windows down.<p>2) The driver missed the exit for SFO, and drove through the median to get to it<p>3) Two drivers did not know how to get to OAK<p>4) I (a pregnant woman) was traveling alone with my infant son. Driver did not help load stroller and luggage into the trunk. Threw luggage out of the trunk onto the curb when we arrived at the airport.<p>Transportation always kind of sucks, and maybe this is the best you can buy for $72 from Berkeley to SFO. My Uber experiences have been uniformly worse than my taxi to&#x2F;from airport experiences. But they are slightly cheaper and easier to schedule.

It&#x27;s a sign of strength in a company when the CEO can talk candidly about problems like this. Every company has problems, most worse than this, but they rarely talk about them except in the blandest, most evasive way.<p>Conspicuous candor.

That&#x27;s confusing that he pulled a response to someone else&#x27;s post into a standalone post, without quoting this Noah person for context.<p>Here&#x27;s the original complaint:<p>============================================================<p>I&#x27;m a huge #Uber fan, but the service has been getting really bad lately. Anyone else experiencing these issues?<p>-App shows a car 2 minutes away, and when I reserve, it then says the car is 8 minutes away<p>-Drivers who increasingly have no knowledge of the city and&#x2F;or driving routes<p>-Drivers who increasingly have trouble communicating in English<p>-After booking, the car gets further away (significantly) before it gets closer on their way to pick me up.<p>-Surge pricing becoming the norm--even during traditional &quot;non-peak&quot; hours<p>Again, I&#x27;ve been and continue to be a huge fan of Uber, but the past couple months have been disappointing. On the plus side, I had an awesome Pakistani driver yesterday who had a great story to tell about how he emigrated to America and is making twice as much driving for Uber than his old taxi. Pretty cool.<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/noah.lichtenstein/posts/10100797782090093" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;noah.lichtenstein&#x2F;posts&#x2F;10100797782...</a>

As the original poster to Facebook that Travis is responding to, I&#x27;d just like to add a few thoughts here. First, I&#x27;m an early adopter of Uber and have been + remain a big fan of the company. Second, I commend Travis for taking the time to write out his thoughts and provide a well-thought out response--even if I don&#x27;t fully agree with everything he wrote. Third, I think it&#x27;s a good sign for Uber that a) people care enough to be talking about it...passionately; and b) their CEO is involved in the debate. Fourth, the quality in SF has been declining for those of us with a longitudinal view over time, and even if the top-line metric of overall reviews inflates the NPS score, the fact that this is striking a chord with &quot;power users&quot; should be alarming. Fifth, I think this is correctable, and is not unique for a company scaling this quickly. Thanks everyone for the debate. - Noah Lichtenstein

Perhaps the reason that the quality numbers have been mostly flat is because drivers have been pushing to get 5 star reviews.<p>In case you didn&#x27;t know, as a customer of uber, the driver gives you a star rating just like you give the driver. A lot of people in SF have figured that out, and a lot of time I&#x27;ll get an offer of &quot;5 for 5.&quot; The drivers are letting you know that if you give them a 5 star rating they will give you one.<p>On top of that, drivers more and more push for a good rating, trying to make you feel bad if you don&#x27;t give them 5 stars.<p>I can&#x27;t recall these pressures in the past, and if they are working, then quality numbers staying flat actually mean they are quite down.<p>----<p>That said, I am still an avid user of Uber, using it almost every day. My biggest concern is the same others have voiced, the drivers have no idea where they are in the city. I&#x27;m not talking cross streets, I&#x27;m saying a lot of time they don&#x27;t even know how to get to a whole neighborhood. They also don&#x27;t appear to be good &#x27;city drivers,&#x27; and frequently seem to put bikers at risk due to that.

For me, the convenience of Uber was always in the predictability of when the car would arrive. Flywheel (<a href="http://www.flywheel.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flywheel.com&#x2F;</a>) has finally effectively solved that problem for regular cabs, after half a dozen apps tried. Anecdotal conversations with taxi drivers indicate that they are pretty happy with the Flywheel service as well - it is definitely the best received app by drivers.<p>Using an app that seems to treat driver&#x27;s more fairly is worth something to me, YMMV.

I think some of it might be self-inflicted too rather than purely a scaling issue. Anecdotal evidence here but probably relevant- I got a mail from Uber a while back, where (presumably) some automation noticed that I was taking a bunch of uber rides to the airport when I was in Boston, but never from, so it offered some Uber credit to use from the airport. I was pretty stoked that Uber had such great analytics and this past Saturday, requested an uber when I landed. Once I got picked up however, it was a different story, with the driver claiming I had &quot;tricked him&quot; and that it was illegal for him to pick anyone up from the airport and that Uber had specifically given him guidance not to pick anyone up from the airport. Clearly there was some miscommunication there and although he calmed down once I explained my side of the story, it still creates a bad experience (probably for both the customer and the driver). Uber support was reasonably prompt in getting back to me but it was somewhat of a non-reply and I still don&#x27;t know if picking people up at Logan Airport is a supported scenario or not. However, my positive experiences with Uber far outweigh the negative ones and I think Uber still has that built-up goodwill going for it which should cushion it through these growing pains.

I remain unconvinced. In Atlanta alone I find myself waiting up to 30 minutes for a UberX because nobody tells them about potential traffic conditions, and nobody knows the city routes. Maybe its different when I price up to just Uber service, but this is pretty inexcusable.

I prefer taking Lyft to Uber because with the former the default mode is friendly conversation. When you take an Uber the assumption is that neither of you will talk to each other, like in a Taxi or Limo. In this sense Lyft is more revolutionary than Uber because it fundamentally changes the social dynamic, not just the economics.

Anything is better than waiting an hour for a taxi to show up, and then having to call a friend because the company just forgot about you.

I wonder what kind of response we would get from the CEO of Yellow Cab if people complained that their service was degrading.

It&#x27;s a challenge to be a popular company that everyone would like in their market. Yet, in every single city there are differing rules that govern taxis. I&#x27;d LOVE to have Uber in Portland but the local Government is the road block. In cities that Uber is available, they&#x27;re growing.<p>I love this company and use them any chance I can. I know that they&#x27;re doing everything they can to be the best company and the best service for those that want to use them.

I had a bad ride to OAK from Berkeley, wrong freeway, no AC, it was a mess. But the Uber app prompted me for feedback, and I got a personal support message and a credit when I complained.<p>I will Uber again, as it is easily the most convenient way to get to the airport, and I can tell that the software is rigged to continuously improve the company. After a lifetime of cab nightmares, I&#x27;ll take Uber with double the warts.

I&#x27;ve definitely had mixed experiences with Uber in San Francisco; In LA the drivers were excellent, here it seems to be hit or miss.<p>This seems to be a particular problem as regards UberX. With the Surge pricing making UberX more expensive, it&#x27;s not really worth it for me if I have to show the guy where to go and he&#x27;s not nice or accommodating in any way.

I would really like to see an aggregate app that only handles the buy side of the market and let Uber, Sidecar, Lyft, taxis and others handle the sell side of the market. This way, you could have an app that shows you the rating of the companies relative to one another. Every vote for a driver would also be a vote for the company as well. If a company wasn&#x27;t great, you can opt to stop seeing drivers from them.

Like several others, I&#x27;ve had the problem where I need to give directions, despite the driver having a GPS enabled phone. Do we know why they do this? It&#x27;s by no means a big inconvenience for me, but it&#x27;s somewhat perplexing, at least...<p>PS: I&#x27;m extremely happy with Uber. My experience with calling cabs was forged on the south side of Chicago, where they seldom ever actually came. It was miserable.

They are looking at average quality metrics. I think they should be looking at perc based quality metrics. That would have reflected a drop and the variability far earlier on. In this sense, it&#x27;s akin to performance metrics — you want to find out what % of your users are experiencing what levels of service.

Uber, at it&#x27;s worst, is still far better than any experience I&#x27;ve had with traditional cabs.

You get what you paid for.

2 and 8 minutes? Are you serious? Sure you&#x27;re being promised something and getting something else, but....<p>At least it&#x27;s better than being promised that a cab would come in 15 minutes, and then having to wait in the rain for 50 minutes instead.