Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics

Wow. This is low.<p>The statement is absolute bullshit too: &quot;In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we&#x27;ll make sure they tone down their sales tactics.&quot;<p>No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than &quot;hey, stop that&quot;.<p>I live in NYC. The Uber app has now been banished from my phone. It&#x27;s too bad the Gett app is kind of an unpolished turd.

That is not only morally wrong but it is flat out stupid. Uber is the leading firm in a growing market with network effects. They should be worried about growing as fast as possible first and above all and not about competition. The network effects will take care of the competition.<p>The worst thing a company in a leadership position like Uber can do is take actions that acknowledge their competition. Even if they are trying to screw over their competition they are doing them a big favor by acknowledging them.<p>It seems that Uber may lose their first mover&#x27;s advantage by their greed and small mindedness.

It&#x27;s interesting that all these ride services are so aggressive about recruiting drivers. I looked into driving for them to make a few extra bucks and the one thing they could do to get a leg up on their competition is clarify the insurance situation.<p>They all essentially claim that a driver&#x27;s personal auto insurance is good enough and combined with the companies umbrella policy provides sufficient coverage. But then if you go and read their fine print that really isn&#x27;t the case and if you were to be involved in an accident while driving for them there is a good chance no insurance would cover damage to yourself as the driver or your car.

Between this and how they handled the girl who was killed by an Uber driver on New Year&#x27;s Eve in San Francisco...my opinion of them has taken a decided turn for the worse in the past few weeks. And for both, I can&#x27;t help but think that company culture is set from the top.

One man&#x27;s dirty tricks is another man&#x27;s free market - <a href="http://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pando.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;10&#x2F;24&#x2F;travis-shrugged&#x2F;</a><p>Who needs pesky Taxi and Limousine Commission busybodies to ensure people aren&#x27;t arbitrarily blacklisted from being able to call a cab?

I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s not a popular opinion, but when Uber itself is a business that seems to exist on the border of legality, this type of stuff isn&#x27;t that much of a surprise to me. Uber et al. specifically skirt around regulations that cab companies have to abide by, which, at least in my opinion, sets the tone at the top that legality and ethics are somewhat secondary to the mission of the company.<p>IMPORTANT: I&#x27;ve used Uber, and the experience has been great. All I&#x27;m saying is that I don&#x27;t love the cavalier attitude towards city regulations on taxis, and that I think that attitude flows down the chain.

I&#x27;m not even sure that &#x27;accuses&#x27; should be in the title given that Uber have already admitted that they did it. Pretty shady, IMO.

Lots of bantering about whether or not it&#x27;s ethical &#x2F; low. tl;dr: It probably is; Travis probably doesn&#x27;t care.<p>Honestly, since all that really matters to Uber is $$ and being forced to deal with the law (and even then only barely), Gett should just sue them. It&#x27;s clearly illegal (putting aside differences between NY&#x2F;CA law) and it proves the point in a way they&#x27;ll be forced to notice.

I love the doublespeak in the statement: &quot;Our local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers&quot;<p>&quot;opens up new economic opportunities&quot; is that what we are calling &quot;sales&quot; now?

<i>Order forms provided to CNNMoney show that more than a dozen Uber employees were involved, including community managers, operations managers, Uber&#x27;s general manager, and the company&#x27;s social media strategist.</i> So much for blaming &quot;our New York team&quot;.<p>Why does the bit at the end discuss California law? This happened in New York.

Gett probably should sue Uber, but what sucks is they (Gett) would have to divert precious money, time, and resources to fight a much bigger company with deeper products and better lawyers, which takes focus away from product and growth, which decreases their probability of success long-term.<p>Very shitty, lose-lose situation for Gett. The fact that they got &quot;free PR&quot; out of this CNN article is probably small consolation.

Really scummy behaviour. Warrants a much stronger response than: &quot;&quot;Our local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers,&quot; Uber said in a statement. &quot;In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we&#x27;ll make sure they tone down their sales tactics.&quot;&quot;

This type of behavior is often swept under the rug in the startup world, eg. Airbnb hijacking Craigslist:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=261024" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=261024</a>

Just this morning there was a story on NPR about how Uber has price-gouging built into their system: during a snowstorm you may pay something like 5x the normal fare.

In a world where you generally only get one chance with a new customer, I wonder how many people decided not to use Gett because there wasn&#x27;t availability at the time that they wanted to try it.<p>As much as I love über I think these tactics aren&#x27;t going to win them fans. Competition in the market should be a good thing, right ?

This is one of the reasons traditional cab services are heavily regulated: to avoid these sorts of battles. It&#x27;s in the interest of a municipality to have stable, predictable, reliable public transportation. Price wars, selective service, and tactics like these disrupt that stability.

I&#x27;m sure it was a &quot;local&quot; decision, but from everything I read and hear, lack of ethics is part of Uber&#x27;s DNA as much as lack of hierarchy is part of Steam&#x27;s or Github&#x27;s.<p>Calling it &quot;a bit too ambitious&quot; is just further proof of Uber&#x27;s structural lack of values.

I think there is an interesting contrast between this recruiting approach and the Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;Intel&#x2F;Intuit non-recruiting agreements people were complaining about yesterday. Yet here, the weight of opinion is on the other side, while I see them as roughly equivalent.

A friend who works at a different Uber competitor is banned from using Uber. I think now I know why...

Dear Uber,<p>I guess I shouldn&#x27;t have expected much from a company that was founded on the principle of giving their customers the experience of being a baller.<p>I only wanted a consistent and yes boring, non-baller experience.<p>I&#x27;ll be looking to find a boring company that just shows up, doesn&#x27;t try and and cheat me during peak period and has respect for other organizations.<p>I once loved you, but now I&#x27;m leaving you.<p>Sincerely, Brian McDonough

What a dirty act. It&#x27;s unfortunate that these type of tactics likely do succeed and furthermore go unpunished. But that&#x27;s the cutthroat nature of business in today&#x27;s world.<p>So I guess I say this with a disgusted sense of admiration - kudos to them for figuring out a new way to beat the competition.

&quot;Gould&#x27;s railroads began to cut down Western Union connections and replace them with American Union&#x27;s. (This was pure vandalism, and directly violated the &#x27;no exclusivity&#x27; court decision Gould had celebrated.)&quot;<p>- p. 146, The Tycoons, Charles R. Morris, ISBN:1429935022

I almost remember when Uber was the good guy. Stories like this keep popping up everywhere.<p>It&#x27;s a competitive market, but there&#x27;s better ways to grow than attacking competitors and banning developers (earlier story) who try to do interesting things to extend your service.

This makes me really angry as a happy Uber customer. I wish there were a way to express my displeasure to Uber without having to give up a great car-on-demand service.

Just thinking out loud, but couldn&#x27;t this be interpreted as falling under that nebulous &#x27;unauthorized access of a computer system&#x27; law?

If Gett isn&#x27;t taking legal action against Uber, then this just sounds like a good marketing ploy to get attention.

Seems like the offline equivalent of a misguided &#x27;Growth Hack&#x27; gone wrong.

Fraud is a felony.

why Gett can&#x27;t sue Uber in this case ?

I love it, great scrappiness from the local team. As CEO i&#x27;d have a good chuckle, and tell them to tone it down a bit.<p>Generous of the article to refer to Gett as a &quot;rival&quot; and not a clone.