Uber Banned In Germany, Raided in Paris, Facing Charges In South Korea

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Uber just can't seem to catch a break these days. The company is now banned in Germany, had its offices raided in Paris and company execs were arrested in South Korea :eek:

Executives at taxi-hailing service Uber's South Korean office have been charged by local police for violating the nation's transportation law. Seoul District Police booked Uber's South Korea brand manager, along with other employees and drivers. Authorities seized a total of 432 items to be used as evidence, including handsets that Uber Korea distributed to its drivers.
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The Taxi lobby is amazing. For instance if you read the comments sections on various articles you will see a surprising amount of support for them talking about how everyone should play by the same rules and regulation, especially commenting on things like vehicle safety requirements etc. Stuff most of us would actually relegate to the "obscure" category, since honestly nobody is concerned with vehicle safety when getting in any car manufactured in the last 50 years. If you search through their post history it's usually just the same comment pasted multiple times in different areas, always new accounts, etc. I'm really impressed with their dedication to this whole grassroots thing. They need some coaching on how to come across as believable and natural, but the fact they're out there in such force is impressive. Even oil/tobacco never went this far.
 
People are so fucking dumb.

Conservative or not, wake up. The Taxi regulations all over the world evolved over decades/centuries, all for damn good reason and none of it was "Taxi Lobby".

It was public safety based on reacting to actual facts and occurrences that led to state/local governments implementing regulations and laws.

That's how civilization works. These Uber/Lyft/etc rich asshole "entrepreneurs" are just trying to end run around all that "hassle" to make a quick buck, screwing drivers and giving customers a false sense of economy.

The "Walmart Effect", it is an effort to make your business model profitable by shifting the burden to others and collect while no one is looking hard enough to realize ..... you business model is a failure, it is NOT economically viable and shedding light on where the costs ... the total costs .... are being borne, viola' you are out of business.

Just as Walmart is profitable ONLY because the employee's and suppliers have subsidized the business for 30 years. The US Taxpayer filling in the monies to employees through Welfare, Food Stamps, and Medicaid high risk pool healthcare costs .... and suppliers giving Walmart corporate welfare through layoffs and outsourcing.

Every dime of wealth of the Walton family has come straight out of the US Treasury through a black box. The Treasury needs to claw-back every dime.

The "Uber's" of the world need to GO before they do any more damage.
 
The better question is, why is anyone taking a taxi? Inconvenient, smelly, scary drivers, expensive, etc etc...

my 97 bmw 540i costs me $70 a month for pl/pd and registration - its always there ready to go when i need transportation. I understand public transportation is better for our environment but its not cheaper then having your own transportation.

I use my car probably 25 times a month, if i was paying uber to drive me to the grocery store, to work, to a restaurant, a friends house, etc id probably pay $800 a month. my friends mom takes a bus to work -- the bus ride is 4 hours to go maybe 4 miles (if the bus went straight from a to b for her) I know a bus ride is cheap, but my time is worth more then that...
 
It's the Taxi Drivers. They are ganging up. Look out Uber !
 
Ashbringer said:
Why so many countries hating on Uber? The hell did they do wrong?
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They are bypassing the regulations to make money. Most countries have will make you buy a very expensive license to operate as a taxi. Your car has to be checked and you have commercial insurance. Uber is bypassing all that trying to make money. These drivers don't even have commercial insurance.
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
People are so fucking dumb.

Conservative or not, wake up. The Taxi regulations all over the world evolved over decades/centuries, all for damn good reason and none of it was "Taxi Lobby".

It was public safety based on reacting to actual facts and occurrences that led to state/local governments implementing regulations and laws.

That's how civilization works. These Uber/Lyft/etc rich asshole "entrepreneurs" are just trying to end run around all that "hassle" to make a quick buck, screwing drivers and giving customers a false sense of economy.

The "Walmart Effect", it is an effort to make your business model profitable by shifting the burden to others and collect while no one is looking hard enough to realize ..... you business model is a failure, it is NOT economically viable and shedding light on where the costs ... the total costs .... are being borne, viola' you are out of business.

Just as Walmart is profitable ONLY because the employee's and suppliers have subsidized the business for 30 years. The US Taxpayer filling in the monies to employees through Welfare, Food Stamps, and Medicaid high risk pool healthcare costs .... and suppliers giving Walmart corporate welfare through layoffs and outsourcing.

Every dime of wealth of the Walton family has come straight out of the US Treasury through a black box. The Treasury needs to claw-back every dime.

The "Uber's" of the world need to GO before they do any more damage.
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I forgot to mention the margin of error that accounts for random nutjobs that always side with the absurd.

While I am sure at some point back in nineteen-ought-six some unscrupulous carriage riders peeked the local town hall's interest into some form of "regulation", but today when you have to pay something like $250,000 for a sticker to place on your car and your only reason for bitching at the competition is because they didnt, clearly regulation and safety is the least of your concerns. You can always find the flaw in someone's argument when they attack the character and not the merits of the argument. Notice how Taxi drivers do not purport to be more efficient than Uber, faster, more friendly, have nicer cars, less offensive, less manipulative, etc etc etc. No, instead they make baseless accusations about safety and "wahhhh it's not fair I agreed to be extorted and pay a ridiculous amount of money for a broken and corrupt system and they stood up to it and didnt!"

The complaints from big-taxi have about as much merit as the postal service complaining about email.
 
TheQuebecerInFrance said:
They are bypassing the regulations to make money. Most countries have will make you buy a very expensive license to operate as a taxi. Your car has to be checked and you have commercial insurance. Uber is bypassing all that trying to make money. These drivers don't even have commercial insurance.
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They shouldnt need a commercial license for this kind of business. These are individuals donating their personal vehicles for a ride and giving a kickback to Uber for locating them clients. Should I require a business license to sell my old mountain bike on ebay?
 
Also Uber Drivers are being shady now with a process to cause sure-charging by turning off their main mobile device in which has their Uber account tied to and then using another phone or device to monitor demand. When the surcharge kicks in due to demand (also less drivers) they then turn back on and take in the extra money.
 
And if they do ultimately end up with some kind of licensure, it should not be shaped in any way the way the taxi industry is modeled. Uber has quite simply taken taxi to the next level, and the system needs to evolve to suit it, not the other way around.
 
TheQuebecerInFrance said:
They are not selling used goods. The are selling a service, just like painter doing paint jobs. So yes they are professionals.
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They are acting as a craigslist for rides via an app. I've had good drivers and I've had bad drivers, much like I've had good experiences on CL and bad experiences on CL.
 
At least from the perspective of vehicle safety, I see nothing wrong with Uber. This may come as a shock to some people, but vehicle owners/operators are already required to have their vehicles meet minimum safety standards to be driven. In most states they are re-examined annually to ensure safety and emissions compliance, though some states do bi-annual inspections.

The end-run around the livery service regulations is questionable. Technically, if I understand Uber's service model correctly, they provide an interface in the form of a smartphone app, which allows a passenger to hitch a ride with a driver that is already going to the same destination, or somewhere close at any rate. The driver then gets a little cash for temporarily renting their passenger seat, of which Uber gets a percentage.

This may sound like an exercise in semantics, but in the legal world, semantics are important. Whether or not they should be will probably be debated until the end of human civilization (I think in ancient Rome they didn't allow lawyers to be paid for their services - maybe they were onto something). At least here in the US it appears like it would be difficult to prove definitively that the intention of the driver is to operate a livery service.

I also wonder how any subsequent ruling on the matter might affect carpooling or giving your buddy a ride to the store in exchange for gas money. Maybe from a legal perspective, the fact that there is a centralized overseer, in the form of Uber, makes it a livery service? But then Uber didn't really send the car to pick up the client, the driver ultimately accepted the passenger's request to hitch a ride, right? Maybe we would be better off going back to the trucker model where instead of money the driver gets paid in blow jobs?
 
Taxi regulations absolutely need to be modernized, but that doesn't mean that Uber and company should be able to skirt regulations as they currently stand and gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace. There are absolutely logical, often safety and liability related, reasons for there to be stringent regulations in operating transportation services etc.. hotels etc... and everyone needs to adhere to them, period. Modernize the entire system to get rid of the mess and then demand everyone adhere to the same rules. Jerks at both end of the spectrum, those who monopolize taxi medallion ownership/services and those who lie through their teeth claiming not to be cabs/car services and shouldn't be regulated will both throw a hissy fit, but overall the system will be better.

Good on those who aren't putting up with this crap.
 
1. I get picked up reliably!, usually less than 5min (and I can see the driver's live eta)
-Safety aside, this is prolly the most important part of taking a taxi service, reliability. I can't count the # of times I've been left stranded by cab companies.
2. Clean, non-ashtray smelling ride (sometimes with a comp. bottle of water)
3. Payment occurs instantly and without any fumbling for my wallet and without threat to tip or the "I have no change" or "debit machine no work" BS
4. Diver is never yapping or texting on the phone while driving (during the ride the driver's phone is in GPS mode)...
5. Since the route is pre-calculated I don't get driven the long way around.
6. Feedback on both sides, very quickly eliminates the disenfranchised
7. Uber's been consistently 40%-45% cheaper than the identical cab ride to the airport here

and last but not least:
newer cars (Max 6year Uber vs. Max7 year cab companies)

And don't even lament about insurance. Uber has umbrella commercial insurance, 1mm for each incident +

cities will eventually adopt the uber type model (progress is inevitable)
maybe once licensing/oversight is settled everyone can move on.
 
imafrk said:
1. I get picked up reliably!, usually less than 5min (and I can see the driver's live eta)
-Safety aside, this is prolly the most important part of taking a taxi service, reliability. I can't count the # of times I've been left stranded by cab companies.
2. Clean, non-ashtray smelling ride (sometimes with a comp. bottle of water)
3. Payment occurs instantly and without any fumbling for my wallet and without threat to tip or the "I have no change" or "debit machine no work" BS
4. Diver is never yapping or texting on the phone while driving (during the ride the driver's phone is in GPS mode)...
5. Since the route is pre-calculated I don't get driven the long way around.
6. Feedback on both sides, very quickly eliminates the disenfranchised
7. Uber's been consistently 40%-45% cheaper than the identical cab ride to the airport here

and last but not least:
newer cars (Max 6year Uber vs. Max7 year cab companies)

And don't even lament about insurance. Uber has umbrella commercial insurance, 1mm for each incident +

cities will eventually adopt the uber type model (progress is inevitable)
maybe once licensing/oversight is settled everyone can move on.
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They are cheaper because they don't have the commercial license and they don't have commercial insurance. But they are selling a service that is regulated and therefore are illegal. That it is moraly wrong or not is not the problem. If I buy a $200000 license and someone else starts offering the same service without the licence, I will be pissed off. And I can't sell at the same price because I have a $200000 debt.
 
TheQuebecerInFrance said:
They are cheaper because they don't have the commercial license and they don't have commercial insurance. But they are selling a service that is regulated and therefore are illegal. That it is moraly wrong or not is not the problem. If I buy a $200000 license and someone else starts offering the same service without the licence, I will be pissed off. And I can't sell at the same price because I have a $200000 debt.
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But it's not the same service. Your taxi service fails on all 6 of those homerun points listed above, so much so that you dont even qualify as being in the same business. It's like comparing a grocery store to some random food stand on the side of the road. Just because they both revolve around driving a car does not make them the same thing. The taxi model is extinct, and this is just the death rattle any dying business makes. I'm sure Blockbuster had a whole laundry list of reasons why they are better than Netflix.
 
And your mistake of paying into a system for $200,000 should not punish those smart enough not to. If eBay starts taking 90% of sales profit do their powersellers have the right to complain that Swappa just charges a $10 fee? Many business ventures collapse and those who invested in them are left hung out to dry. Taxi drivers who squandered their savings on a medallion are nothing more than collateral damage of progress.
 
McFry said:
And your mistake of paying into a system for $200,000 should not punish those smart enough not to. If eBay starts taking 90% of sales profit do their powersellers have the right to complain that Swappa just charges a $10 fee? Many business ventures collapse and those who invested in them are left hung out to dry. Taxi drivers who squandered their savings on a medallion are nothing more than collateral damage of progress.
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You mean not buying the license and breaking the law? It's the law that requires the license. Not buying it makes you an illegal taxi. People not buying their license deserved to get heavily fines anf their vehicle seized, they are breaking the law.
 
TheQuebecerInFrance said:
You mean not buying the license and breaking the law? It's the law that requires the license. Not buying it makes you an illegal taxi. People not buying their license deserved to get heavily fines anf their vehicle seized, they are breaking the law.
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And that's exactly why Uber has gone to such lengths to explain why and how they are not a taxi service. You apparently disagree, but I think all that is necessary to convince yourself that Uber is not a taxi is to use the service. If your taxi experience is anything like mine, Uber is a breath of fresh air. It's a different concept with a different business model. I'm not saying that it doesn't need to be regulated (getting robbed/assaulted by an Uber driver would suck some serious balls) but there's no reason to drag it down to the level of a taxi when their entire business model is built on being a better, different level of service.
 
Uber is definitely trying to cheat the system, we don't sell a service we just run a service that finds the service for a cut is complete horse shit. At the same time the system is a dinosaur. We don't need a complex network of companies to call for a cab now, we have the internet. Uber's system is the future, in truth it's the system that needs to change. There's no mysterious taxi lobby spending trillions of hard earned fares to keep Uber down, that's just typical "blame the unions" stupidity. Cabbies are loud, but they have no influence. There are municipalities that love license fees though, and that have to work out legal rights and liabilities. There's also the problem of insurance, the PLPD and injury insurance carried by taxi companies is huge, Uber drivers don't carry anywhere near that level of insurance. Politicians need to get on it, the world is moving on fast.
 
Taxis are a regulated scam. And Uber's trying to bypass it all, which also bypasses some of the other stuff that do good.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Uber is definitely trying to cheat the system, we don't sell a service we just run a service that finds the service for a cut is complete horse shit. At the same time the system is a dinosaur. We don't need a complex network of companies to call for a cab now, we have the internet. Uber's system is the future, in truth it's the system that needs to change. There's no mysterious taxi lobby spending trillions of hard earned fares to keep Uber down, that's just typical "blame the unions" stupidity. Cabbies are loud, but they have no influence. There are municipalities that love license fees though, and that have to work out legal rights and liabilities. There's also the problem of insurance, the PLPD and injury insurance carried by taxi companies is huge, Uber drivers don't carry anywhere near that level of insurance. Politicians need to get on it, the world is moving on fast.
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The problem with these regulations is the conflict of interest from their creators. The people who made them are the people who benefit most from them. Imagine if Amazon launched their free drone delivery service, should FedEx be able to complain and say "thats not fair! We bought planes and trucks and stuff and they didnt! They should have to abide by the same package delivery rules that all parcels be hand carried to the door!" when clearly such a rule only serves to benefit themselves? This isnt like the building a car or something where the regulations are meant to keep the gas tank from exploding. It's just to cover a stupid fee that goes into their coffers. The moment a medallion itself costs money and is selective in ownership then the assurances that medallion is supposed to provide go out the window and becomes nothing more than an anti-competitive crutch.
 
Uber is perfectly willing to insure their drivers and guests and any other reasonable regulation. But right now they're just being flat out snap blocked by judges with such vigor that it is clear they're part of some system. There is absolutely no way a rinky dink ride-sharing service can stir that kind of legal movement so quickly when nothing terrible has even happened all in the name of fairness or "complying with the law".
 
McFry said:
Uber is perfectly willing to insure their drivers and guests and any other reasonable regulation. But right now they're just being flat out snap blocked by judges with such vigor that it is clear they're part of some system. There is absolutely no way a rinky dink ride-sharing service can stir that kind of legal movement so quickly when nothing terrible has even happened all in the name of fairness or "complying with the law".
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Well duh. Its called the government regulatory system. The gov wants its pound of flesh for running their so called protection racket. Licensing sounds like a great idea until the government is in everyone's business in every way extracting a little bit here and there. Most of those licensing costs get passed onto customers. Its how you end up with 50-70 year old barbers being told they need a beauticians license and they need to pay a few thousand in fees along with new "training" to cut men's hair for $15 a cut.
 
McFry said:
^This is the simple truth.
The taxi business lobby seems unwilling to admit they run an antiquated business model and the municipalities that "regulate" them certainly to not want to lose their cash cow. There is a better way and Uber has demonstrated this.
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Funny last night on CSI: Cyber (Yeah I'm not ashamed to admit I watch it), the whole show was basically a jab at Uber/Lyft
 
what I don't get is...
i choose to take a uber and the responsibilities that come with it. i understand the potential risks, no different than the risks of leaving my house in the morning.

i choose the use the app, the service completes life goes on.

why does the government need to be involved? anyone who has concerns about the app need not utilize it or the companies service. i didn't ride roller coasters for years because i wasn't comfortable with them...it's the same thing i chose not to use them.

not sure why regulation is necessary in this case. the company already has the insurance...the money saved is on not maintaining a fleet or purchasing vehicles. i simply don't see where taxi service has a leg to stand on. they got beat by an evolving system and now want to litigate instead of innovate.
 
So question,

I get in Uber ride, accident happens, ends up being fault of the driver, can i hold them responsible and all my medical bills and any other costs are covered, or am i now taking this person to court, and Uber washing their hands of the whole thing and i am stuck in some court battle to get bills paid for?
 
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