The BBB is basically a protection racket with excellent PR.
Get a customer complaint? BBB contacts you to pay for membership. Don't want to pay for membership? You must not care about your customers, so you get an F-. Pay for membership and the score immediately goes up to a B.
But with a name like the "Better Business Bureau", it's no wonder that people get suckered into thinking it's a legitimate organization.
On the Android app, surge pricing is VERY clearly labeled. You have to agree to the rate before service is dispatched and you have the option to wait until the surge ends if you so choose.
The problem with the BBB is that nobody goes there to report positive experiences. Only jaded customers use it to slam businesses with which they have a vendetta. Everybody other than an aging legacy group uses Yelp or other analogs.
Uber may fight dirty, but their product is outstanding. I'm firmly convinced that when regulators discover how amazing it is they will attempt to either legislate it out of existence or shake them down until their rates are no better than taxis.
> or shake them down until their rates are no better than taxis.
Despite their advertising to the contrary, Uber's rates are not always lower than yellow medallion cabs in NYC. For certain trips it may be cheaper, but oftentimes it is just as expensive, if not more[0].
Uber's pricing structure is different from the ones that the medallion cabs use[1], so it's not a one-to-one comparison. This makes it very easy to pick and choose certain trips which would make Uber look cheaper (which they do), and it's also easy to pick and choose trips which make them look more expensive.
In addition, Uber is venture-funded and can easily operate below-cost right now (I would be shocked if they did otherwise).
So it's worth keeping in mind that Uber's rates are arguably already be no better than taxis', depending on the city, depending on the trip, and especially if we assume they had to operate in the black.
[0] This is hard to verify as Uber explicitly prohibits using their API for price comparison, specifically to discourage this. Though there was a project on HN a few weeks back which did do this, and the results were mixed (Uber won sometimes, but not always).
> Despite their advertising to the contrary, Uber's rates are not always better than yellow medallion cabs in NYC
To be honest, I'd use Uber even if it was more expensive than taxis. User experience is leaps and bounds ahead of any taxi I've ever used.
Three things make Uber a far superior product compared to taxis for me:
* no awkwardness/timesuck around payment, I arrive, I walk away
* feedback how long I'll be waiting - when I'm in a hurry, seeing where exactly the car is and how long it's gonna take them to get to me helps calm me down, eases my nerves, even if it doesn't make the car arrive any faster (it *feels* faster though)
* call cab while still getting ready to walk outside, again something that only works because I know how far the car is
I agree.. except in NYC. Cabs are literally everywhere, even in the outer boroughs (I used to live in Queens) its as easy as walking out the door to find a cab in many places.
That said, I use Uber almost exclusively in Boston/Cambridge.
In fact here in DC I have twice found Uber's price comparisons to their competitors to just plain wrong.
They posted a correction not long after I complained about this particular post: http://blog.uber.com/DCuberXpricecut It originally said the DC Taxi would cost $20 instead of $14. Pretty far off.
(To be fair the new, lower UberX fares are now usually cheaper than a cab in DC... just not the whopping 51% cheaper they were claiming at one point.)
I can say that in Chicago, Uber's rates are much better than taxi's. Enough so that I will accept 2x surge pricing and still feel as though I am saving money.
>On the Android app, surge pricing is VERY clearly labeled.
I've only had surge pricing once, but on iOS it is a separate screen, explaining the process and what multiplier you're charged. I have no sympathy for these people who go through this.
As they've expanded - their driver quality has gotten NOTICEABLY worse across MULTIPLE markets. I wonder how they're going to deal with training as some of the uber drivers poor experience has me rethinking about whether or not to use them.
I'm not claiming this evidence is conclusive (I haven't looked at it closely enough), but it's worth being aware of before making accusations like that.
I only read the abstract of that paper, but it doesn't address the extortion. It only addresses _user_ fraud, such as leaving a bad rating on a competitor.
It doesn't address the fact that Yelp can manipulate reviews however they please, as the court ruled.
I believe the grade is about how they respond to complaints, not how many customers complain. I don't see how they could know how many customers use every business in America.
Given that "The Better Business Bureau, which was founded in 1912, is not a government agency, nor does it have regulatory or enforcement power," what implications does this have?
Well, the BBB will give an A to anyone who responds to complaints and marks them resolved, regardless of the number of complaints or whether they are resolved to the customer's satisfaction.
In that sense, yes, they ignore legitimate complaints, because they don't care ;)
There are non-governmental regulatory organizations whose only real enforcement power is that people care what they think. The BBB is one of them.
That said, the BBB itself is not an entirely above-board operation, to say the least. I'm no fan of Uber's business tactics - which I consider deeply unethical - but having the BBB complain about its business integrity is the pot calling the kettle black.
There are many "replacements", none obviously "good". The problem space is inherently difficult.
Any service that takes any kind of funding from businesses has an obvious conflict of interest (see BBB, Yelp).
Any service that relies on consumers for funding will have limited resources and thus limited scope (see Consumer Reports).
And of course rating businesses on things like customer service and response to complaints is inherently subjective.
For small stuff, you're best off with a quick Google for any major problems, and then just trying for yourself. For big stuff... well, lots more Google.
Checking reviews on Reseller Ratings used to be a decent bet for online shopping, but they seem to have gotten awfully far in bed with the resellers. These days I do virtually all online shopping on Amazon, anyway.
In general, government agencies are not the only agents of consumer or producer discretion. In fact, I'd argue that they are in many cases the least effective of such agents.
That said, I get the impression that the BBB has very little relevance, at least with my peers. I don't think I've ever heard someone recommend patronizing or avoiding any company because of its BBB rating. But this certainly isn't the case for other non-government review agencies or individuals.
I used it to complain about a horrible ISP I had a few years ago. It got the ISPs attention when I otherwise couldn't. Other than that, it has no value to me.
I think it's a usability problem with the app - you can't easily see how much the trip is going to cost. It's actually not even completely apparent that you've booked a trip. The app should be redesigned to always show the quote before booking and a very clear button that says "Book Now". The pickup location UI could also use some work - the GPS isn't always accurate and noticing that it's wrong and changing it isn't very intuitive. But apart from the problematic app, I've found the service itself quite impressive - somehow they always manage to find me and it always ends up costing less than I think it will.
With surge pricing, they always show the multiplier at the time of booking.
And it's easy to tap "quote fare" button to see the price. I agree that it should be there all the time, as soon as you select the destination, but that's the thing, lots of my rides do not have destination before I get into the car.
The quoted price doesn't include the surge. Uber goes to very very great lengths to not show you how much you're paying when surge pricing is in play, abstracting it away to a multiplier always.
The BBB gives Uber an "F" rating based on a handful of complaints? Uber serves over a million users a month! And I'd guess most of their customers are repeat - one sign that customers are happy with the service.
This is ridiculous. Uber clearly details the price of the ride when you request it. People accept the estimated price, get picked up, driven to their location, then complain to BBB and want a refund because the price was "too high"? How dumb are these people, and why is the BBB validating their claims?
When I have to accept surge pricing, I have to jump through hoops. Was this not always the case? At least currently, people shouldn't accidentally accept unless they click Accept compulsively.
They now require you to type in a specified number (the surcharge factor) before you can even book during surge pricing, so there's no excuse for not knowing.
Get a customer complaint? BBB contacts you to pay for membership. Don't want to pay for membership? You must not care about your customers, so you get an F-. Pay for membership and the score immediately goes up to a B.
But with a name like the "Better Business Bureau", it's no wonder that people get suckered into thinking it's a legitimate organization.
More info: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_customer/2010/12/... https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110919/14221016016/criti...