To ask if I can still get an Uber in London?

[lookingforthecorkscrew]

I have a hospital appointment, morning sickness and a 3yo and the bus seems impossible today.

App is showing cars nearby, but does it still work?!

Whose gonna get a black cab they cost a fortune!

But if you’re disabled they take wheelchairs. And they do at least know where they’re going.

Don't see where the op said she's disabled?! Cost me a fiver to get home from my local hospital when I had my baby. Imagine it would be triple in a black cab.

But if you’re disabled they take wheelchairs. And they do at least know where they’re going.

So do Uber.

So does anyone with a satnav. The Knowledge is obsolete.

The Knowledge is obsolete.

I disagree. My sat nav wouldnt take me the way that I know is best from having lived in an area and learned the roads. Yes it would get me from A to B but it wouldn't always be by the best route.

I love my Sat nav but it is no substitute for proper knowledge.

I know the routes that are usually best to all the places I go. I still use my satnav all the time, as without it I can't know how traffic has affected the calculation.

When I used to commute through central London there were a huge number of possible variations of my route, and the overall route would change more than once during my journey, as the traffic changed.

Even black cab drivers who know exactly what route they want to tak could benefit from using google navigation.

The times I have disagreed with my sat nav, it's usually known something I don't. Traffic accident, road closure, Tower Bridge going up, etc. I learned to regret overriding it's judgement.

SoupDragon Obsolescent if you prefer. The Knowledge does not now add enough value to justify the cost of the black taxi. New technology replaces older technology and old skills all the time. Think of film cameras and digital cameras.

Yes you can. And this is not meant as a lecture, just an FYI if you’re stuck in the future or can’t get an uber (and as I just got one myself with no cash) but most cabs have a card machine in them now.

The black cabbies resist taking plastic because it costs them. Theirs is mostly a cash business with more scope for tax dodging than Uber’s where every transaction is electronic.

Yeah uber are still up and running. I think they were given a year to sort thout issues out. Yey

Andrewofgg some black cab drivers don't like cards, but they can't get away with refusing them. every black cab now has to have a card payment machine. Some of them seem to ignore the one fitted in their cab and use a different one, like the ones that market traders are starting to use. not sure if that's a better way for them to put the payment through as cash? But even so, they have to take cards. If they say they can;t they are either lying or shouldn't be on the road.

Having said all of that I would use Addison Lee over black cabs or Uber any day.

I only use black cabs in London, have a peek at whosdrivingyou.org for the truth about Uber. Hopefully their appeal will fail.

Obsolescent if you prefer.

No, still not true IMO

The Knowledge does not now add enough value to justify the cost of the black taxi.

That is an entirely different point though.

New technology replaces older technology and old skills all the time. Think of film cameras and digital cameras.

Technology doesnt yet replace the knowledge that going from A to B is best not done via C because of traffic between 8am and 6pm and the best route is to avoid C entirely by going via D E and F.

As I said, I love my sat nav but I don't use it in areas where my personal knowledge is far superior to and more immediate than a computer's. It is absolutely not the same as digital cameras replacing film, both of which are things not skills.

I don't use cabs anyway. DS2 uses Uber lots with his father's account. I think the idea is very good, far better than old fashioned mini cabs. If they can sort out their issues that is.

Uber is brilliant. All the drivers incomes are recorded and capable of being audited so less tax evasion as black cab and mini cab drivers are prone to. I had a black cab driver once boast he paid no income tax.

Directions better with a black cab? Maybe but think of the benefit vs the additional cost. Uber back from Heathrow yesterday = £42. Black cab = £80+. Black cab maybe five-ten mins faster. Uber for my boys to school =£23. Black cab =£35+ and maximum five mins faster before you factor in impossibility of getting one to make the journey in the first place.

So at best I am paying £180 an hour for the benefit of a faster journey. Actually I am not as I won't pay that and will use Uber until luddites and reactionary forces being it down. Protecting a closed shop is anti-consumer.

As for safety. Black cab with driver's licence in opaque aging plastic pocket or online? Black cab with TfL doing nothing after a complaint I made as driver denied allegation or uber who take complaints about service seriously? And uber are right to say contact police about crime as Uber are not the police.

SoupDragon Film cameras are things but the scores of thousands of people who used to work in the big photo processing labs were definitely people, and the new technology destroyed their jobs. Just like the railways destroyed the canals and the typewriter put the old Dickensian copying clerks out of work. That’s life.

But SoupDragon Google maps or Waze (sat nav on a smart phone) knows where traffic is bad and plans the best route according to traffic conditions at the time you're travelling. It'll even tell you whether traffic is continuing to get worse or whether it's starting to clear up.

Black cabs have to take cards, but a lot of the drivers are overtly unpleasant about it, even when it's a very expensive fare and thus fees should be a really minor concern. I've had to really argue the point with many of them, which, personally, service like that totally defeats the purpose of a black cab for me. Not to mention the pressure they put on people to pay cash should ping people's tax avoidance radars far more than anything Uber's doing.

Uber's aren't perfectly safe, but no driving service is. I don't know why people act like there aren't a ton of stories about regular taxi drivers as well. At least with Uber there's a better record left.

Oh, and any half decent Sat Nav knows not just what's usually happening on certain roads at certain times, but what is actually happening in real time. My sat nav regularly sends me on detours around crashes, unexpected high traffic areas, emergency closures etc. For a person to do the same they'd have to be listening exclusively to traffic updates for the whole drive.

I loved uber when I first moved to glasgow but my account got hacked and it's caused no end of problems to the tube of 1k. I wouldnt save your card details as it's not secure. I always found the service great though but I'll never use them again.

That can happen with any online service, alas. It doesn't stop Uber being a better service than the London tractor black cab or any minicar firm.

Uber are great!

When it is 2am on a Sunday morning and you have missed the once an hour night bus that would have taken you vaguely close to where you live and you have been freezing your nuts off standing on a street corner competing with half a dozen other punters in the rain for a rare black cab that has (a) got its light on, and, (b) has a driver that does not have a phobia against south of the river locations then I will use über every time.

The moment GPS technology migrated onto mobile phones the writing was on the wall for black cabs, they could have adapted, developed their own app and competed with über but instead they arrogantly believed they deserved to be a protected closed shop industry where customers would continue to knock on their door no matter how much they treated them with contempt. A black cab from the centre of London to my home used to cost me upwards of £35 - 40, uber does it for around £18.

@Cactusjelly00 - well it obviously doesn't help does it? Head tilt. Tinkly laugh etc.

Get a grip.