The problem that I have with Uber is that they continue to skip around the licensing and insurance laws. If they want to be taken seriously (at least by me) they need to address this.
The problem that I have with Taiwan taxis is that they seem to be operating in the technological stone age. Uber has done really, really well with apps, e-payments and several other cool techy things.
This may be one reason Uber is a passing fad in Taiwan. They can’t explain why they use it. I hear this all the fucking time. “Why did you upgrade to an iPhone 8e7wry3?” Oh, because I saw an article on the Apple…
Muzha Man, I deal with some folks who deal with Kapernick, He’s not a nice guy. But…is he supposed to be? In a capital economy, there’s no mention of manners, morals, or etiquette - unless you’re applying for a gig at the joint, and then of course, you must have that. I freelance quite a bit and I’m somewhat down with the new contract/market/ economy, but I’ve also got a list of fuckers who haven’t paid yet. Recourse is recourse. And a union is your advocate. 
[quote=“Abacus”]The problem that I have with Uber is that they continue to skip around the licensing and insurance laws. If they want to be taken seriously (at least by me) they need to address this.
The problem that I have with Taiwan taxis is that they seem to be operating in the technological stone age. Uber has done really, really well with apps, e-payments and several other cool techy things.[/quote]
I agree on the licensing and insurance laws. I want to add, which I think I did earlier in this thread, that in my experience, Uber drivers all rely on GPS to get you from A to B. So, if you’re not sure of the route, the GPS decides how you get there. However, we all know in Taipei that the most direct route is not necessarily the fastest!
I will still either hail or use an app to call a yellow taxi. By luck of the draw, I’ll call down a taxi that smells of smoke and beetlenut, but there’s no rule saying I can’t exit the cab before he starts the meter.
[quote=“ranlee”]…
I will still either hail or use an app to call a yellow taxi. By luck of the draw, I’ll call down a taxi that smells of smoke and beetlenut, but there’s no rule saying I can’t exit the cab before he starts the meter.[/quote]
What’s the Uber standard on this? Your car can not smell, stink, be dirty? The drivers can not wear flowery shirts, checkered shorts and blue slippers? 
Can not chew beetelnut or eat stinky tofu while driving?
If an Uber driver doesn’t need a license or insurance than the above doesn’t really matter. :ohreally:
[quote=“Belgian Pie”][quote=“ranlee”]…
I will still either hail or use an app to call a yellow taxi. By luck of the draw, I’ll call down a taxi that smells of smoke and beetlenut, but there’s no rule saying I can’t exit the cab before he starts the meter.[/quote]
What’s the Uber standard on this? Your car can not smell, stink, be dirty? The drivers can not wear flowery shirts, checkered shorts and blue slippers? Can not chew beetlenut or it stinky tofu while driving?
If an Uber driver doesn’t need a license or insurance than the above doesn’t really matter. :ohreally:[/quote]
I don’t know what the official policy might be, or if they even have one. I do know that I endured none of that in the 10 months that I have been regularly using Uber in Taipei. Why? Maybe because there is an understanding that if you behave this way, you are likely going to be written up by your passengers.
That said, savvy passengers remember that they, too, are rated by the drivers. So, if you you wreak of stinky tofu and chew betelnut in your checked shirt and flower shorts, you might expect it to eventually be increasingly difficult snagging a ride. And that’s cool.
i hear good things about Lyft in SF and their business model (ride-sharing with other customers to lower cost). Uber cannot compete on price in Asia, only on better service (for now).
Ubers offers different formats for each market. I recalling visiting Shanghai and being surprised that there were 5 different types of Uber services on offer there. On my last visit to New York, last Spring, Uber over there offered a kind of car pooling - so passengers would ask to be let off when their stop approached (sounds like riding a jeepney in the Philippines).
And in HK, I remember finding it interesting to see that Uber over there offers moving services. I have heard that Taipei is looking into courier services and food delivery. All of which are hardly “ride sharing” even in the most generous sense.
I am still baffled how Uber expects to thrive in Manila, which is at the start of a 15-year road works programme. See this interaksyon.com/article/1160 … rt-clogged <- I expect that to be normal for the next 10 years. And yet I have been very happy using Uber to zip around that city (usually within a specific area, like just around Makati or only within The Fort area)
It should be about ride sharing (driving to work and picking someone up on the way for a small sharing fee) and not be an alternative taxi service!
It should be about ride sharing (driving to work and picking someone up on the way for a small sharing fee) and not be an alternative taxi service![/quote]
I agree and I think that’s how these services (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar) first positioned themselves when they started. I would guess that only 5-10% (max) of the rides given each day are actually sharing scenarios. It’s a good idea but too much gray area that’s hard for anyone to control or monitor.
Had my first ever experience with Uber yesterday. It was my wife’s idea as she had one free ride that she got upon joining. We needed to go from Xinzhuang to Banqiao (with no convenient way for us to do this with public transportation). She booked the trip and immediately got a message saying a car would arrive in 5 minutes. We promptly left our apartment and while descending the stairs she got a phone call from the driver, confirming the particularities of the pickup location. The car arrived just as we got out on the street to meet it. Oh, the car itself was spotlessly clean and very new. The driver was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt - more casual but smarter looking than you average taxi driver. No need to give him directions.
We don’t have much need for this kind of service so I don’t know how long it will be before a second journey. But we were both impressed. The ability to give immediate and consequential feedback to the company about the driver is very empowering. The feedback is also effortless. If our first trip was at all representative I would say it is easily superior to the taxi experience. Perhaps we just got lucky.
That is mostly my experience. If you always remember that these guys are not professional drivers (and as already mentioned are not properly insured or trained), and are usually very open to suggestion, then you will likely be pleasantly surprised.
I have had 2 instances out of a countless number of rides in 6 cities where the experience was bad enough to complain. Both were related to very inexperienced drivers. Not all the cars as spotless and new. Some are small (I usually use UberX, which comes to about -15% less than a regular taxi in Taipei)
If you want to try it out, you can use my discount code: uberforumosa when you order the ride. I do not think you get your first ride free with that, I think you get NT$ 200 taken off. I used my friend’s discount code one time while riding an Uber Black car, and was happy with the deep discount.
Why was it superior? I often call taxis and they are waiting for me within a couple of minutes, never been a delay. the drivers are all courteous, they help with the luggage and their cars spotless, roomy Toyota hybrids.
That’s Taipei. I did live in Taichung and there were a lot of asshole drivers and they also charge a lot more than Taipei.
I don’t think I have said that my Uber rides were superior to taxi rides, although on the whole, I have been very happy as an Uber rider. On the contrary, I have pointed out that I expect Uber drivers to not know which way to go - they are not professional drivers. But since I usually have a pretty good idea what route I want to take anyway, their over-reliance on GPS hasn’t bothered me too much.
These days, when I have decided not to walk, bike, or take public transportation in Taipei, I will first consider whether I can get an Uber ride. If I can, I will take it. This isn’t always available to me - especially where I regularly go in New Taipei City. But I will check first. And it isn’t unusual for me to cancel an Uber pickup if I really need to get somewhere already and an empty taxi pulls up to me.
Now, why is Uber superior? All of the things you have probably heard. Plus its a cinch to cover the ride for someone else - just the other day, I was with a group of friends and I offered to give everyone a lift home, so multiple drop off points. Bummer that my place was the closest to where we were picked up - but, then, it wasn’t a problem after all, because after I got off the Uber car, my friends didn’t have to pay anything anymore.
I did have problems having a Taiwan debit card attached to my Uber account while I was in Manila. But I worked around it by sending a LINE message to my wife who was in Taipei at the time (and whose Uber account is attached to the same debit card) with a map of where I wanted to be fetched in Manila, and she was able to order the ride on my behalf. That was super cool.
It isn’t perfect,. hardly. But for me the upside has vastly out-weighed the minor hassles. It is clearly the future of hired car services, and more and more taxi fleets and livery companies around the world are responding by rolling out their own apps.
I was referring to an earlier poster mixed up the quote button.
I thought it superior for a few reasons. When your turn on the app it instantly works out your location so all you need to do is type in the destination. It shows you a map and you can see the Uber cars in your vicinity (or not, I suppose 
) and how quickly they can arrive. The payment is done by debit or credit card, so you don’t need to deal with cash - for some people that may be a trivial thing but my wife hates exchanging cash simply from a hygiene standpoint; as for me, I just hate coins. Lastly, and very importantly for me, you get to rate the driver and he actually cares about your rating because it has consequences for him. This is completely different from taxi services in this respect - Uber solicit your feedback and the end of every trip and make it consequential.
Oh, and it is cheaper.
Okay, thanks to both for outlining your reasons. being able to swipe a card is vastly superior than handling cash, I agree… I thinks some taxis can’t take cards in Taiwan but many cant, and I don’t know prepaid systems. I also like the receipt system for business expense and when traveling overseas for different currencies.
But for daily use in Taipei, I just don’t see much advantage especially that you have to wait for a driver given there are so many taxis in Taipei. Confession, myself and family very rarely get taxis in Taipei except for airport and business visitors. I tend to drive on weekends outside the city, use public transport on weekdays.
I also would be concerned about insurance and who is driving, but driver quality, except
For Taiwan taxi and airport taxis, is highly varied. HOWEVER Taiwan taxi drivers are vastly
Superior to their Chinese counterparts!
Maybe some people prefer Uber because it offers a non verbal and Ebglish interface?
For those that have taken Uber here in TW, how are the driver’s driving skills? Do they drive like idiots? Or for the most part they try to follow some rules?
In my experience riding Uber in Taiwan for about a year now, the cars are typically nicer than your usual cab, and they are owned by the driver. The drivers are careful.
There are exceptions, and not all cars are SUVs, or minivans, or Benzes and BMWs (I’m only talking about UberX, not UberBlack). But if you are in an Uber car and are not comfortable with the speed or the way they drive, you can ask them adjust. The same is true in a regular taxi here.
IMHO the main issue is not their driving skills, but their knowledge of the city, which is normally not good. But I’m not complaining. I live in Taipei and every once in a while, I will get picked up by a taxi from Keelung or Taoyuan, and I end up giving them directions. Think of an Uber driver as an out of town cabbie, and you won’t feel so frustrated about this.
To me it’s one of the strongest qualities of Uber. So far, I’ve found that their drivers are great. The level of crazy compared to taxis is toned way, way down.
And the government has named Uber as enemy of the people…
[quote]Taipei, Dec. 6 (CNA) Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) is planning to press criminal charges to stop what it feels are illegal ride-sharing services offered by Uber Taiwan (台灣宇博數位服務股份有限公司), MOTC sources said Sunday.
Since September 2014, the Directorate General of Highways (DGH) under the MOTC has imposed more than NT$40 million (US$1.22 million) in fines on Uber Taiwan and its drivers for violating the Highway Act, which bans unlicensed operators of transportation services.
But those fines have failed to stop the practices, the MOTC sources said.
Uber runs transportation services in Taiwan but has refused to apply for the required licenses and has never paid taxes in Taiwan because its earnings from the services are all booked overseas, according to the MOTC.
The Directorate General of Highways is consulting with its lawyers on a plan to stop Uber’s allegedly illegal operations by means of the Criminal Code, under which it is illegal to “induce people into committing crimes,” the MOTC sources said.[/quote]
There are some cool minds