Private Hire/Uber

bigjl

dacouch wrote: »

The stopping wherever they want to pick a fair up is ridiculous, they quite happily block two lanes or sets of traffic lights as they do not care about anyone else but themselves.

I was amused to watch a cab about to block a road to drop a fare off on a side road by Waterloo today. They clocked another black cab behind them so as it was a black cab they moved off and parked correctly only for the cab behind to just block the road anyway.

Ok, we get it.

You don't like Black Cabs.

Why not go work for Uber and report back with your findings.

dacouch

Edwood_Woodwood wrote: »

What drivers like you often fail to realise is that the road is a working area for a taxi/ph driver and not just a means of getting from A to B like yourself.

What do you expect a taxi to do when picking up a fare facing east but the passenger wants to go west?

A taxi will have dispensation to do certain things that you may not approve of, such as stopping on double yellow lines to pick up/drop off a fare. Tough, they are allowed to.

If a u-turn is not prohibited in the area he picks up then it is a perfectly legal manoeuvre but an annoyance for you.

Get a grip.

How do you know the road is not a working area for me?

I do not have a problem with them dropping off or picking up on double yellow or red lines.

Try living and working in Central London and having to put up with some of the appalling tricks some of the Black Cab drivers do. The majority of which they could avoid with no inconvenience to themselves and keep the roads flowing.

Get a grip

Edwood_Woodwood

cw212010 wrote: »

Can anyone vouch for Uber in Glasgow? I wouldn't imagine it is anywhere near as bad as London.

Again this would be job #2 so not my main source of income!

I've heard bad things about Uber, amongst them-

They charge 25% of every fare from the driver.

Depending on what taxi firm you contract to, it will on average be about 10 to 20% that the taxi firm will take.

(For eg, the average fare may be about a fiver, you pay £100 a week admin to your taxi firm and you get say 100 jobs a week.

Therefore, for every job, on average £5, minus a £1 for the admin, = about a 20% cut)

Just a rough calculation.

If an Uber passenger just doesn't like you for any reason they can give negative feedback and you get put on stop straight away, no appeal, no explanation.

There will be no tips, all journeys are paid for by card.

Take into account that maybe 10,20, 30% plus of your takings can be tips.

I'd say it probably costs on average in the region of £300 to £400 per week to run a cab, even before making a penny, then I'd say it's not something to do as a part time job or even a 2nd job.

Edwood_Woodwood

dacouch wrote: »

How do you know the road is not a working area for me?

Because the tone of your post suggested you were just one of those private drivers who get annoyed at the slightest thing.

As a private driver I don't like being behind a cop car, ambulance, bus or a taxi as I know these vehicles use the road differently to what I do as they can do anything at any time. It is the nature of their job.

Just relax.

bigjl

Actually in London most account firms take an awful lot more than 20/25% of account work.

Addison Lee take more like 50% of account work and feed certain drivers aswell as trying to push cash customers into booking by card so the driver gets an awful lots less.

As far as tips go they are extremely rare in run of the mill Private Hire in London.

You do get decent tips in the higher end Chauffeur market.

Though London is different to other areas in that PH are very different to Taxis.

They don't use the same kinds of vehicle (though Vito Taxi and Vito MPV or Viano are very close) for example.

And there is no knowledge testing or driving test for PH just a map test that is open book but which is still too hard for some new PH entrants, hence the number of PH Schools popping up in East London that guarantee a pass aswell as a medical by a Dr other than your GP so all you need is a copy of your Med Records which you can edit as required prior to the medical.

PH in London was in a better state before Uber, there was always the low end and high end.

Uber is now the low end, picking up punters based purely on low prices which is why they like having new drivers to the trade as they don't know they are being screwed over.

There are tales of Uber drivers double shifting cars and living in shared houses with other Uber drivers working in a hot bed system.

Which is actually relatively common in East London amoungst some immigrant communities. Not just in PH but also other relatively poorly paid employment.

Also living 3 or 4 to a room is common in East London, probably common elsewhere but I only have "hands on" experience in East London.

Ubers plan is to try and kill off all forms of competition in PH then move into parcel or food delivery.

They want a monopoly, nothing less and if what they have got up to in the US is anything to go by they are happy to play dirty.

TFL are as responsible for the poor quality of new entrants to the London PH market as Uber though

If TFL didn't allow these people to have a PH Lic then Uber couldn't sign them up to work for peanuts

Uber don't care about quality anymore, any complaints they deactivate you as there are plenty more willing cannon fodder outside Aldgate everyday.

As they said in Starship Troopers, "more meat for the grinder"

dacouch

bigjl wrote: »

Uber is now the low end, picking up punters based purely on low prices which is why they like having new drivers to the trade as they don't know they are being screwed over.

There are tales of Uber drivers double shifting cars and living in shared houses with other Uber drivers working in a hot bed system.

Which is actually relatively common in East London amoungst some immigrant communities. Not just in PH but also other relatively poorly paid employment.

Also living 3 or 4 to a room is common in East London, probably common elsewhere but I only have "hands on" experience in East London.

Ubers plan is to try and kill off all forms of competition in PH then move into parcel or food delivery.

The majority of the people I know now do not use black cabs, they use Uber not just for the price but because society is obsessed by their mobile phones. They can summon a cab at a preset time, see when the cab arrives or how far away it is and pay without cash.

It suits their lifestyle.

Double shifting a vehicle is not unique to Uber and happens with a fair amount of normal PH and Black Cabs.

The future will eventually be Johnny Cab

w211

Go to the uberpeople.net forum for further advice.

There are sections for different cities, there isn't a Glasgow one (yet), though the London one is fairly busy, and you'll get the idea, to back up what's being said on here.

weejangus

I found myself in the same position as you a few years back. I ended up a Private Hire Driver in Cumbernauld for a while. If you do decide to go down this route, I'd highly recommend contacting the council and finding out what regulations are in place for where you intend to drive (for example, Private Hire vehicles in Cumbernauld cannot be registered if they are over 5 years old and cars must be re-registered every 3 years).

Carefully consider your set up costs. You pay for your licence (and wait 6 weeks for it to arrive), you may need to upgrade your car, taxi insurance is very expensive, etc, etc. I really wouldn't recommend it as a 2nd source of income because you really need to be out as often as possible just to make a resonable living.

I don't have any experiance with Uber i'm afraid (although, in Cumbernauld at least, we got on well with the Black Cab drivers).

peter12345678910

weejangus wrote: »

I found myself in the same position as you a few years back. I ended up a Private Hire Driver in Cumbernauld for a while. If you do decide to go down this route, I'd highly recommend contacting the council and finding out what regulations are in place for where you intend to drive (for example, Private Hire vehicles in Cumbernauld cannot be registered if they are over 5 years old and cars must be re-registered every 3 years).

Carefully consider your set up costs. You pay for your licence (and wait 6 weeks for it to arrive), you may need to upgrade your car, taxi insurance is very expensive, etc, etc. I really wouldn't recommend it as a 2nd source of income because you really need to be out as often as possible just to make a resonable living.

I don't have any experiance with Uber i'm afraid (although, in Cumbernauld at least, we got on well with the Black Cab drivers).

I think that the cost of a car that meets Uber specifications is the scratch that you cannot get rid off. Though the PH license is just a health and criminal check.