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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of comments in this thread about the problems Uber solves. I'd like to pose a different question: which of those problems is not solved by Flywheel?

For those who don't know, Flywheel is an app that lets you call a regular taxi cab with an Uber-like dispatch system. You watch the cab arrive with GPS and pay on your phone. It is some small fixed cost over the cost of a cab, no surging obviously. And you can put in your destination for the driver to navigate to via GPS, just like Uber.

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I think there's an element of principle to it. I certainly feel that way, and it appears the majority does as well.

App GPS, app payment, star ratings... these are not new things. And yet the taxi industry couldn't be bothered to better itself until a higher quality service came through and gutted their profits.

Consumers suffered some universally abhorrent treatment for years because taxis flat out don't give a fuck. And now, what.. all is expected to be forgiven because they're suddenly in the app store?

They made this bed. They can lie in it.

That is the biggest point in favor of Uber, their threat made some taxi operators attempt to get their act together.

I think that in a few years Uber will learn to give as few fucks (to borrow your phrasing) as taxi companies do today. Most of the current taxi drivers will become Uber drivers, Uber will have too many riders to do reasonable customer service, and there will be no incentive to go the extra mile for customers when there is no entrenched competition to outshine.

The only reason I bother playing the devil's advocate in pro-Uber threads is because I don't like how they got here. They used VC money to barrel into ever major city and actively ignore the law. It's just one more symptom of the problem that having a billion dollars in America makes you above the law.

Sounds like it does most of what ride-share services do.

Does Flywheel allow you to rate individual drivers/cars (and prevent being matched to creepy drivers or dirty cars on future rides)? I think that's actually one of the biggest value-adds of Uber/Lyft/Sidecar--direct feedback about drivers which tends to retain good drivers and reject bad ones.

You can rate your ride, I have no idea what happens to the feedback.

The uber/lyft rating system is a little broken these days since many drivers will ask you to exchange 5-star ratings with them (you have a rating too). When a bad driver is a 4.8 and a good driver is a 4.9 it's hard for me to tell what I am getting into.

Huh. I haven't ever run into that, and I've been using uber twice a week for more than a year. Maybe it just comes down to which city you're in?

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