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Comment by slackstation | Hacker News Reader

Alot of people in this thread talking about how they won't use Uber for whatever reason. Those are the minority of opinion.

More people will use ride services when they are cheaper. Rides are a commodity. You will get there just as much with Uber as with Lyft. It doesn't make that big of a difference to most people. It's like the level of luxury in a car. I'm sure it's rare to find people not taking a Lyft or an Uber because the car didn't have leather seats.

I'm a daily user (to and from work, carless for over 18 months now) and I use the cheapest option. Historically it was Uber. Checked and for the past 4 months or so, it's be Lyft so I switched. Now it's back to Uber because of one reason, price.

The drivers on Lyft seem a bit happier and nicer but, it doesn't really make that much of a difference. I'm not using a car service for the quality of a 10 minute conversation with a random stranger that I'll never see again.

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> It doesn't make that big of a difference to most people.

It'll be interesting to see whether it starts to make more of a difference. Rides may be a commodity now, but so was coffee until Starbucks made people "feel good" about drinking over-priced burned coffee. Kimmel did a funny bit on this: https://youtu.be/HxlGI4OzeBk

If Uber has an Achilles heel it's branding. I like and use both Uber and Lyft, but every time you see Uber in the news it's because cabbies are rioting in some European city or because a driver sexually assaulted someone. Their recent logo redesign was cringe-worthy. It's all bad optics. Not sure that will ever make a difference, but history has shown that consumers are stupidly open to "feeling good" about their consumption, so we'll see.

Funny. I'm exactly the opposite.

I use Lyft only because it is nicer. If I cared about the price, I wouldn't use either. I don't shop at Walmart for similar reasons.

Ultimately, I think that payoff from being nicer is with the drivers, not the consumers. How it plays out is going to depend on which side of the market is the limiting factor on growth.

I'm a pretty loyal Lyft user primarily because of the "nice" reputation and because when I ask drivers they usually tell me they like driving for Lyft better (even though they almost universally drive for both). I've only taken a few uber rides and they were all noticeably less comfortable.

For me the difference is a tie-breaker. I'll use Lyft if the customer experience is the same. So far it isn't, the app is more glitchy and it seems like it does a worse job of picking drivers that are nearby and giving them directions. I check in with it every couple times and if they fix it I'll switch.

Having a competitor so hot on your heels seems like a damper to Uber investors ultimate theory that they'll be able to exploit market dominance. I don't see how Uber ever can get to a point where it can extract a ton of consumer surplus.

I use Uber because it's the only good cab company in Europe.

In Poland I prefer cabs to Uber. Worse apps, but far better cars, and they can get anywhere. The wait times and reliability is similar.

That seems like a bit of a generalization considering Europe contains about 50 different countries.

Quite a lot of which have pretty much the same level of service (apps included) and are also legal.

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