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Comment by caseysoftware | Hacker News Reader

Tried to use Fasten twice.

The first time, I waited 15 minutes when the driver was 3 minutes away, I gave up.

The second time, I got in the car and the driver said he didn't know where I was going and demanded directions. I had put it into the app but not sure why it wasn't passed along.

If Fasten's mission is to "be good to drivers," that's fine. But I thought their mission was to "get passengers to their destinations."

I started using cabs again. So Kitchens+Adler appear to have won that one.

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Your second experience just sounds like you got a bad driver, which has happened to me with uber/lyft before they left.

I mostly use Ride Austin which has been reliable, but I've also used Fasten numerous times without an issue.

It is the wild west of TNCs right now in Austin, I'm curious to see who comes out on top. I'm just glad they popped up quickly after Uber/Lyft left.

It's easy to move quickly when City Council ignores the law and invests in you:

https://medium.com/@CaseySoftware/mayor-steve-adler-is-scamm...

So much scare-mongering went into this vote and it's a big reason why Prop 1 failed. No one was scammed by anybody.

Uber and Lyft chose to leave Austin. You can argue endlessly why they were forced out, but somehow other services managed to pop up and make the business work.

Adler and crew said they expected Uber+Lyft to continue operating in spite of the law. Weird.

Most of the things I cite were done after the Prop 1 vote. U+L screwed that up.. the City's behavior since has been ridiculous.

Didn't the law just require fingerprinting?

There were a few other regulations.

One of them included that TNCs can't stop in the middle of a busy road when picking up a rider. This is one thing I'm really glad got implemented because people have been seriously injured and killed[0] because TNCs stop in the middle of busy roads.

0: http://kxan.com/2016/04/28/woman-claims-lyft-driver-was-at-f...

And rev-share and geo-fencing and detailed geo-reporting and...

http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/blog/techflash/2015/12/poi...

> The City of Austin is the hot girl from high school who wanted you to do her homework and then just go away.

Yikes.

Would you feel better if the example were a "hot guy"? Or do you think the nerds should have been happy to do homework without compensation?

Your experience in your first example is not dissimilar to my various experiences with Lyft and Uber. A Lyft driver was incapable of following my directions at SFO (I followed the Lyft instructions). And I've had Uber drivers basically accept my request, only to remain in one place for 15 mins despite being 3 mins away (happened once in South America, another time in Canada). I've also had Uber drivers who enter in the destination only to get flummoxed by the map and basically go rogue.

I've definitely had issues with both apps during peak hours, but they work just as well as Uber or Lyft most of the time.

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