This is true in lots of cities in the US too. In Portland, our police were working with the taxi union, and kept creating phony Uber accounts, requesting rides, and then fining the drivers. Obviously those riders were getting horrendously negative reviews, so they got added to the "greyball" list where the phony users would log onto the app, and it would look like there were no cars available. They had the gall to complain that they were being targeted unfairly.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/uber-portland-greyba...

Fuck the taxi unions and especially the PPB for so many reasons.

In Las Vegas, where the corruption is much, much deeper, police, at behest of the taxi union, were just driving around and towing any car with an Uber or Lyft sticker. When the ride sharing companies finally broke through, they were still forced to only pick up at the farthest point in the parking lot of their airport, and at the back end of any casino, which could mean 10-15 minutes of walking in the 100F weather to get to the rideshare pickup spot. Vegas is the only place in the US where I'll still take a taxi, which I hate, but ride share there is so horrible that there isn't really much of an option.

I also got robbed in various ways about 50% of the time when taking a taxi in Miami, with taxi drivers driving circles, or threatening to drive off with my luggage if I didn't leave a tip that was several times the actual fare of the ride, etc. People who complain about ride sharing companies are obviously people who have had the privilege of never needing to ride in a taxi. Maybe they're okay in some places, but they've been terrible pretty much everywhere I've been. The reciprocal rating systems that ride share apps use is a godsend.