Uber was also amazing for travelers. No need to worry about the taxi driver looping around the city to run up the meter just because you aren’t from there.
A good example: I arrived at Budapest's train station. I asked a taxi driver if he'd take me to my hotel. The driver asked me about the address, and said 35 euros. It sounded fishy, so I pulled out Bolt. It turned out it would cost me only 8 euros. From then on, I didn't bother to talk to any taxi driver. Just Bolt whenever I need a taxi.
As is Uber is a vastly better product than current taxi services.
"Computer-dispatched" taxi companies existed before Uber. They had numbers you could call to verify that your route didn't go the wrong way and they'd have guarantees to refund you if they found the taxi driver had done something wrong. Uber didn't invent that.
Hmm, never heard of them in my city but instead always had to deal with sketch taxis who credit card reader was “broken”.
Yeah, as with nearly anything taxi-related it was definitely a city-by-city thing to find/evaluate. There was at least one big franchise you could count on to be "computer-dispatched" in several cities, in my experience, if you knew to look for it. Unfortunately, Uber disrupting the traditional taxi companies also has seemed to have disrupted that franchise and the situation actually seems worse today than before Uber existed from that perspective.
I'd argue the real transformation of that was really phones with GPS maps. These days, the tourist is more likely to notice they're being scammed by long detours.
Was that a function of Uber and ride sharing? Or just having a GPS-connected app that you can track? Plenty of cab companies are following suit w/ GPS systems.
It's not only tracking. It's convenience of ordering, and paying, and knowing in advance how much it's going to cost, etc. Sure, I've seen taxi apps doing that too but it always been hit or miss whether particular app works in particular city and has a good sized fleet there.