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"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.

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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.

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