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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I'm torn too, but the meter thing is a very sensible point. Taxi meters in NYC (the only market I have experience with) are basically entirely locked boxes- the drivers can't do anything beyond poke the buttons on the front. This is, of course, very sensible- otherwise there's a danger of unscrupulous drivers modifying their meters to charge passengers more. This is only the case for yellow cabs in NYC, though- I'm surprised that Boston expands the principle to private car services.

A lot of government regulation is bad, but not all of it is. AirBnB and hotel regulation is another example of this.

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I agree that the metering complaint is valid - I suspect it may be possible to create a nefarious drop-in replacement Uber Driver app which reports longer rides. The only location / metering source Uber has the iOS app and there's no additional hardware or software protection on the driver's Uber iPhone beyond the standard OS protections, which are easily circumvented by a jailbreak.

In contrast, real taxi meters provide no software access beyond a few defined interactions and limited and intentionally obvious physical access (start/stop meter) only, and the hardware is built to be relatively secure from tampering.

Uber could use the rider's app as a verification of distance, but as there's currently no incentive for users to keep the Uber app open while they ride, I suspect this method wouldn't work right now.

I like the idea of Uber, but, like Square, I think it's only a matter of time before a nefarious party exploits the easy availability and comparative insecurity of smartphone hardware to scam someone and disrupt a new smartphone-based industry.

> The only location / metering source Uber has the iOS app and there's no additional hardware or software protection on the driver's Uber iPhone beyond the standard OS protections, which are easily circumvented by a jailbreak.

It would be hardly difficult to verify metered distance via Google Maps or one of many other mapping type apps on the iPhone. There's about a million of them.

Exactly. And as the trusted middleman, Uber has every commercial incentive to spot check its drivers.

As the company that gets paid more the farther you go, Uber also has a rather different commercial incentive...

Although Uber would probably prefer that someone rides with them again and tells their friends/family about their pleasant experience, rather than squeeze a rider for a few more pennies. Their helpful community managers and system for doing a fare review certainly give the impression that they are looking at building a long term business. As a pre-IPO startup facing regulatory issues in a number of cities, they really don't have the luxury of offering a bad customer experience. The alternative is also simple, if someone has a bad experience, they don't have to use the service anymore.

you get a map of your ride with your receipt. one time i submitted feedback when the driver went the long way, which it clearly showed on my map, and uber refunded me for the entire ride. it is an excellent service. i use it all the time in sf.

It shouldn't be our burden to be verify the accuracy or integrity of cab meters, gas pumps, or deli scales. When's the last time you brought your own jug or scale? Common consumer protections like these are what the government should be doing on our behalf. I think there's a clear case for why cabs should be subject to such inspections, and gives us the confidence to jump into any cab. Given the nature of Uber, whether or not Uber needs to fall under the same rules is less clear.

There is zero guarantee that the route you took is the route Google Maps would give you, though. And the time estimates are way off in many major cities.

I got an email showing the route superimposed on a map. The picture I saw was almost an exactly straight line from pickup to dropoff.

If the driver was cheating, then the email would show the wrong route and it would be obvious to me: "hey, I wasn't picked up there" or "that's an inefficient route". I suppose the driver could cheat by small amounts with the duration, but that would be a pretty dangerous game to play because it's so easy to be caught (the exact pickup and duration are also reported) and relatively hard to do (if you hack your phone, it's kind of hard to just say you made a mistake).

If uber was cheating, perhaps it would be more subtle, but it's still verifiable. They'd have to show you a 5 mile route and then say it was 7 miles or something. The danger of being caught for that is way too high to be worth it.

I am more concerned with taxis, honestly. They can take you for a long ride and it's hard for you to tell them otherwise. If you do they can claim "oh, there was construction over there" or "oh, I thought you said XYZ lane not XYZ street". Or, if you ask to be taken to a train station, they can pressure you to take the taxi to your final destination rather than the train (which can be quite intimidating in some circumstances).

"I suspect it may be possible to create a nefarious drop-in replacement Uber Driver app which reports longer rides."

If you take an uber ride, you receive an email receipt (which you can see on the website too). It shows you exact pickup time, exact duration, total charged, and the route superimposed on a map.

If you think something is awry, they offer a button to request a "fare review".

It's hard for me to imagine how either the driver or uber could cheat the system without a high risk of being caught (way too high to be worth it).

I am more concerned about various bad practices by taxis than uber.

About taxi meters: from my experience, the mileage may be fixed, but it always seems that the cab driver is able to press something/manipulate the box somehow when they need to add additional fees (in Boston, specifically, in fact).

For instance, when I get picked up at many airports the cab driver adds some additional fee (usually between $3 and $8). For all I know, they're just making this number up - how would I know what the toll at the airport exit costs?

Also, many cabs have a list of flat rates for common routes (from Hotel X to airport - $35, etc.) It seems that in these cases it would be independent of whatever the meter says.

I guess these things make it seem questionable to me how much regulations on metering can actually matter. Is it just a matter of "if we catch you doing this (ie. someone reports questionable activity), we're going to revoke your license"?

Cabs are generally required to have fare schedules including fees clearly visible to the rider, to prevent just this sort of scam.

Even if the user doesn't know the actual airport fare and the cabbie manages to scam a few riders unfamiliar with the true fare schedule, a tampered-with giant human-readable fare schedule is pretty easy for an inspector or frequent rider to detect and report.

Plus, as the user pays the cab driver on the way out, there's an opportunity for the user to review the charge and reject payment if the driver is scamming them.

With Uber, the payment takes place later and an e-mail receipt is sent, and the fares are seemingly intentionally obfuscated (see: the controversy about displaying peak v. off-peak pricing as a multiplier rather than a dollar amount). Hence, a driver using a malicious Uber Driver app to report a few more blocks travelled on each trip is much less likely to be detected than a cabbie physically and obviously entering additional fees. I suspect Uber would find it difficult to prove that the driver's (fake) extra mileage wasn't actually rider-requested or an attempt to circumvent traffic - and I also suspect most riders won't notice.

Regular cabbies try the obvious, physical "take the long way" scam often enough that I suspect a hard-to-track digital form of the same idea isn't far off.

With Uber you get an actual map of the route taken on your receipt, so it seems like a driver trying to pull a scam would be quickly discovered.

> With Uber, the payment takes place later and an e-mail receipt is sent, and the fares are seemingly intentionally obfuscated (see: the controversy about displaying peak v. off-peak pricing as a multiplier rather than a dollar amount). Hence, a driver using a malicious Uber Driver app to report a few more blocks travelled on each trip is much less likely to be detected than a cabbie physically and obviously entering additional fees. I suspect Uber would find it difficult to prove that the driver's (fake) extra mileage wasn't actually rider-requested or an attempt to circumvent traffic - and I also suspect most riders won't notice.

Au contraire, Uber provides you a much easier way to audit your ride, a detailed email receipt seconds after you leave the cab with a map, origin and destination addresses, breakdown of your fare, how it was paid, and a customer service email address. On your phone, you also get a couple survey questions about the ride (how was the car, driver, etc.) too.

https://skitch.com/bkerley/ecigm/skitched-20120814-192957

I haven't had to deal with them (Miami doesn't have Uber yet :( ) but I suspect that their customer service is more interested in customer happiness than pinching pennies. Since it's paid with a credit card, even if their customer support process breaks down, you still have a powerful recourse.

I'm unlikely to be able to identify a discrepancy on a map in an unfamiliar place - but the map-in-email feature does bring Uber much closer to a regulated cab meter, especially since it can be reviewed by a more knowledgeable person later.

It still doesn't match the "system audited by a supposedly independent government inspector" aspect of a regulated cab meter (i.e. to prevent Uber from using fake distance calculations), but Uber being dishonest is a lot less likely than a shady cab company, so I guess that's less of a concern.

I personally never used the map as my only Uber trips have been flat-rate (SFO to Palo Alto, where Uber is actually cheaper than a cab in some circumstances).

> I'm unlikely to be able to identify a discrepancy on a map in an unfamiliar place - but the map-in-email feature does bring Uber much closer to a regulated cab meter, especially since it can be reviewed by a more knowledgeable person later.

I suspect that the routing features in "Google Maps" would be useful.

I emailed their customer service about a minor issue (more of a feature request really), and got back a response within hours which included a credit to my account. I hadn't asked for- or felt I deserved- a penny, but apparently their customer service people did.

At least in Boston, there is a strict rule about having a fixed cost for rides from/to the airport. Cabs aren't allowed to deviate from the posted rates for those.

Slightly off topic, but worth noting: In Boston, the fees coming from the airport are insanely regulated...to be very expensive. But always the same amount of expensive. There's no funny business there (I think).

The fees look like they come out of nowhere because no cabbie ever explains them...but they don't explain them in large part because they're simply unavoidable. Making it more confusing is the fact that this fee (on the order of $8) is only levied on taxis going out of the airport, not into the airport. Finally, these fees are new, only from within the past few years - so if you've been traveling to Boston recently, you might have noticed a sudden fare increase without knowing why.

Why all of this nonsense with crazy high, one way airport fees? To pay for the Big Dig, of course. (Which, incidentally, made my taxi rides home shorter to the point that my fares dropped more than the price of the fee.)

It's not that surprising to regulate a private company like that. When you go to the grocery store or the gas station, the scale or pump has a green sticker on it saying that it was verified by the Department of Weights and Measures, along with a number to call if the device didn't start at zero.

That said, regulating a company is very different from issuing a cease-and-desist (which in fact does nothing but ensure that you cannot regulate them!)

No. If you were operating a gas station with pumps lacking those calibration stickers, you'd get a cease-and-desist. That's the very mechanism implementing regulation of companies.

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