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Comment by timjahn | Hacker News Reader

You and me both! I love the idea of Uber, but I can never seem to justify paying the insane extra expense when I can easily take the alternatives for much cheaper.

Then again, I guess I'm not super rich.

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A five mile trip in SF by taxi would cost $16.70 plus tip while Uber would cost $24.50 tip included. An extra five bucks to have a hassle free experience does not seem that extravagant, especially considering what it costs to live in SF. Certainly not "super rich" territory, it's more on the order of staying at a 4-star hotel instead of a 3-star hotel. A nice perk, but the super rich guy is getting an amazing sweet you didn't even know existed.

I live in Chicago.

I note that in your example, it's $7.80, not $5.

There are other companies in the same general space as Uber ("hail a cab with your smartphone") that focus more on the lower end of the market.

It's ~$5 when you add tip to the regular taxi ride.

I live in LA and found it (uber black sedan) to be 1.5 to 2x the normal city taxi rate. So I use the taxi magic app, and works great like uber. Although, most drivers prefer you pay cash unless it's a high fare.

This is making me glad I live in Bangkok. A 5 mile trip would cost less than $3 US, unless traffic is really heavy, and there's enough taxis everywhere that you almost never wait more than 5-10 minutes to hail one curbside. No fancy tech required.

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