October 24th, 2014, saw the start of Uber ridesharing in the Las Vegas valley, Reno, and Carson City. Of course, the local cab/limo companies are against it... citizens will no longer be at their mercy.
The arguments against Uber are pretty ridiculous: you can't tip, the drivers are reckless criminals, the cars are falling apart, and surge pricing. These are very much untrue. Drivers are not only required to have a clean 3 year driving record, but they much pass a background check, the same check that pretty much every employer in town does. Drivers must have their own auto insurance, their cars must 2005 or newer, their vehicles must be professionally inspected, and the cars must look great, too.
All of that aside, Las Vegas NEEDS Uber! Why? If you have ever been off of the Strip or a hotel/casino and been in need of a taxi, you will wait at least 30 minutes for a cab... sometimes, as long as 3 hours. Try being a block or two away from a known cab staging area, like a hotel, and you STILL have to wait 30 minutes. The dispatcher will tell you to walk to the cab. Frankly, that kind of defeats the whole concept of getting a ride... if I wanted to walk, I wouldn't be calling a cab, ffs. Uber will fill the HUGE gap left by the lazy cabbies. Uber will service the 90% of the valley that the cab companies choose to ignore.
The cab companies tell people that Uber drivers are unregulated and, therefor, dangerous for riders. They will bring up the same two tragic incidents of an Uber driver hitting a bicyclist and/or the Uber driver that wouldn't let a rider out of the car unless they gave him the top rating of five stars. So, out of millions of rides in hundreds of cities across the world, these are the only two incidents that we hear about. Have cabs or limos ever been in an accident or threatened riders? You bet, and it happens much more frequently. I've been hit cab a limo making a right turn from the left lane of a four lane street... I've witnessed a cabbie add time (read: money) to the meter so that my cab ride from McCarran Airport to UNLV cost $35... what the cabbie didn't know is that I've made that trip many times and the fare, with tip, was never more than $20.
With Uber, the rider enters the destination and the driver follows the turn-by-turn directions on the app... no long hauling, no scenic routes, no way to add time or stops. There is no $3 charge for using a credit card, no excuse for not having change... just a ride from A to B.
Perhaps if the cab companies thought about providing superior customer service rather than robbing the citizens and tourists of time/money, we wouldn't need Uber or Lyft... but, like most other business models in Las Vegas, they don't give a shit about us, they only care about keeping competition out so they don't have to actually work for their money.
Uber on!
PS: When you sign up to use Uber, enter in my code 9r6ke to get $20 off your first ride. If you want to drive for Uber, follow this link to sign up (t.uber.com/9r6ke) and we both earn $$ when you take your first rider.
