Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway

An OTP that's reused?

I ran into a similar arbitration with a condo I rented for a long weekend. There was a significant issue and they weren't able to provide another place. We stayed there and had contractors in and out for the next couple of days. They refused to refund me, so I tried through my credit card to get a refund and they said "well you should have just left, then we would refund you. But since you stayed, the contract is fulfilled."

Especially since you may have no time to wait for another car. There’s an element of “duress” here

I'm pretty sure by now the various "classes" of service offered by Lyft and Uber are instead just ways for the customer to donate money to Lyft and Uber. There's no difference in what kind of yahoo shows up in what kind of beater.

It's also impossible to book an Uber with 2 child seats so, i guess i'm effed then.

As much as I love to hate on Uber and Lyft, tacked on fees like this are often due to state / federal government, and the rideshare service hands are tied. Uber tags on a very long list of random fees when I Uber out of SFO, but when I investigated them, they were all random taxes from the city / state.

If they want to jack up the prices they can just increase them - they don't need to add random fees.

+1 So you may get say a 7 seater where the seats are folded in the trunk, so you can carry 7 people XOR 5 people + light suitcases

There is no option to say “send me a mini van”

I once did a chargeback of almost $5k to PayPal when someone scammed me (and PayPal sided with scammer). I still have my account, though I don't use it for anything I'd actually need protection on now.

On the other hand I did get banned from an online local selling site (rhymes with Canary) for charging back a small purchase where the wrong thing was delivered and their system for reporting it was broken and they refused to refund. I even tried having a roommate create an account (same address) and they banned that when they made a purchase.

Why would you want to continue using a service that is ripping you off? If you're at the point where your only recourse is to charge back, that's kind of a bridge burning moment.

Once during the first year of the covid pandemic, I requested a couple meals for me and my wife through the Uber eats for lunch, my wife was accompanying in the hospital my mother-in-law on Sunday, then after suddenly the place informed the meals was delivered, but I didn't received anything. After I tried to discuss with Uber eats, I had appealled for the credit card, they full refund me.

I’ve never had to get a new card/number after a chargeback.

You just get the charge removed or some amount deducted if it’s approved. You aren’t requesting a new card.

edit: This was for a purchase I made but didn’t receive exactly what I paid for. Now for fraudulent charges I didn’t make, yes they send a new card. I’m in the US, maybe it’s different elsewhere.

Same for cabs who used to be horrible until uber was the alternative. You need to use the vote button on Uber or Lyft. And not get into the car that is crap.

Funny you say this, a year or two ago I contacted Amazon about adjusting the price for something I had ordered the day prior, since it went on sale. It hadn't shipped yet, and they said no problem, we'll refund you the $7 price difference - but we can't do that until the item arrives, just contact us when it does.

So I get the item, contact support for my price match and they say sorry, we can only give you $5 back. I get upset because that's not what I was told, and have a screenshot of the chat to prove it.

We went back and forth forever, I got more and more angry and eventually returned the item for the full amount, and prime had just recently renewed and was in the refund window, so I got a refund for that.

Unfortunately I need Prime where I live, so I signed up for it again a few days later, but used a free trial month.

The whole thing was a giant waste of time, and felt very "optimized".

Speaking of small costs, some time ago I paid 2 euros with my credit card in order to enter the central train station toilets in Milan, Italy.

The toilets were awfully dirty, there was no toilet paper and no soap. I took some pictures just in case, then I filed a chargeback with my bank. After some weeks, they gave me my 2 euros back, and the company that manages the toilets probably paid a small fine to MasterCard or whatever.

Was it a waste of time, for just 2 euros? Sure. But if nobody starts complaining, nothing will ever be fixed.

Doordash did to me for 70cents or so once. There was a missing item in an order, no big deal, app let's you report it, and the exact item that was missing.

But instead of refunding the $2 it cost, they refunded like $1.19 or something to that affect.

You can dispute via your credit card. They'll care quickly enough.

this is so rampant but they know they have a captive market (in many places, only uber or lyft are an option) so they abuse their position

Mysteriously their credit card machines work a lot more often now

What qualifies a professional driver? Lots of uber trips? A taxi licence? A chauffeur cap? A clean car? A person being employed by a company? Not sure but I suspect it's highly subjective. You can book a premium Uber. Or a limousine like the one some airlines offer as a business class package.

But a lot of people basically wanted VC-subsidized cheaper cabs. Even if the easier and more reliable ordering was a bonus.

1950: cars give you the freedom to go anywhere you want. Artificial fertilizer puts an end to hunger in industrialized world. Yeehaw!

2000: you are a second class citizen who can’t even get a job in many places if you do not have a car. Also the median person is overweight. But here is this new internet thing that lets you get everything you need in life sorted out with no need for human interactions. Yeehaw!

2025: the average person can no longer hold a conversation with a stranger for five seconds without having an anxiety attack. Oops!

And we wonder why we can’t get along anymore when the only time we go outside it to grab our Amazon packages off the porch.

What do you propose? Should Uber/Lyft train their drivers better to pick up on social cues to know when to engage and when to shut up and drive? Should they do more to make sure their drivers have good hygiene and manners?

Going outside costs $200 a day, and i cant afford to spend 1/4 my paycheck 7 times a week.

Also, I'm just doing my best to get the most out of the ludicrously high rent is pay every month.

Time for a Perry Expedition-themed dating service.

[Caveat: there aren't many Lyft drivers in my town, so I have only used Uber]

The problem is their system extorts you into tipping. If you don't tip, the driver will give you a 1/5 rating. If your rating averages low enough, nobody will pick you up. It's more of a bribe you pay for a good passenger rating than an actual tip.

As a result, you're forced to tip if you want to use it long term.

Personally, I'm hoping Waymo takes Uber's lunch money. I will gladly pay more for a service has not been infected with tipping.

Sure, nobody has to tip anyone. But I do tip taxis and etc, typically about 30%, and it factors into my overall price perception.

I'm just saying $15 that I will add a tip to vs $20 that I have no intention or inclination to tip isn't anything more than I don't have any expectations or empathy about tipping a machine. It doesn't seem particularly complex an issue about why Waymo can charge the same amount that I am willing to pay anyway.

It's also a small, $5 tip. When you get small numbers, like $5, it tends to blow out the percentages.

For me the appeal of self checkout is that everyone gets in the same line and then fans out to the next free checkout machine. I don't have to wonder if I chose wrong when I see all the other lines moving faster. Some places with human cashiers (such as Marshall's) do this, and it's great.

It was an old school approach to appear friendly, which in theory makes customers more comfortable and encourages retention. Small steps to build a community. At the very least, you don't want to appear like that unresponsive cashier who's clearly having a bad day and grimaces at you when you say 'hello'.

It's definitely a generational issue. Gen X and older seem to appreciate small talk more than most millenials and pretty much all of Gen Z.

That is extremely rare in America, too. But it still feels awkward to an introvert. Just having another person nearby makes you feel self conscious. You won't be called on to make small talk, but you can't be sure of that.

> It's interesting how American cultural expectations of forced social interaction may be having the effect of promoting automated systems as a reaction.

That's not it. The issue is that it is FAR easier for me to interact with automation than some completely incompetent service worker.

Yes, I get it. The service jobs pay so poorly that nobody competent wants to work them. However, at the end of the day, I simply want to accomplish my task and get going. For example, if you're drunk or stoned off your ass, to pick a totally random (not) example, you're probably in my way.

Because of general levels of incompetence, automated systems are quite often better than most service workers I'm interacting with. Additionally, the service worker probably is limited to the same authority as me ie. totally unable to help because they are completely stuck with the same shitty web interface to solve my problem as I am.

Why do you assume the surveillance will go away as they become cheaper? The taxi company know who is in their car and they have access to interior cameras if something happens. In many respects, it is going to be even more difficult to take a dump in one and get away with it than if a human was driving it. They have your credit card number and visual evidence of what you did, they will just charge your card automatically for things like puking.

they kinda too, they will charge you $50/$100 if you make the car dirty

https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/14248697?hl=en

All the while though, they’re taking the air out of the room for any alternatives you might choose in the future. It only gets really enshittified once market dominance has been established.

not op but cleanliness would be my first expectation

I've seen many reports of dirty waymos on reddit recently for example.

second I'd assume they would start charging you for point 3, "loading delay fee" when you take too long to load, after all that's missed profit from other rides.

after that point 1 and 2, with you getting either a Jag (nice car), a Zeekr (unknown to me, Chinese company), or a Ioniq 5 (much cheaper feeling car than a Jag, with hard plastic everywhere). You want the jag? Expect to pay for it. So suddenly all cars aren't the same, and only some are comparable to Uber Black.

To summarize:

Point 4, followed by 3, followed by 2 and 1 (which imo are just one point). 5 I don't expect to change unless they have to start cost-cutting on compute and sensors, but I HIGHLY doubt that.

So tear down every city in the country and rebuild them all from scratch, then force the ~45% of people that don’t live in those cities to move there.

And that’s better than mandating a small percentage of the population use FSD cars?

Not sure I like the autocratic tone of that plan

My father can barely walk a block before he needs to sit and rest. Your plan would not work for him. A more walkable city would be great for me, someone who can walk well. Him? Nope.

Well, you wouldn't have to sell the car. You could also setup a licensing / loan / dedicated car system.

It would work well for local municipalities that want to provide low-cost door-to-door service for the elderly.

We have a bus service here, The ART, and a dedicates "paratransit" bus service that provides door-to-door service to eligible riders.

And a couple private large-scale developed and managed neighborhoods that have driverless non-automated (remote controlled) transit systems.

If you know a large portion of your riders have disabilities, dedicated buses or vans make sense.

I'm sitting here advocating for this, and it's a great service that I'm glad they have it for those in need, and yet I need fucking plywood for hurricanes myself.

Yeah, it is Florida. But honestly, the transit system here and bike infrastructure development and traffic planning is good.

It's not so much "why sell the car" but more "who is going to buy this car?" Plus, without maintenance the self-driving capability will probably degrade and become unsafe.

Supply. There may not be enough Waymos sitting around to satisfy all of the demand at a point in time.

That's really interesting because I hadn't actually thought about that in-depth before. I think Tesla's robotaxi prototype was even a 2-seater. My knee-jerk reaction to your comment was "no, 2 seater won't happen because the incremental cost of the additional seats and doors is immaterial to the overall cost of the car."

But then thinking more about it I thought of how great we (all the people who like Waymo) think it performs around bikes and pedestrians. So now I agree with you directionally but you might not be taking it far enough. Once (if?) autonomous vehicles rule the road, and they're known to be safe, the future will likely be the broad spectrum from autonomous buses (on the large side) to super-cheap, bike-like vehicles (on the small side) that cost way less than a car. For a single occupant, if you knew another vehicle wasn't going to kill you, wouldn't you take an e-bike (with a cover and basket on it?) for short trips if the fee was proportionate to the cost of the vehicle? I would. Assumes lidar shrinks I guess and that automated kickstands are a thing, but that seems tractable in the years to come.

That's actually a really interesting question. Because it's not necessarily about handling most usage, but also about handling peak usage. Is it worth the cost to keep everything 4-seater if that means they can all enter "carpool mode" whenever required at times of peak demand?

Because once they become ubiquitous, I suspect the vast majority will be operating in carpool mode at rush hour. Most people won't be willing to pay 4x to get a private vehicle if they're by themselves. Especially since the more vehicles there are, the more efficient carpool mode becomes for everyone.

This makes lots of sense to me. A 2-seater is often a hard sell for a private owner (even one with no kids), but I'd bet the majority (or at least a plurality) of taxi/ride-share trips are for one or two people.

I figure the real future will be 2-3x 2-seater separate soundproof bubble domes per car.

Self-driving cars are cool but I'd rather have good public transit. These vehicles clearly have utility beyond just public transit, but I'd rather they be an edge case rather than considered a main solution. So yeah, from my perspective the problem is being focused on profits instead of trying to solve the real problem with solutions that have already existed for decades.

If you zoom out a bit, your argument would be more-or-less the same when regular automobiles were replacing the functioning transit systems in the USA, specifically in LA.

Why? Why is not "everyone has access" and "wellbeing for everyone" the reward for inventing the future?

Why is "that person gets to be extraordinarily wealthy" for inventing the future rather than "we all chipped in so we could all benefit" for inventing the future?

If Waymos make the world better and safer and more convenient, why are they not simply something we figure out how to make a public good?

In Star Trek you didn't have to pay to take the turbolift or transporter around large spaces, everyone got the benefits of the technology.

Facebook was once inventing the future, too

You sound young and naive

> If they have competitors with a similar-quality product that is undercutting them on price, Waymo will have to lower prices to compete.

Oligopoly, cartels, huge barriers to entry into the market.

I appreciate your optimism in the free market for a domain where you have to spend tens of billions of dollars to even enter it

What do you think is happening, now that the hyper scalers stopped growing by more than 20-30% per year? We're just entering the maturity stage of the tech world. 10-20 years from now all these subscriptions will reach and exceed cable levels.

Yeah I know about Geely and under current circumstances I categorize this as "never gonna happen". There's probably better chance of partnering with GM at this point...

> In Chatham County, the living wage per hour necessary for one adult with no children is $22.46 while those with one kid is $35.70, two kids is $43.45, and three kids is $56.93.

https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2024/12/09/what-is-a-...

Knowing how economics works, this will lead to specialization.

Human drivers will become more likely to offer extra services like drugs, company and entertainment. Silent careful drivers will be driven out by Waymo.

Baha

It could be good business for AI cars to start doing this too. You can't put an algorithm in prison, and the programmers can just say its a black box and nobody could possibly understand how it trained itself to do it. The company makes money off the extra rides, while having plausible deniability because maybe the customer just wanted a ride. IANAL.

In-car product vending will come soon enough I’m sure.

(All this assumes some some not-yet-here future where "AI agents" are less flaky than today's LLMs.)

Things like "call center jobs" are where "superior" gets muddy.

They can be superior for the business. The business does not want to spend money. Now they aren't paying a person, and they have to worry less about a sob story convincing their agent to make an exception. Health insurance company, for instance, where the life-saving treatment was declined. Refund of plane ticket because the flight was delayed and normally the policy would be to deny it but this particular person missed his father's funeral as a result, so the agent takes pity. So it's "superior" for the company because it entirely IS about saving money.

Hard to say those are superior for the customer. And most of us aren't the megacorp-owners here. We're the customers.

So yes, AI agents could be the logical next step in the "turn people into robots" march of bureaucracy. But that's not a good thing.

Human interactions, human judgement, human empathy - these are features, not bugs. Consider also that loneliness epidemic. Let's make it even worse! (In the short term "not talking to people" is being seen as a positive here - because we've already raised a few generations of scared, not-socially-equipped kids, since these are old trends. How is people-avoidance-maximization working?)

> less tedium

That may eventually happen, but most of the time current AI systems need a lot of handholding to reach human levels of accuracy. I personally find this kind of supervision extremely tedious, it’s more stressful to use a poor level 2 system than just drive yourself. Driving has surpassed that point, but it’s taken billions so extrapolating into other fields without that kind of investment is premature.

> AI agents done well are superior at call center jobs, screen-based office work, mortgage processing, financial analysis, most business consulting like process redesign, etc. The biggest benefit isn't reducing payroll, it's doing the job faster, with higher quality and more consistency.

Please don't use the present tense to describe a not yet realized future.

>AI agents done well are superior at call center jobs, screen-based office work, mortgage processing, financial analysis, most business consulting like process redesign, etc. The biggest benefit isn't reducing payroll, it's doing the job faster, with higher quality and more consistency.

Just wait until your human needs inside the bowels of some corporate or government bureaucracy, that no matter what will inevitably make either human or algorithmically generated mistakes, are being "attended" by some AI agent that can feel nothing, cares nothing and of course doesn't really think for itself or use common sense outside the bounds of formal rules, and you find yourself fucked over by this in some absurd way.

Imagine all the so-called customer service (almost entirely non-human) that Google shafts its users with, about which so many people on HN have complained, but writ much larger, in all kinds of far more vital user attention scenarios.

No thank you. Human bureaucrats are bad enough, but at least there's an avenue for empathy and flexibility in many cases.

The AI fawning on some comments here lives in a bubble of perfect expectations that will die a horrible death in the real world, or cause people horrible miseries in that same real world.

How is it better for the worker? They just go hungry instead

The problem with that kind of thinking is that "superior" is in the eye of the beholder.

An AI manager might be "superior" in the view of the executives of the company, but that AI manager's reports might feel very differently. From a societal perspective, the employees' feelings are what should matter most, but from a capitalist perspective, the executives won't care if workers are treated poorly, as long as the work gets done and profits go up.

And I think we already see the shit experience customers get when customer service jobs are replaced by AI. I doubt that will ever improve, by design.

Remember, also, that computers only deal with situations and problems that they are programmed to deal with. AI is a little different, but still suffers the same limitations in that they can only deal with things they're trained on. Humans can make exceptions and adapt to new situations. If we get to AGI, perhaps that problem will go away, but I expect we'll be granted many new problems to deal with instead.

lol. Sure.

I’ve seen three of these implementations in contact centers. AI drives lower satisfaction and lower cost. That business is about delivering defined level of service at the lowest possible cost.

The advantage of Waymo is that it’s a first party service that doesn’t hide behind the fig leaf of an independent contractor. Easier to regulate those nexus points than to figure out of some dudes 2015 Sienna is safe or reliable.

Why didn’t you end the ride and get out?

Probably undiagnosed diabetes. My dad would do the same and he’d have a regular night of sleep

So instead of giving my money to Google, I should get in a car where someone could easily kill me and others?

No thanks.

>> Imagine how desperate you would have to be to drive a cab when you're that sleep-deprived (probably haven't slept in 36 hours). Now imagine someone took that income away from you to give it to Sundar Pichai.

Desperation isn't an excuse for risking the life of your passenger and other road users or pedestrians.

I think we're in a lot of trouble as a society if our choices are between a) automating away people's jobs and giving the savings to rich company executives, and b) getting into a car that's being driven unsafely.

Ooh I know the ones you're talking about. YouTube has started recommending those to my elderly family members. They are pure brainrot. I suspect AI generated too considering the sheer volume the YouTube channels in question put out.

If aggressive driving is 5% faster, then your expensive investment (the cars and the business) might get a few percent better utilisation (assuming liabilities don't increase much). More likely to see aggressive driving on way to pickup?

Capital costs matter, and how quickly you get ROI matters.

Electric engines are very efficient; aerodynamic drag is by far the biggest source of efficiency loss. The most efficient traversal for a fixed time interval is fast acceleration / deceleration with a reduced top speed. OTOH the most efficient for same time interval for a gas vehicle would be a slightly higher top speed but lower acceleration / deceleration.

People do this? I'd expect them to at least click the belt in and to sit on it. Personally I prefer to not die violently so I just strap in normally.

You could easily avoid the "noise pollution" by driving safely.

> I formally report it every time I'm in a car that has the deodorizer turned up to 11 because it makes me nauseous.

This is a good thing. I do think we're much better off now than we were in the 80s-10s (relentless, pervasive over-fragrancing).

But lately I've been running into the occasional Axe-weilder or odd desktop gadget that creates an airplane sized zone of unbreatable air. It might be time to dust-off some civil reminders about air quality.

Just say you feel carsick and want a window open for fresh air. They surely don't want puke in their car so they should be willing to oblige.

> I'm an "always 5 star" type of reviewer

Same. Only time I will rate lower is for safety issues. Offensive conversation and bad smells are not great, but I don't want to screw up what might be someone's only job because they're having a bad day or because they can't afford to get their car cleaned as often as they should.

But I also don't judge people who would rate lower for stuff like that; everyone's threshold for what's acceptable is different.

Driving is not grueling work. Imagine a utopia where people aren't needed for any work at all! No job for you. Only AI robots taking care of rich people while everything else burns. Just make sure you're one of the rich ones and everything is A-okay!

The example starting this discussion was not "avoid talking to a taxi driver." It was "book the taxi with an app at higher cost vs using the phone." No Waymos in Europe for them to avoid the drivers with just yet. Simply spending to avoid a phone call.

I'm skeptical we save a lot of time with our technology-mediated world. I think I could say "one medium pizza with pepperoni" and hear back "ok it'll be ready in 20 minutes" on a phone call quicker than I can put that order in with a device. Apps/websites are only better for group orders that require coordination. That's after I've picked out the restaurant, of course, but there is no shortage of literature on how the huge menu of choices presented by modern app-based services usually slows down people's decision making. (Amusingly this may swing back the other way, just with us talking to LLM-backed machines soon, but I find it hard to believe "we don't want to talk to the guy at the pizza place because we value our time THAT MUCH.") Compared to the phenomenon discussed in all sorts of media from https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/15ecqat/phonephobia/ to https://www.thecut.com/article/psychologists-explain-your-ph... to https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/gen-z-developing-fear-o...

Very curious if you have a source for that time value bit. I find it hard to believe. We Americans often have EXTREMELY long commutes using a mode of transportation that allows less multitasking than most others. I don't mind my car-based commute personally - it lets me listen to music in peace - but that's similar to how I don't mind making small talk while getting my hair cut - it's a peaceful respite from the usual noise of modern life. Certainly a nice change of pace from using that time to scroll social media or argue on the internet even more.

You may not agree with it but I fail to see how it’s disingenuous

German Millennial here, I'd much prefer an app to having to call someone. I hate calling anyone, and I know I'm not alone there. Let me text or use an app and I'm in.

When I take a booked private car back and forth to the airport (about an hour) I don't really have an issue. Sometimes the driver is chattier. Sometimes I'm chattier. Probably (likely) more expensive than an Uber would be but 100% reliable even at zero-dark-thirty times. Never had a real issue of any sort.

> AI is generally predictable quality, and it's not going to go down.

"Not going to go down" does not seem consistent with the way other tech trends have developed: magical at first, then subject to endless churn to seem dynamic and reduced quality, increased costs, or both as it becomes harder to squeeze out additional revenue.

Some analyst will figure out the robots have less billable time on task and they’ll find some way to avoid the problem.

There’s a million ways to do it. Shadow ban locations, mistakenly pull up to the wrong location, etc.