I'm Sick Of Uber's Shit

Uber has become the most frustrating app on my phone.

Uber has become the most frustrating app on my phone. What used to feel like the future of transportation, hailing a slick black sedan ride from your phone, now feels like an underfunded Soviet-era municipal service.

The app used to be simple: you’d call a car, agree on a price, they’d show up in a couple of minutes and all would be right in the world. Now, just getting a driver to accept your ride is like catching smoke with a fishing net.

When you do get a driver, God only knows if they’ll actually show up. Because one of the most infuriating parts of the app now are drivers who accept your ride and then simply do not move. They just sit there, clearly waiting for you to cancel so you pay the fee, while they face no consequences. You end up staring at a frozen car icon while your time evaporates, locked in a petty game of chicken with whatever “Md” is working that day.

Then there are the wait times. At normal hours, it is now completely standard to be quoted 10-20 minutes for a ride. The entire original promise of Uber was speed and convenience. That promise has packed up and moved out.

And the tier system has become another sign of Stalin-era bureaucratic rot. You open the app and are greeted with a buffet of confusing options and aggressive upsells. UberX, UberX Priority, Uber Comfort, Uber Premier…what the fuck does this all mean? It reminds me of the loyalty rewards program at an Atlantic City casino.

The cheapest tier (whatever the fuck it’s called) has now very obviously been made intentionally slow and miserable, while the app gently threatens you with even longer waits unless you pay extra for what used to be the default experience. This is not pricing. This is hostage negotiation.

The energy inside the car has deteriorated too. Ride after ride turns into a live podcast, hosted by a miserable driver, talking about how Uber does not pay enough, how the algorithm is ruining lives, how tolls are expensive, how nobody is tipping, how everything is broken. I sympathize, but it is not exactly soothing to hear how the system is collapsing from the person currently doing 80 miles per hour in the left lane down I-95.

And pricing has completely lost the plot. A ride that was $14 five minutes ago is suddenly $32. Close the app. Reopen it. Now it is $27. Refresh again and we are back at $19.

I understand that corners have to be cut to improve profitability to some degree. But Uber has ventured into territory where they risk losing business because the service has gotten so bad. In New York City, it is now genuinely easier to get a taxi. You step outside, raise your hand, and a car shows up. No tiers. No mind games.

I’m not a shareholder and haven’t looked at the financials, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the company has topped out at what can be cut without driving customers away. And if I were thinking about starting a competitor, or if I were Lyft, I’d be looking at this as prime time to make my move.

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