My Holiday Experience in London with Uber

As an early adopter of technology, I’m always curious to try out some of the latest and greatest tech tools on the market to help me perform a task, whatever that may be. This time it was Uber, the latest disruptor of the transportation industry that has essentially turned the taxi business on its head. Ever ripe for disruption, the taxi industry in many ways brought this conundrum on itself by not policing its drivers more carefully and not automating the entire pickup and delivery process as Uber, and several other similar intermediaries, have now done.

Having previously installed the Uber app on both my wife’s Windows Phone and my own while back in the U.S., I felt confident and ready to use this exciting new service while on our vacation or holiday in London. So, off we went to Londinium, the original name of London given by the Romans or so the story goes. London is a fabulous city, steeped in history and technological innovation. So, it’s only fitting to test out the latest and greatest in technology in a city like London.

Day one in Londinium, as my wife likes to call it. We step outside our hotel and I fire up Uber on my Windows Phone to request a car. I wait several seconds as Uber detects my location and determines which drivers are nearest to me. Everything seems fine. Then, as I watch the cute little car on my Uber map making its way towards me, I notice it stopped. I figured the driver was simply at a stop light, but after about two the three minutes he’s still in the same place. The next thing I get is a text telling me the driver has cancelled for whatever reason. It then instructs me to order up a new driver and so I did.

The next major failure that occurred using Uber was with the telecom network, which caused the Uber app to lose communication with the system and the driver. At the time I was using O 2, one of the largest telecom service providers in the U.K. From the get go I was having difficulty launching Uber with O 2, so it should have been a warning sign of trouble ahead. Eventually, I switched to Vodafone later in the trip, which worked like a charm, but that’s another story. So, we quickly switched to my wife’s phone that had initially roamed to Vodafone, ordered a car and the driver quickly showed up. Botta boom, botta bing. We’re on our way.

Now for the irony of it all. While we were previously fumbling with Uber on both of our mobile phones in front of the hotel (and in a traffic island no less!), there stood not two, but three London black cabs behind us waiting for prospective passengers. I couldn’t help but think they were noticing us desperately trying to use Uber, so I looked back with trepidation only to see three middle aged guys staring out into space while waiting for customers. From my perspective, they seemed forlorn for the good old days before Uber.

In a way, my heart went out to them. After all, these guys go through great pains and finance in order to become a London cabby. To put it mildly, these guys are furious with Uber because of the huge cost and training differential (known as “The Knowledge”) that each driver must go through compared to Uber drivers. Conversely, all that is required of Uber drivers is a car, driver’s license, prove their knowledge of London streets with a basic test and pass a background check.

But back to Uber’s transportation service. Later on that first day in London, after visiting Westminster Abbey and the required visit per the wife to Harrods department store, it was time to call a cab or taxi. This is where it got real nasty using Uber, simply because the wife was not amused in my determination to use the latest and greatest in technology at all cost. Uber began to greatly malfunction outside Harrods. Let me explain as briefly as possible.

This time we use the wife’s “mobi”, as the British like to call them. Since it was her phone that successfully requested Uber the first go round, I thought to myself let’s just stick with her phone. So we requested a car or driver and lo and behold he never arrives. The driver apparently was lost or simply couldn’t move in the rush hour traffic in time to pick us up. So we cancelled the car and requested another. Unbeknownst to us later on, there is a penalty for cancelling a driver in route, which can prove costly.

Again, we wait for the Uber car that never arrives. So we cancel the car and try one more time to get another. Scanning the streets for a previous Uber car, I spot one parked over on a side street and walked over to ask him if he’s Ahmed, our previously requested driver. He says “no”. I then explain to him our predicament and he suggests we cancel again and request him, since he’s idle. But it’s not as simple as that. Under Uber’s service, you cannot request a specific driver.

Instead, the driver suggested we order another car and he will see it pop up on his GPS and grab us from the list on his Uber dashboard. Well, we repeated the process FIVE TIMES all the while racking up cancellation charges--in pounds—not dollars, simply because other drivers were tagging us for pickup before he could. Apparently, it’s quite competitive in London for Uber drivers. Anyway, suffice to say, we never got that driver, but one from the previous requests eventually showed up.

From then on, we stuck to the good old reliable black cabs of London, enjoying all the sites stress free. It’s clearly evident that Uber has a bit of tweaking to do before it expects to displace the prolific London black cab service. That’s for certain. However, when it works, it’s simply outstanding. No fussing with hailing a cab, making change, tips, etc. It’s all handled by e-commerce and GPS technology, which makes it so simple to use. Its concept is the “easy button” for transportation and it’s a great one.