It’s a quarter past midnight on a Saturday, and three giggling, tipsy 20-somethings have just shot out of their apartment directly into a luxe, air conditioned black car waiting for them on their Williamsburg block.
Gone are the days of waiting miserably for a merciful cab to take pity on the pretty young things. Now, upstart New Yorkers are enjoying the plush comfort of car service, sometimes complete with free bottled water and gum.
Hailing a cab? Officially passé. Welcome to life with Uber.
The concept of the car-service app is simple: After creating a profile and adding a credit card, users set a pickup location and choose from the following options: a black car, an SUV or an uberX (a cheaper alternative to a black car, such as a Honda Accord). Uber locates a nearby vehicle, provides a photo of the driver and the license plate, and GPS tracks the car as the driver makes his or her way to you.
The Uber buzz began during February’s New York Fashion Week.
“Who can remember life before Uber?” says 35-year-old Melissa Liebling-Goldberg, fashion and beauty director of PopSugar.
“Fashion shows are often a little far-flung, so when you found yourself all the way on 11th Avenue in the 30s, or all the way down at the tip of the island, there’s definitely a scarcity of cabs,” she says. “I realized that we could save so much time if I ordered an Uber from inside the show and could gauge how long it would take.”
Liebling-Goldberg isn’t alone. Today, you can’t step out of a club, or the office, or even your apartment, without hearing fawning adoration for the car-service app.
A rep for Uber confirms that ridership has grown month-over-month in New York since launching in May 2011. With the service available in 35 cities around the world, the number of rides Uber provides globally is now seven times larger than it was a year ago. Both new riders and the average number of rides per user each month are on the rise.
And other competitors are emerging: Hailo serves the same function as the hail-a-cab option through Uber, and Taxi Magic does the same, with a new feature in the works that will allow advance bookings.
Bobby Abtahi, a 31-year-old lawyer who splits time between Long Island City and Dallas, is among Uber’s fans: “When you hear someone talking about a cab, it’s almost like they’re stuck in the past,” he says. “[Telling someone about Uber] is like telling someone about an iPhone for the first time. Everyone I’ve introduced to it — it just blows their mind.”
At the end of an Uber trip, riders simply get out of the car. Cash isn’t needed, as Uber charges your credit card automatically, tip included. You can also hail a yellow cab through Uber, though you can’t pay for it through the app. More than 1,000 taxicab drivers have signed up for the uberTAXI service, which is free for them to join. But because cabdrivers are free to change their minds and pick up a street hail while en route to the e-hailer, uberX is the more reliable option.
In most instances, taking an uberX amounts to only a few dollars more than a yellow cab. There’s a $6 base fare, and it costs $3 per mile/75 cents per minute after that with a $12 minimum (tip included). Wait times can be as short as one minute and as long as 15.
Hieu Luu, a 41-year-old financial services technologist from Chelsea, has used the service at least 500 times, with an average of three or four daily trips, since downloading the app in November. (So far he’s spent at least $4,500 on the service.)
“I don’t know what I would do without Uber,” says Luu, noting he knows several drivers from repeat usage. “It is really like he’s your personal driver. He remembers you, he says hi. He tells you about his family.”
The service allows both customers and drivers to rate each other. Since Luu is a “VIP” status rider, Uber only sends him highly rated drivers, some of whom will now automatically seek him out.
Knowing that they’re being rated is motivation for drivers to be friendlier: Intern William Nelligan, 21, who uses the service up to five times a week, recalls a recent incident where his driver took a wrong turn in the maze of the Wall Street area.
“I said, ‘Oh, actually you needed to take a right there, but you can just loop around.’ Before I even finished the sentence, he turned off the meter and apologized profusely,” says Nelligan.
But Uber has its detractors. Yesterday, controversy erupted when the rapper Le1f claimed racial discrimination against a driver with the following tweet: “@Uber MY CAB DRIVER DROVE BY ME & REFUSED TO PICK ME UP, NOW I’M SUPPOSED TO PAY $10 TO CANCEL?? IS THIS HOW YOU GUYS TREAT PEOPLE IN HARLEM.” He then clarified, “i’m an hour late for this interview just because i’m black and decided to take a cab instead of the subway.”
A rep for Uber told The Post, “We are looking into the details of this incident and will take swift and appropriate action. What we do know is that the customer used the TAXI e-hail product, which generally provides a poor quality of service across all of New York City. Fewer than 20 percent of TAXI e-hail requests result in a completed ride.”
Liebling-Goldberg, though, concedes even uberX can be challenging to nail down during busy times such as Fashion Week.
“There are definitely moments when you can’t get it, because all of the cars are in use,” she says. “You do feel a little bit like you’ve won the lottery when it comes through.”
Additional reporting by Jozen Cummings and Tim Donnelly
UBERx VERSUS YELLOW CAB
: The Post test-drives both services on four different routes
Trip #1: Midtown (50th Street and Broadway) to the West Village (Christopher and West Fourth streets) during rush hour
Cab: 10 minutes (including a two-minute wait), $12.50 (including $2 tip). Upon stopping, driver yelled, “Manhattan, right?” Luckily, it was. Back seat was decorated with fun accessories, like an empty Red Bull can and a crumpled paper bag.
UberX: 22 minutes (including a five-minute wait), $15. Two minutes after requesting a car, the driver arrived, but it took three additional minutes to locate him in the busy intersection. I had to give him directions using Google Maps on my phone. But the car smelled like strawberry air freshener, and “Blurred Lines” was playing at a comfortable volume. I tipped the driver $5, but when I later learn a tip is already included, the company offered a refund.
Winner: UberX. The driver seemed to be an exception, not the rule, and the company was unbelievably fast at reconciling the situation. Plus, strawberries are delicious.
Trip #2: Boerum Hill (State Street and Flatbush Avenue) to the Lower East Side (Hester and Essex streets), during Beyoncé concert traffic
Cab: 12 minutes (including a two-minute wait), $13.75 (including $2.75 tip). Your standard no-nonsense cab ride. Got me to the right spot.
UberX: 16 minutes (including a three-minute wait), $20. There was some miscommunication when it came to destination: He looked as if he did not know that Hester was a street, and had trouble finding it on his GPS. When I got out, I realized he had dropped me at Houston and Essex instead.
I put this complaint in my Uber rating on the app and received a nice e-mail from a customer-service rep who wanted to know more information and gave me a $10 credit as an apology.
Winner: Yellow cab. The shrewd efficiency of a veteran NYC cabdriver beat the tech-enhanced Uber rides in price and accuracy.
Trip #3:
Williamsburg (North Sixth Street and Bedford Avenue) to Union Square (corner of 14th Street and Fourth Avenue)
Cab: 15 minutes, (including a two-minute wait), $18.85 (including $4.35 tip). Driver was listening to the Yankees game when A-Rod made his return, so I asked him to turn up the radio, and we ended up talking the whole way about baseball and how much we all wish A-Rod would just go away.
UberX: 28 minutes (including a 13-minute wait), $21. I was watching the little car on the app approach me, but it seemed to stop on Bedford, a block down from where I was standing. After an additional five minutes, I was almost about to cancel the car but got a call from the driver telling me where he was parked, so I walked down and met him. The car was a clean Toyota Corolla with lots of legroom.
Winner: Yellow cab. In terms of speed, price and conversation topics, the old yellow cab was the better way to go.
Trip #4: Meatpacking District (14th Street and Ninth Avenue) to Lower East Side (Essex and Delancey streets), after work, in the rain.
Cab: 15 minutes (including a three-minute wait), $1 4.40 (including $2.40 tip). I jumped in the cab and asked the driver how he was doing; he asked me where I was going. Conversation over.
UberX: 20 minutes (including a five-minute wait), $18. My driver parked a block away from where I was actually waiting. It’s probably best to put in an exact address for an accurate pickup. But outside of that, the car was as clean as something fresh off the lot.
Winner: UberX. Knowing I will already be billed for the ride saves the small hassle of waiting for a receipt or swiping a card numerous times on a faulty machine.
— Jozen Cummings, Tim Donnelly and Gregory E. Miller