My personnal experience.
I come back from a trip in romania - bucharest.
At first I didn't take Uber but tried for the regular Taxi from the airport.
All of them requesting ~40USD.
At the end I go with one who put the meter and indeed arrived to 200 Lei (~40 USD). I payed in euro because I didn't have enough local currency, hopefully I had some and the driver accept.
Taking some information it's way too much, but would I have argue with how the meter was operating anyway?
Now, I need to comeback to the airport at 4am.
So instead, I reserve a airport transfer from the airline itself, pay in advance something like 30 USD this time.
And... no one show up at 4am. Mobile phone of the transfer is not answering... I never heard of them *
So I install Uber, hopefully it's working, enter my visa (from my country, no need for local currency at all), after 10 minutes, someone very nice take me and I just paid like 15 USD to get to the airport, at 5 in the morning, with the invoice by mail.
How do you compete with that? Taxi business need to reflect. And every country is the same strangely, it's as universal than taxes: you can't escape!
* Edit: In fact I know what happened, and there is nothing to do, because I looked at the invoice and on the third page of the voucher PDF there, it's said that I needed to call 24h before to confirm the transfer... They don't call, you have to call. Even after the first confirmation I already did for confirming the pickup address some days before, I wasn't feeling paranoid enough. So you can't say nothing because I didn't read the last page, but it's a dumb heavy process, do people changes their mind and decide to live forever in the country frequently?
Taking some information it's way too much, but would I have argue with how the meter was operating anyway?
Now, I need to comeback to the airport at 4am.
So instead, I reserve a airport transfer from the airline itself, pay in advance something like 30 USD this time.
And... no one show up at 4am. Mobile phone of the transfer is not answering... I never heard of them *
So I install Uber, hopefully it's working, enter my visa (from my country, no need for local currency at all), after 10 minutes, someone very nice take me and I just paid like 15 USD to get to the airport, at 5 in the morning, with the invoice by mail.
How do you compete with that? Taxi business need to reflect. And every country is the same strangely, it's as universal than taxes: you can't escape!
* Edit: In fact I know what happened, and there is nothing to do, because I looked at the invoice and on the third page of the voucher PDF there, it's said that I needed to call 24h before to confirm the transfer... They don't call, you have to call. Even after the first confirmation I already did for confirming the pickup address some days before, I wasn't feeling paranoid enough. So you can't say nothing because I didn't read the last page, but it's a dumb heavy process, do people changes their mind and decide to live forever in the country frequently?