Most of my exposure to Uber has been negative articles about them. I've used them a handful of times, but not for a couple of years, until just this week.

I used them to get to and from the airport for a trip this week, and it was pretty interesting to compare with what I've been reading.

First, of course, the experience as a user was great. This is no surprise, but it sure does cement my desire to use them over any other service. I wanted to avoid taxis at all costs. I was ready to drive to the airport twice each way to handle all 8 people who were going, and pay for parking, rather than deal with that. I've done it before and wow, it just sucks. You call and get a surly dispatcher, you have no idea where your car is until it arrives, it might just not show up, credit cards are a joke, you have to figure out what to tip, etc. Uber was great. Hail in the app, see within seconds exactly where your car is and who's driving it, track them all the way, get in, ride, then get out on the other end and go, without even needing to explicitly pay. It just works! Even getting two different cars at 5AM in the suburbs was no problem. No cars were available at first, but within a few minutes they appeared.

I'll note that it's not just taxis who are problematic. I also checked into Super Shuttle, because heck, there's so many of us that we should be able to get a whole van at a good price. Checking on their web site, I thought that's how it would be. They wanted $28 plus $10/person, which worked out to quite a bit cheaper than four Uber rides (two each way). And we'd all go together, cool! Of course, it turns out that this is the price for each way, so the actual price would be double. They are pretty careful not to make this clear until very late in their reservation process. To be fair, all the info is there if you pay very close attention, but they make it extremely easy to assume that the quoted price is the whole thing. Compare with Uber, which is happy to give me a pretty precise quote, and matched it (near the low end!) all four times.

OK, we know all this. It's a great service (unless you get a bad driver who attacks you or something) but it's built on the backs of the poor oppressed drivers. Except both drivers I talked to were ecstatic about Uber and loved doing what they do. One was relatively new on the job, having been an assistant manager at a pizza place until a few months ago. He started out doing Uber part time, then graduated to full time once it became apparent that it was the better choice. The other one has been doing it for about two years. He bought a brand new Toyota just to drive for UberX, and he's put over 60,000 miles on it since then. He loves the flexibility (apparently he's somewhat "on call" to help family members out doing various things, and when he needs to help them he just signs out of Uber, goes off and does whatever tasks this involves, and signs back in) and the money is pretty good. He usually hangs around downtown DC on weekends and makes good money accumulating lots of short trips, but hangs out doing occasional airport runs on other days to earn a bit more.

So they're good with customers, they seem to be great with drivers, and all I have left is a vague sense of unease at how they approach regulations, by basically barging in and ignoring them. Except they're totally on the up-and-up in Virginia now, having reached an accommodation with the relevant authorities to be completely above-board.

After all the stuff I've read about them over the years, I felt a little guilty using Uber for this trip, but practicality won out. The guilty feeling didn't last.

Edit: I forgot to mention, the second guy, with the new Toyota, previously drove a cab. It was awful, and says he tries to convince his cabbie friends to switch to Uber at every opportunity. They charged him $150/day to drive for them no matter what. No fares? Fuck you, pay me. He's extremely happy that Uber came along to give him a much better way to make money.