Grab Buys Uber’s Southeast Asia Business, Ending Service in Thailand in Two Weeks from Today

[observer90210]

No need to be a rocket scientist....

 

Should it be Uber or Grab, these ventures became sucessful almost overnight....not because they were good, but because most of the official taxi drivers around the world are just a bunch of cheats who never cease to ripoff tourists, refuse the meter, refuse to certain routes, take longer distance routes etc.

[Justfine]

15 hours ago, observer90210 said:

No need to be a rocket scientist....

 

Should it be Uber or Grab, these ventures became sucessful almost overnight....not because they were good, but because most of the official taxi drivers around the world are just a bunch of cheats who never cease to ripoff tourists, refuse the meter, refuse to certain routes, take longer distance routes etc.

Rubbish. They ran up huge losses by offering cheap prices. Uber has lost billions. Their strategy was try to grab mkt share by cheap prices. Now they are desperate to avoid total worldwide collapse they are selling off businesses and trying to fleece restaurants via the eats con.

 

It's a scandal ridden business that is rotten to the core.

 

 

 

 

[Justfine]

15 hours ago, Takeprofit said:

Uber takes 25% comission from its drivers from the cost of every trip.

It is a crazy deal for the drivers but local people dont think about this kind of things.

I even used to ride on premium cars cost more than 1 million baht (like Camry, Fortuner) for the trip price of peanuts (around 40-50 THB).

Finally, they use their cars as a "slave car" without any profit.

Big profit goes to IT-owners only.

Correct. It's a network mkting con from it geeks.

[halloween]

The great mystery is why governments around the world have allowed uber to set up business while ignoring all the rules and regulations governing the taxi industry in their country. The pendulum is swinging back in Oz with uber drivers now required to collect GST, register their vehicles for commercial use and carry appropriate insurance.

But why would you allow 25+% of a multi-billion dollar industry to exported for zero gain to the host country?

[jerry921]

On 3/27/2018 at 5:43 AM, Justfine said:

On 3/27/2018 at 5:31 AM, Skeptic7 said:

Seems something is keping so many of them behind the wheel...

You could say the same about tuk tuk drivers.

But tuk tuks don't have steering wheels 

[jerry921]

I suspect when a lot of drivers figure out that they're working 12 hours x 7 days a week and barely making enough money to pay their other living expenses, they think "hey, but I'm paying off the car, and when I don't have the car payment any more I'll really be doing well".  (Just another 6 1/2 years to go...)

 

What they don't understand or anticipate is how fast using the car as a cab 80 hours a week destroys the car. By the time they get it paid off, it's nearly worthless, and they need another one. Unless they wreck it first, in which case they've dug themselves a deeper hole.

 

Others perhaps try to do the math ahead of time, but mis-estimate something important, and once they have the car payment they are trapped - posters have called these uber slaves, but really they've signed their own freedom away voluntarily. Indentured servitude is more accurate.

 

Two trips ago when I took Uber in the US, I got picked up by a king cab (stretch) pickup truck. Vehicles that size use lots of gas (or maybe it was diesel, I don't recall). Totally uneconomical to be using it as a cab, but somebody had a payment to make and had (I suspect) dragooned his girlfriend into driving it for uber, because it was a very "guy" vehicle, the sort of thing a construction worker would love, but the woman driving it was also the sort a construction worker might find attractive.
 

 

[observer90210]

16 hours ago, Justfine said:

Rubbish. They ran up huge losses by offering cheap prices. Uber has lost billions. Their strategy was try to grab mkt share by cheap prices. Now they are desperate to avoid total worldwide collapse they are selling off businesses and trying to fleece restaurants via the eats con.

 

It's a scandal ridden business that is rotten to the core.

 

 

 

 

Not very polite to refer on another fellow poster and say "rubbish".

 

But I'm sure you have good reasons...maybe you are an official cabbie ? whatever....cool down a bit and enjoy

[The manic]

On 3/27/2018 at 5:04 AM, Justfine said:

"empowering" 

 

They are exploiting people via an app. IT geeks are the only ones making good money.

My uber drivers in the uk really liked the system. And it breaks the taxi Mafia. 

[The manic]

16 hours ago, jerry921 said:

I suspect when a lot of drivers figure out that they're working 12 hours x 7 days a week and barely making enough money to pay their other living expenses, they think "hey, but I'm paying off the car, and when I don't have the car payment any more I'll really be doing well".  (Just another 6 1/2 years to go...)

 

What they don't understand or anticipate is how fast using the car as a cab 80 hours a week destroys the car. By the time they get it paid off, it's nearly worthless, and they need another one. Unless they wreck it first, in which case they've dug themselves a deeper hole.

 

Others perhaps try to do the math ahead of time, but mis-estimate something important, and once they have the car payment they are trapped - posters have called these uber slaves, but really they've signed their own freedom away voluntarily. Indentured servitude is more accurate.

 

Two trips ago when I took Uber in the US, I got picked up by a king cab (stretch) pickup truck. Vehicles that size use lots of gas (or maybe it was diesel, I don't recall). Totally uneconomical to be using it as a cab, but somebody had a payment to make and had (I suspect) dragooned his girlfriend into driving it for uber, because it was a very "guy" vehicle, the sort of thing a construction worker would love, but the woman driving it was also the sort a construction worker might find attractive.
 

 

What a forensic analysis. You a taxi driver? 

[The manic]

On 3/28/2018 at 9:42 PM, hobz said:

Have you tried to get a real cab in Chiang Mai at night?? Not tuktuk or red car.

 

If you can find them at all at night it's gonna cost u way more than 150.

And I've yet to even hear of one using the meter.

I found Tuk tuks in CM to be the worst in Thailand in about 30 years. 

[The manic]

4 hours ago, observer90210 said:

Not very polite to refer on another fellow poster and say "rubbish".

 

But I'm sure you have good reasons...maybe you are an official cabbie ? whatever....cool down a bit and enjoy

London Heathrow to south London 90 quid in traditional black cab driven by a racist nutter.  Uber 35 quid to be driven by a mild mannered polite Asian. The London taxi Mafia could give lessons to the Phuket and Pattaya taxi Mafia. 

[elektrified]

On 3/27/2018 at 3:26 PM, Skeptic7 said:

While your concern for Thai taxi/GRAB/Uber wages is curious to say the least...(are you one of them?)  Am certain that no regular driver earns only B500/month. Surely a highly exaggerated exaggeration, but FAR from realistic. Had you used B5000 net...that would still have been an unrealistic exaggeration. 

 

On 3/27/2018 at 3:00 PM, Justfine said:

35,000 less

22,500 fuel

5,000 car finance

2,000 maintenance

5,000 commercial insurance

 

Net 500 baht

Total non-sense. Every driver we encountered on our last trip to Bangkok (about 15 of them) had LPG tanks installed. Also Uber covers the commercial insurance.

[strewth mick]

On ‎27‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 12:22 AM, crazygreg44 said:

we can call ourselves lucky to be able to just wave a taxi down at any streetside in Bangkok . . .

 

if likes of GRAB and UBER take full control, it could mean one good thing - no empty taxis polluting the air while driving around looking for passengers . . . . 

 

However then you need a lot of parking spaces for taxis-on-the-wait-for-an-APP-call 

 

 . . .and you need EVERYBODY to be equipped with a Smartphone, not excluding  Grandma & Pops

 

 .. i guess the future is not very far away 

 How do you think uber and grab cars find work? They drive around "polluting the air" the same as taxis.

[strewth mick]

The inconvenient truth that Uber lovers around the world cannot see and will never address in their uber fuelled rhetoric...................

 

Uber as a business has churned through $10 billion in the last few years. They have churned through this money to get rid of traditional taxis which all uber lovers hate. Once traditional taxis are gone uber will put prices up so they will be more expensive than traditional taxis. Venture capitalists need to get a return. Just to say it again....uber have lost $10 billion by providing cheap and unsustainable fares.

 

I'm not ashamed to say that I am a neo-luddite when it comes to venture capitalist funded technology like uber. Its a planned transfer of wealth from working class drivers into the venture capitalists hands. A race to the bottom that all uber lovers are happy to support.

 

Delete the app......its not part of a society anyone should want.  

[jerry921]

Uber is pouring lots of its revenue into its self-driving car development. They're working hard to cannibalize their own business. The whole issue of whether Uber drivers are "slaves" is only temporarily relevant, because when the self-driving cars arrive the uber "contractor drivers" will be just as much out of work as the regular taxi drivers.

 

I doubt that's going to be five years from now, because I'm not an optimist when it comes to software development. The west-coast programmers are used to their culture of writing code as fast as they can type it in, full of bugs, but no matter, just ship it quick before anyone else so you get market share and then work the bugs out in versions 2.0 and 3.0. That works ok for an operating system or spreadsheet, but not so well for software where bugs kill users and pedestrians.

 

So I think it will be ten years not five, and the companies that ship first won't necessarily win. It will be the companies that have the best safety record - more like the airlines. But it's coming just as certainly as the automation in fast food that we had a thread about, it's only a matter of time.
 

So the current uber drivers might have time to pay off their new vehicles, if they're lucky. But I'm not betting on uber to be the brand of self-driving taxi everybody hails in 2030.

 

But these changes will come more slowly to cheap-labor countries like Thailand and Mexico than expensive labor countries like the US. At first the drivers will try to compete with the driverless vehicles by lowering fares. Also, I suspect it will be a lot harder to make the software Thai-driver and Thai-road and Thai-pedestrian proof than it is to get it safe for use in the US. And there will be some taxi-mafia types that intentionally crash into driverless vehicles. So everyone who survives that long will probably still be complaining about the non-functioning taxi meters in 2030 in Thailand.

 

Just my 2 baht worth.

[DrTuner]

Uber is folding Asia. I wonder how many billions they lost.

[balo]

The taxi mafia probably made a deal with Grab so they get something back. Ask any taxi driver now and they just accept them , unlike Uber drivers who were chased around like criminals.

[strewth mick]

1 hour ago, balo said:

The taxi mafia probably made a deal with Grab so they get something back. Ask any taxi driver now and they just accept them , unlike Uber drivers who were chased around like criminals.

When people call taxi drivers part of a "mafia" I have this image of all the drivers being really rich......in reality driving a taxi is a pretty average paying job. Their mafia is a failure.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

4 minutes ago, strewth mick said:

When people call taxi drivers part of a "mafia" I have this image of all the drivers being really rich......in reality driving a taxi is a pretty average paying job. Their mafia is a failure.

 

It's not the troops who typically get rich. It's the bosses.

 

I think the mafia term more relates to their style of dealing with business and any rival competition.

[strewth mick]

3 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

It's not the troops who typically get rich. It's the bosses.

 

I think the mafia term more relates to their style of dealing with business and any rival competition.

A sad world we live in when people are happy with the way uber deals with the competition.................using venture capitalist funds to be unsustainably cheap in order to destroy existing taxi mafia. Its called predatory pricing and is illegal, for good reason, in a lot of countries. Uber also get a competitive advantage by exploiting tax loopholes.

 

Just a gross transfer of wealth that should be boycotted in its current form. 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

11 minutes ago, strewth mick said:

A sad world we live in when people are happy with the way uber deals with the competition.................using venture capitalist funds to be unsustainably cheap in order to destroy existing taxi mafia. Its called predatory pricing and is illegal, for good reason, in a lot of countries. Uber also get a competitive advantage by exploiting tax loopholes.

 

 

Well, you won't have to worry about that any more, since Uber in SE Asia (including Thailand) is going out of business, leaving Grab in their wake.

 

But having an attractive, successful business isn't ONLY about low prices alone, it's also about providing good service, dependable service, honest service, and meeting the needs of your customers. And that's where Uber drivers in Thailand blew away the typical taxi mafia colored-taxi drivers, and became very popular among the locals here, myself included.

 

Never had an Uber driver try to cheat me on the fare. Never had an Uber driver refuse to take me where I wanted to do. Never had an Uber driver stop mid-trip and pretend to have engine trouble, only then to drive off after I got out of the taxi because he thought there was too much traffic. Etc etc etc.  They made their own bed, and now they're having to lay in it.

 

[strewth mick]

3 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Well, you won't have to worry about that any more, since Uber in SE Asia (including Thailand) is going out of business, leaving Grab in their wake.

 

But having an attractive, successful business isn't ONLY about low prices alone, it's also about providing good service, dependable service, honest service, and meeting the needs of your customers. And that's where Uber drivers in Thailand blew away the typical taxi mafia colored-taxi drivers, and became very popular among the locals here, myself included.

 

Never had an Uber driver try to cheat me on the fare. Never had an Uber driver refuse to take me where I wanted to do. Never had an Uber driver stop mid-trip and pretend to have engine trouble, only then to drive off after I got out of the taxi because he thought there was too much traffic. Etc etc etc.  They made their own bed, and now they're having to lay in it.

 

Yep....looks like the taxi mafia is winning in Thailand.

 

I don't use taxis much so maybe that's why I've never experienced the problems you talk about.

[metisdead]

Off topic posts and the replies have been removed. 

 

Posts in violation of fair use policy have been removed, off topic as well. 

[Dibbler]

Just Grab price to BKK Swampy airport from my home today 193 thb, double the normal taxi meter fare. I used to ride Uber for 80thb. Grab is a ripoff!


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[Takeprofit]

10 hours ago, Dibbler said:

Grab is a ripoff!

And their app is annoying.

[Dibbler]

And their app is annoying.

Agreed app is terrible. My experience this morning, tried to book Grab to the airport. Got a discount fare for 188thb but no drivers accepted. Then called security in the mooban and had a taxi within 5 min at the door. Fare was 88thb! Grab fare more than double the taxi meter rate. RIP Uber


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[ExpatOilWorker]

5 hours ago, Dibbler said:

 

Agreed app is terrible. My experience this morning, tried to book Grab to the airport. Got a discount fare for 188thb but no drivers accepted. Then called security in the mooban and had a taxi within 5 min at the door. Fare was 88thb! Grab fare more than double the taxi meter rate. RIP Uber


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Are you using Grab Taxi or Grab Car, or are they both the same price?

[Dibbler]

Are you using Grab Taxi or Grab Car, or are they both the same price?

In the app you can select Just Grab which means the closest Grab car or Grab taxi comes. Price is the same. Seems taxi meter is cheaper by a long way, so not much incentive to use Grab except for the convenience of not having to use cash, and the many ways you can use points collected


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[balo]

2 hours ago, Dibbler said:

In the app you can select Just Grab which means the closest Grab car or Grab taxi comes. Price is the same.

No it isn't . If you choose Just Grab, often the nearest to your location will show up, if it's Grab car it will be more expensive. 

 

Grab Taxi is always cheaper so I always select that first .  But of course in Bangkok you have a luxury problem , the normal taximeter is cheapest unlike other cities. 

 

 

[Dibbler]

No it isn't . If you choose Just Grab, often the nearest to your location will show up, if it's Grab car it will be more expensive. 
 
Grab Taxi is always cheaper so I always select that first .  But of course in Bangkok you have a luxury problem , the normal taximeter is cheapest unlike other cities. 
 
 

Hmm no the price is fixed when you select Just Grab. The price appears when you select that option regardless of the type of vehicle that turns up to pick you up. But they key is that the cheapest option is still more expensive than taxi meter which means there are few reasons to use Grab.


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