Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: cab

Uber Experience in San Francisco

I was in the city a couple of days ago & needed a ride to Caltrain station from Financial District. Turns out, it is hard to get a cab from one of the busiest parts of San Francisco city. So I scheduled a cab through Uber, this was an opportunistic move as well as I have been waiting for the right opportunity to use the Uber service.  Firstly, kudos to the Uber team for such a great experience - right from scheduling the service (via the application) to the the journey to the train station, the experience was very smooth.

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So let me describe my experience - I launched the app & used the push pin in the Uber mobile app to point to my "exact" location & called for a cab. I waited for about 2-3 minutes before the cab showed up (the arrival time of the driver is available in real time in the app...this is super COOL). Oly, the driver hailed from Brazil and he was a great guy - friendly, talkative and his town car was spotlessly clean. Due to traffic, the ride took about 15 minutes . Upon arrival at the train station, I realized that payments are processed within the app which means no exchange of cash. This is beautiful because cash can be another point of friction for the rider. So far so good. I hopped out of the cab and Oly informed me that I'd receive a receipt for the ride within the app. (SWEET!) I hoped off the town car, received a notification in the Uber app to rate Oly and then the receipt. (Nicely done)

The disappointment then set it in - It cost me $27 for the ride.  A cab ride that normally costs approximately $8-$9 was three times more expensive with Uber. I was not happy about this. Uber seems elite to me :(. I guess I should have seen this coming, after all I rode in a town car. Overall I had a great experience but I was just not prepared to spend twenty seven dollars for a ride to the train station.

I think Uber can do a better job setting the expectations of the user as to how much a cab ride would cost before actually scheduling the service, this is missing in the service today. Perhaps Uber has made this tradeoff for a crisp UX, but I think there is room for improvement here. In all, Uber - I love the product & the experience but please make it more affordable.