Tech’s broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.
Let’s be real: Uber/Lyft is actually better than calling a cab. Even for the same price, it’s more convenient. When you actually share the cab, it’s more efficient too, you get a price cut while it optimizes the route automatically to pick up and drop off people.
I have a cab company in my city (near Chicago) that you can order it online or in the app for now or in the future and it is cheaper than Lyft/Uber. No hailing a cab like back in the old days.
The problem IMHO is just that you need a different app for each cities cab companies. That’s great if you were living in that city and regularly taking cabs. I don’t know what the percentage is, but at least for me, I only take cabs when I’m travelling, otherwise I drive my own car. I like having one or two apps, and I don’t have to find, sign up for, and configure an app for each city I go to.
Note - this is actually a bigger issue, not one that the cab companies can necessarily fix - but I think PayPal is doing the best here in having a “checkout with PayPal” on random websites and I don’t have to do anything but log into paypal. I’m still surprised it seems like no one else is really doing it. I’ve very occasionally seen Pay on Amazon, but I don’t recall if in those cases I still needed to create an account on the website etc unlike the newer offering from PayPal.
Where’s American Express, Visa, Mastercard, Zelle, Venmo, Cashapp, etc or even another new offering that just makes it as easy as PayPal does to have your “Pay online / in the app” account that if you do it gives the seller the payment (without exposing your actual card number), and address if needed for shipping?
