We are staying at the Logan Hilton overnight since we are leaving so early in the morning so we decided to take a cab to Alewife MBTA station. We need to take a cab since no busses run to Lexington on Saturdays (a topic for another blog post). Rod called two cab companies and neither had a cab to send out to us. Really???? One said they could send one in 30 minutes which was tolerable but then called us back to say they did not have a cab for us.
We had used Uber when we were in London in June. Our friends Andy and Miriam use these services all of the time and I had loaded the app onto my iPhone out of curiosity but had never used it. I got onto Uber and requested a cab. Someone would arrive in 6 minutes, which was just about how much time it would take us to get ready. The app showed us a picture of the driver, the kind of car he drives and we could look on a map to see where he was as he approached our house.
In the end we took the cab all the way to the airport hotel for $30, rather than switching to the MBTA. This is a lot less than half of what a cab would cost. I don't think this is a perfect situation, but Uber is definitely going to shake up the cab industry and I for one am only going to use Uber from now on because of the convenience and because of their business model. We talked a lot to the driver on the way to the airport. He used to drive in Norwood and has worked for Uber for 1 month. He is convinced that Uber will win the current legal battle in Boston.
I understand that there is tension in this industry between the traditional cab companies and Uber, but believe me, if I cannot get a cab at all in Lexington and I don't really have another option, this is how I have to get somewhere without a cab and on a day when the busses are not running. I am often an early adopter of technology so for now on I will adopt this new business model, until I get burned or hurt somehow.
