Uber is back across Germany…but be careful, as the drivers are not exactly well-experienced.
I was recently in Germany with my business partner. We landed in Frankfurt and needed to get to Mainz. When I travel alone, I take public transport…it is not as convenient as using a taxi, but easy enough and I can accomplish more on the train than I can in the back seat of a car. Meanwhile, my business partner prefers the quicker taxi trip, arguing that it is “penny wise, pound foolish” to wait for a train, especially if there is a long wait for one or when traveling with bags.
One thing I will say about the cab drivers in Germany is that they are professional, much like (most) of the London cabbies. Put another way, a German taxi driver never takes the wrong turn…at least in my experience.
But I noticed that Uber is back in Frankfurt and about 25% cheaper than the cab (60EUR for the cab via MyTaxi app, 45EUR for the Uber). So we tried that.
The driver was a recent arrival from Afghanistan and we had a very nice chat about living in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul…he was absolutely flabbergasted that I had been to his home village.
But he wasn’t a good driver. A lot of sharp lane changes at the last-minute and he missed the turnoff to Mainz. That’s not a huge issue on U.S. cities where interstate exits are more frequent, but we had to travel several miles to the next exit before turning around and hitting horrific traffic retracing our steps.
Although we were not charged any extra for the “detour”, it left me ticked off that I lost almost 30 minutes because the guy didn’t know where he was going…penny wise, pound foolish indeed.
CONCLUSION
Maybe just maybe that was one bad apple, but it is not worth the risk. I’ll stick to S-Bahn when traveling alone and taxi when traveling with my business partner. Uber is not substantially cheaper and German roads are not for the inexperienced.
image: Uber
You’re going to find this to be the case most anywhere in the world if you’re in big cities, so I think it unfair to levy it on just Frankfurt. In SF, for example, most of your drivers will live in the East Bay – think Oakland and beyond all the way to Sacramento and will commute into SF to drive. Further, they frequently are either recent immigrants to the US and/or to the Bay Area with zero knowledge of the city’s layout beyond the rough grid and that Market Street causes a “refraction” of that grid. They rely 100% on the directions provided via the app because they have minimal/no knowledge of the intricacies of SF traffic – flow or patterns – and the near-constant road and building construction that creates gridlock but isn’t necessarily tracked by the apps. So if the app is late in providing turn instructions, most drivers won’t know it’s coming up and will breeze right past it. Or if the app is using an algorithm to calculate the most direct way from A to B but a local will know that construction on Franklin Street or Gough Street (major one-way north/south arteries, respectively, in the eastern part of the city) is causing major slowdowns, you’ll sit in traffic for an extra 10-15 minutes. I’ve also experienced this in NYC and Chicago.
Of course I know all this and understand that this is the tradeoff for a lower fare, ability to rate drivers, the semi-guarantee of a clean-ish and well-maintained car. So, TL;DR is you get what you pay for and caveat emptor.
It’s hard to beat German public transportation.
Swiss & Japanese public transport
I guess you haven’t been to Berlin? The Taxi drivers are rude, are notorious for ripping off tourists, and many are “pirate” taxis that lie and say their card readers are broken and only can accept cash. There are many of stories of tourists not having had time to exchange currencies into euros and being threatened and in some cases accosted by the taxi driver for not accepting the only cash payment.
As someone who has lived in Berlin for over 13 years, I’ll take an uber any day over a taxi. The drivers often times engage in small talk and are ok with changes with my destination. Berlin taxi drivers?? I’ve had drivers tell me my destination wasn’t far enough for them to take me because it wasn’t worth the time and/or gas. In my defense, it wasn’t a down the street request at all!
My client, the head of THE urban mobility company here in Berlin, which works with all of the major modes of transport in Germany concurs. He refuses to take taxis in Berlin. Sounds like Frankfurt is a different city with the exact opposite circumstances.
If a taxi driver tries to pull the broken credit card stunt with me, I will refuse to pay him. If I have baggage in the trunk, I say my cash is in the baggage. Happened to me once in London. Never again.
When you tell the taxi driver your cash is in your luggage, do you pay them cash after you get out? Or does the credit card reader magically start working?
Personally I have found Frankfurt taxi drivers more willing to take credit card than Munich or Berlin taxi drivers.
I’ve never had an issue in Frankfurt.
So you just walk out of the cab without paying?
Seems like Ubers are also “penny wise, pound foolish”.
Book Uber, get a driver who can only get you there by following his/her SatNav, sometimes very badly.
Use a local firm and get there without the stress of Uber for a small amount more.
Uber is a service I no longer use.
It is the complete opposite these days in NYC. All the experienced drivers are with Uber/Lyft/Juno. This means that during surges (say, when it starts raining) you can miraculously find a yellow cab now. However, nine times out of ten, my experience is that the driver will be a very recent arrival, who then has to pull up instructions on their phone (while the meter is running, mind you) and even then will not have the basic geographic knowledge to make the ride go smoothly.
I hailed the worst recent offender at 32nd and Fifth and asked to go to 14th and 2nd. After two minutes of watching him fumble through Google Maps, I politely informed him to forget it and left the taxi.
Uber saved us while traveling in St Petersburg. We traveled to Peterhoff on the last day the ferries and hydrofoils were running for the year. Bad weather hit right after we arrived. After visiting Peterhoff and going back to the dock, we found out that all services were suspended for the day. We did not understand enough to follow the google map directions (3 buses and a walk between bus 1 and 2), so we decided to try Uber. After waiting 20 minutes for it to download on the phone, we were able to log in and hail a ride. Fifty five minutes later with scenery we would never see otherwise and $13 later, we were dropped off very close to our hotel. A miracle for our 1st use of Uber!
We used Uber a few more times in the city- very cheap and no issues. While I understand Uber has issues like all forms of transportation, it has a place in our international travel because of that experience. I cannot imagine how much a taxi would have cost us there (or if we would have been picked up at all) standing outside of Peterhoff.
Russia is probably the mostly liberated country as for the alternative taxi. Yandex Taxi is dominant provider, and it has predefined price that you see before ordering. The price can be slightly increased in very rare cases if you are stuck in the jam for say 5-15 minutes.
In Toronto the taxi drivers are all horrible immigrants from India. They don’t know how to drive, they’re rude, and their car smells bad.
The problem is all those guys became Uber drivers too, so even getting an Uber there’s a high chance of getting a taxi driver.
. After living here for a while, many many many taxi drivers take “alternate” routes to hike up the meter. This is why i always just “which way i want to go” to minimize shenanigans like this…
Thus, uber arrival in Germany is a bliss for me! Especially with much cheaper fares than taxi. Aaaand cashless payment!! Note that this is quite rare for with taxi drivers in Germany – even happened to me once with driver thaz i booked from taxi.eu app(?!)
Sure this may be just another “German” thing… but increasingly biz people obvs prefer to pay cashless for reimbursement purposes?
Also… maybe it’s not really fair to judge/generalise uber service in Germany based on one trip? Or have u indeed experienced Similar “bad” uber experience in Germany?
I lived in Frankfurt for 4 years and i’ll take a less knowledgeable Uber driver over a taxi any time. Not only will it still be cheaper, the Frankfurt taxis are very rude and too many times have a taxi taken a detour to stop at an ATM because he refused to accept my card.
One ride to cross off a major country’s Uber service?
To be came a professional driver you need practice, lot of practice, write? But hey what just you did whit this article, let me brief explain. You cut him out of his legs, or you knocked his sails out of the boat. Congratulations!
She is looking very cheap customer who was notesiñg only uber driver all d the, everyone can make mistakes taxi drivers didn’t come from sky direct… taxi driver always rude and charge way extra but these kind of customers happy to travel with them
This review is a joke. Do you live in Frankfurt? I do, and I prefer Uber. I have had the same taxis (which you claim to be so great) who could not find my address, and I have had to give plenty of them directions from the airport. In my experience in, very literally, hundreds of cabs and Ubers in Frankfurt the most common differences are that Ubers tend to be cleaner, smell better, and the drivers more courteous. They both seem to get lost about the same amount of time.
You are using old stereotypes about the greatness of German cabbies as the backbone of your article – not any significant amount of experience. Articles like this are examples of the fourth estate just generally sucking. Not professional at all.
I’ve lived in Frankfurt, speak German, and never had a bad taxi experience. Meanwhile, Uber was horrible.
it countries responsibility to deal with the driving license. the uber have nothing to do if the person have driving licence. so i think it was not their fault.
What a bizarre article from a “travel consultant”. I hope he never consults for who I work for….actually the best thing is to take the train from the airport into the city and Uber the rest of the way. Then you combine the cheap public transport and fulfill your green credentials, although unfortuantely contributing to the overpaid underworked public sectror, and then benefit from low Uber fares for the last mile part.
I travel the way I want. Thanks for reading.