A FEW days ago, rushing between meetings, a colleague of mine ordered us a cab. When we got to the station I offered to pay but was told there was no need, it’s on his Uber account: I had inadvertently broken my two-year personal boycott of the service. Wrongly, I was surprised other people didn’t dislike the organisation as much as I do, and then I was angry at myself for not telling more people why I don’t use Uber. I have talked in this column a few times about the Uber economy and the dangers of the growing dominance of self-employed, low-wage transportation services, but my dislike of Uber goes deeper than that. On the train back from Edinburgh that day I opened my news app to read that Uber had lost its licence to operate in London (pending appeal) as Transport for London had decided they were not a “fit and proper company”. If I was surprised, it was possibly that Transport for London were willing to act.

First of all, let me say that every Uber driver I have met has been nice and professional and most of their cars clean and comfortable – I am not having a go at the drivers, they are just trying to make a living. The app is clever; seeing the approaching cab on a virtual map as it drives towards you fits right in with our mobile device-addicted society, and getting an idea of the price upfront does mean you won’t get that ripped-off feeling at the end of the ride. Maybe that’s why 500,000 Londoners have signed a petition for Uber to keep its license.

However, there is a lot more to operating a cab firm than a clever app and this is where Uber have fallen short. I tried Uber out and liked it a lot, until I had a short ride to book. One short trip away from home, I tried three Ubers, which, one by one, accepted but which, one by one, all cancelled as I watched them approach on the app. So I called a local minicab firm and the driver turned out to be ex-Uber. He explained that its drivers are self-employed and so they can cancel the booking if they get a better offer. Now, whether that’s official practice or not he didn’t say, but it left me questioning who Uber were and what their end goal is.

Uber is a huge venture which is a capital-funded (by Goldman Sachs, among others) American corporation that refuses to pay a wage to its drivers. It makes huge losses and so uses its low costs and big investment to undercut locally owned cab firms in order to gain a market-dominating position. That isn’t cool, folks, it’s threatening and the advantages for the consumers will be short term because, once they have crushed local rivals they will raise prices to generate a return for investors.

Earning low wages, drivers have to work extremely long hours to make a living, meaning they can be tired at the wheel and, as part of the big economy, they will often have a second self-employed job or part-time work. Having attracted good drivers with a promise of lots of work that meant the zero hourly rate wasn’t an issue they then set out to create mass demand and hired more than 50,000 drivers in the UK – leading to less hires to go round. Uber boast that it’s easy to drive for them – if you have a licence you can be driving for Uber within two days – but this makes me worry they cant be vetting drivers properly. London’s black cabs have a seven-stage process involving written examinations and three face-to-face oral examinations to prove you know 320 routes, plus all the roads and landmarks. Glasgow’s Black Cab drivers (presumably in other Scottish cities too) are vetted through the Scottish Government’s Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme.

Last month, the Metropolitan Police accused Uber of failing to report sex attacks by drivers and, in one case allowing a driver, who had sexually assaulted one passenger, to go on to rape another passenger because he had not been suspended or reported to the police. In response, Uber said they were surprised by the accusation, and that they actively encourage people to report attacks to the police.

A YOUNG female friend of mine had a terrible experience in a London Uber, when she was driven around for 90 minutes into areas of a city she didn’t know and unable to get out. She felt sure the driver was planning to rape her but eventually managed to force her way out of the car, only to find herself lost and alone with no power in her phone in a strange part of London further from her destination than when she had started. She reported the incident to Uber but felt nothing was done and, despite my advice, didn’t report it to the police. Uber are required to report such complaints but it appears they don’t.

Watching the news last week and seeing several women recount similar tales (and worse) filled me with revulsion and made me wonder how often female passengers felt threatened in this way. It can happen anywhere, I know, but when a big global corporation fails to vet its drivers properly and then tries to sweep serious allegations of sexual assault under the carpet, that’s an organisational failure and not just a symptom of the times we live in.

Last year, a UK employment court ruled that the nature of the work offered by Uber was not self-employment and therefore all drivers should be paid the national living wage. The big picture, however, becomes clearer when you realise Uber see drivers as a short-term inconvenience and their future business model is based on driverless cars. They have teamed up with Mercedes-Benz to run a network of self-driving cars that can be booked through the Uber app. Ford and BMW are planning the same and the first self-driving cabs are due to hit the streets in 2021. Volkswagen is also planning a fleet of self-driving electric minibuses to be booked through its own app. The key advantage of self-employed drivers to Uber is not just avoiding paying the minimum wage, it’s not having to ever make redundancy payments.

Meantime, Uber, you are much more than just a cool app provider, you are a taxi firm with obligations to your drivers and passengers. You must be safe and operate within the rules – understand that, or get off our streets.