In message , at 17:16:08 on Wed, 7 Mar
2018, D A Stocks remarked:

A £5 fare would be (at 20mph) 2.6 miles, £20 11.5 miles. That's a
stupendous amount of "getting lost"

Is Uber any good?

I've not been encouraged by their website. For a journey that we do
occasionally by taxi from our local station to home, it shows a range
of fares from £4 to £16 (a black cab typically costs £5.50).

Once you get outside metropolitan areas the cost per mile is a
killer. Even a short-ish trip to an airport (let's say 50 miles) is
grossly uncompetitive with local minicabs.

I've just got a quote for central Brighton to Gatwick Airport (around
30 miles) that compares reasonably well with a turn up and go fare in a
minicab.

It's not as different as I expected for a trip to Stansted (~1hr on the
road) where I've got an estimate of £75 from Uber, and a fixed fare of
£55 from a local minicab firm.

That exercise has also reminded me of what my apparent confusion was
regarding Uber fares being fixed or variable. I took their site to mean
that "we estimate your fixed fare, should you wish to book at the
moment, will be £75".

On a different day, different time, I'd have expected a different such
estimate[1], but I (naively it seems) expected the fare quoted when I
booked to be honoured (like it is for minicab firms who are off their
Local-Authority meter).

[1] Or, as every time I've actually tried taking my mystery shopping to
the next stage, a "no bid".
--
Roland Perry