I’m feeling sour about Uber Singapore’s free ride promo. Here’s why

I loved using Uber in the past. I remember booking the expensive UberBlack car for the first time in Singapore, and coming away impressed by the experience despite the hefty bill. Later, I ordered another ride soon after the cheaper UberX rolled into the country, and again in Bangalore en route to the airport. There’s a lot to like: the really nice app interface, the courteous drivers, and the fact that I don’t need to worry about having enough money in my wallet to pay.

Sure, there were flaws. Getting a ride isn’t always easy. But I understood that Uber was a service that’s still in beta, and I tolerated the imperfections.

Increasingly though – and I’m wearing my consumer hat here – I’m growing impatient. Today’s event might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

You see, Uber decided that it wants to offer everyone in Singapore two free rides for the entire day. This has never happened in Singapore. If you’re Comfort Taxi and someone suggests that you do that, you’d think he’s is mad. But Uber is different. It’s trying to grow aggressively. And that calls for aggressive marketing tactics.

As a frequent Uber user, I’m happy of course. Who doesn’t like freebies? But as the day wore on, my excitement turned into frustration. I tried getting an Uber ride early in the morning. No luck. Tried again a couple of hours later. Failed. I decided to take the train to work, and along the way hoped that I can get out of the train and into a comfy Uber car. Didn’t work.

But I kept at it. I attempted to get a cab from a busy shopping mall back to my office, but no luck. Tried getting an UberTaxi back home before rush hour. I was rejected. And no, refreshing the app did not work, despite what Uber claims.

I wasn’t alone in my predicament. Many users voiced out about this on Twitter:

As expected, not everyone had problems. Some of my colleagues got their Ubers. Other happy customers (including a celebrity) said the same on Twitter:

I must admit I felt a bit jealous. And puzzled as to why Uber would go to such expense to get in new users while potentially alienating the existing customer base. This sarcastic tweet encapsulated my thoughts perfectly:

Now stay with me. The point of this missive is not to rant on and on about Uber’s poor service. Rather, I’d like to raise this question: is this promotion a good idea in the first place?

Global domination

There’s a lot to like about Uber’s vision. In typical Silicon Valley fashion, it’s grand. Jordan Condo, head of public policy at Uber, put it eloquently at The New Mobility Forum held in the National University of Singapore this week:

Uber has the funding to match its ambition. It raised US$1.2 billion in June, valuing the company at a massive US$17 billion. That explains why it offered free taxi rides to Singapore and other places. It wants/needs to grow as fast as possible to justify the money put in. It’s Silicon Valley on steroids.

I asked Uber about the campaign. Its response: “Uber runs promotional events to delight customers – we do this from time to time around the world, in more than 200 cities, not just Singapore. We’ve also seen a great response to the uberTaxi service since we launched it, so we want to encourage more riders to try using Uber, and thank our existing riders for being supportive.”

So much to address here. Let’s break it down.

Uber is delivering the wrong emotions to some users.

UberKittens is about bringing joy. But not being able to book a cab brings annoyance, anger, frustration, and a whole bunch of negative stuff. I felt positive emotions towards Uber. But after today’s experience and not being able to book an Uber ride to that Forum attended by Condo, the good vibes decreased.

This isn’t such a bad thing if Uber is the only game in town or if the race has just started. But the situation has changed. GrabTaxi is now the leading taxi booking app here. My experiences bear this out. More often than not, I’ve managed to get a cab through the app. The odds improved as the service matured. Uber’s benchmark isn’t the crappy apps created by the taxi companies, but nimble startups who are savvy about mobile technology.

Negative emotions tend to stick longer than positive ones. Biologically, we have a negativity bias, and that’s bad news for Uber. The more I’m not able to get a cab through it, the more I’m likely to switch over to a competitor. GrabTaxi has a great user experience, but lacks Uber’s seamless payment feature. But adding that is just a matter of time. Easy Taxi revamped their app recently, but their initial design turned me off. So I’m unlikely to switch to it. From my conversations with taxi drivers, they seem to love GrabTaxi over Easy Taxi. Uber? Never heard of it.

People have high expectations of public transport and internet services.

We expect shit to work. Period. Singaporeans demanded the head of SMRT’s CEO when the subway lines experienced a spate of breakdowns. With cabs, the expectations are lower, since people in the country have been conditioned to the mismatch between supply and demand. Uber had a chance to prove it can improve the status quo.

But with the promotion, it sent the wrong message. Using the app became a contest. A lottery. In local lingo: heng if you get a ride, suay if you don’t. And that’s not the right expectations to set for our public transportation.

Uber is also an internet service. And again, people demand reliability. Google gives you more or less what you’re looking for every time you hit search. An Apple computer rarely crashes. PayPal processes your payments to the exact cent. These tech companies didn’t become global players by being broken. A service valued at US$17 billion should just work.

Uber is obviously in a difficult space. It’s both a transportation service and an internet company. Excelling in one area is hard enough. Now it needs to thrive in both.

So what’s next?

All things considered, the company isn’t in a bad spot. There’s clearly strong demand for Uber rides, so it just needs to get more taxis on board as fast as possible. And like up-and-rising smartphone maker Xiaomi, it has strong enough branding to weather the storm arising from angry customers who can’t get their butts into an Uber car.

Like it said, the company has run these promos before. And it has probably been effective enough that Uber would want to do it again and again. While this is not its official line, It probably believes that the risk of upsetting existing users for a day is worth taking if it means securing new users for a lifetime.

Clearly the promo was a special event. People go into it understanding that there’s no free lunch in this world, so it’s okay that they miss out. Freebies work like that. What they may have done, and done very well, is to get people to talk about Uber, download the app, and register as a user. These seem to be some of its goals, and on that count, it has succeeded.

With a swelling database of new users, Uber now has to convince them that a “no cars available” message is the exception, not the norm.

See more: Breaking down the Uber battle in Malaysia

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