Uber

Reasons to avoid

1. New York Attorney General Letitia James secured a $328 million settlement from Uber in November 2023 after investigators found the company had illegally deducted sales tax and black car fund fees directly from drivers' pay rather than billing passengers, withholding hundreds of millions in earnings. The settlement was the largest wage theft case in state history, with Uber paying $290 million into a fund covering up to 100,000 affected drivers.ag.ny.gov2023-11-02
2. Uber and Lyft threatened to shut down all operations in Minnesota in 2024 rather than comply with a state bill that would have set a minimum wage of $1.28 per mile for drivers. NPR reported the companies spent heavily on lobbying to defeat the measure, which ultimately failed after the governor vetoed it under pressure.npr.org2024-06-17
3. A New York Times investigation found that 400,181 Uber trips ended with reports of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the U.S. between 2017 and 2022, far above the 12,522 instances Uber had publicly disclosed. The company's own data showed it received a report of disturbing sexual conduct on average once every eight minutes during the period.rollingstone.com2025-08-06
4. The National Employment Law Project found that Uber's "upfront pricing" model, introduced in 2022, decouples what riders pay from what drivers earn, allowing Uber to raise its take rate from 32% to 42% by 2024. In 2023, Uber drivers took home 12% less per trip than the previous year while the company posted record profits.nelp.org2025-08-11
5. A University of Michigan study found that a majority of Uber and Lyft riders choose ride-hailing specifically because it is faster than public transit, diverting trips that would otherwise use buses and trains. Researchers found ride-hailing's growth has contributed to declining public transit ridership across the U.S. over the past decade, reducing fare revenue for systems that lower-income riders depend on most.smartcitiesdive.com2025-02-19
6. A UC Berkeley Labor Center study published in May 2024 found that Uber drivers in major U.S. metro areas almost universally earned less than the local minimum wage after accounting for expenses including gas and vehicle wear. In California, the median passenger driver earned an employee-equivalent wage of $7.63 per hour including tips, against a state minimum wage of $16 or more.laborcenter.berkeley.edu2024-05-20
7. The Dutch Data Protection Authority fined Uber €290 million in July 2024 after finding the company had transferred European drivers' personal data to US servers without proper safeguards for over two years. The transferred data included location history, payment details, identity documents, and in some cases medical and criminal records, making it one of the largest GDPR fines ever issued by a national data authority.loc.gov2024-07-22