Uber Review

I hate taking taxi's. I think I've made this clear already. I vowed to never take another taxi again (at least not in the city of Sydney) as long as I could help it. Some of you know that since living here, our credit card numbers have been stolen twice now. As if once wasn't bad enough. Our bank has linked this back to taxi drivers. Sickening.

A friend of mine told me about Uber; a car service that is based in the US that has recently come to Sydney 3-months ago. She raved about it so I had to give it a try. It's late here but I'm so excited about this that I had to write about it before I went to bed! So Kevin and I met with some friends downtown for dinner. Everyone decided to go out afterwards and I opted to call it a night. Let's get real-I'm looking a little too pregnant these days to be skirting around the bar scene.

Anyway... perfect opportunity for me to log into my Uber app from my phone and try this company out. I entered my current location and then where I needed to go and hit submit. I immediately got a text from my driver letting me know he would be arriving in 10 minutes. Not 30-seconds later, the driver called me and told me he would be there in 8-minutes. Within the app, you can use the map provided to track your driver to see exactly where he is.

 I then got another text letting me know my car was arriving...and there was Raymond. My driver. And my nice, shiny, black, Town Car. He opened the door for me, the car was immaculate and cold bottled water was available to me. Raymond immediately asked me if the temperature and music selection was alright. I was already impressed. During my journey, the driver was polite, educated and knew when it was appropriate to continue carrying on a conversation with me or not.

From my experiences, this is such a difference from taking a smelly, dirty, taxi car where the drivers are typically talking on their phones, don't care if their music is on or not, or if their car is dirty or stinking. They take you whatever route costs the most money and I have to have my map app pulled up on my phone making sure they aren't taking me "the long way".

So back to Uber. When I stepped out of the Town Car and I received an emailed invoice stating all the details of my trip. Since my credit card was pre-entered, no money was exchanged with the driver. The invoice clearly stated how long the trip took, the distance and the cost. Which isn't that much more than a standard taxi service. I will gladly pay the extra dollars to get good, trustworthy and reliable service like I had just experienced.

I am very impressed and will be using this company whenever we need to be driven somewhere. Sounds fancy, doesn't it?

I'm not sure what cities Uber has popped up in, but in case you would like to sign up, sign up under my invite code below and you will get $10 off your first trip :)

http://www.uber.com/invite/19xt0

You can also download and sign up from the Uber iPhone or Android app, and just enter this invite code on the sign up screen: 19xt0

If you decide to use this service, I hope you are as impressed as I was.