Uber broke laws, duped police and built lobbying operation, leak reveals
Uber isn&#x27;t the most ethical company for sure but here in Brussels the taxi industry is pretty shady as well.<p>Getting a taxi license costs an exorbitant amount of money and it&#x27;s done through all kinds of dodgy deals.<p>There&#x27;s 1-2 companies that have a monopoly on the whole industry.<p>There&#x27;s weird rules about which types of taxis can &quot;serve&quot; the airport, akin to what mobsters are responsible for collecting trash in what areas.<p>You&#x27;ll often get &quot;sorry the payment terminal is out of order, cash only&quot; BS.<p>A study a few years ago showed the main taxi company, according to their tax documents, earned a ridiculously low amount of money per day (= obvious dodging of taxes).<p>They clearly refused to innovate for years. When you called their number you&#x27;d get some unintelligible voice on the other end that would give you about 10 sec to state your details before they&#x27;d clearly run out of patience.<p>You could only request pickups at specific addresses that would then be connected to your phone number &#x2F; profile. So &quot;pick me up on this street corner&quot; was impossible.<p>The last time we called one for a ride to the airport they didn&#x27;t show up at the agreed time so we got an Uber. Taxi company called us many times screaming insults down the phone, followed by an offensive email with an invitation to pay and threats of small claims courts.<p>In light of all that, I have zero problems with someone else moving in fast to break things.