> Anyway I have very few good experiences with these services
For me, and a majority where I live, this is applicable to taxis. Which were known for being dirty, late, expensive, prone to attempting to rip you off, if they turned up at all, etc.
Outside of surge charging (in which they are more expensive) ubers are by and large either cheaper, or the same price. With the difference being that 99% of the time if you request one, its going to turn up. And when it does turn up, you know what your going to pay, not have them take a wrong turn at some point and by "mistake" and decide to charge you double. Or tell you they take card and then start making claims about how suddenly they can't etc.
Sounds like europe gets the bad end of the stick in this regard.
Yeah here in Spain the taxis are great. They're plentiful, cheap and efficient. The city is kinda a mess and the rideshare drivers have to drive a route mapped out by the app which often is not optimal. The real taxis know the city well. I think this is why the rideshares are unpopular and thus there's not many of them leading to the long waiting times. They're also spread between different providers, Uber is popular with the tourists only and the locals mostly use Cabify (a local company).
However in Romania on the other hand many taxi drivers are scammers or even criminals (one of my colleagues was robbed by one of them). It's also because the maximum taxi fares are too low to actually make a wage so I can kinda understand so I always tip really well (like double the fare or more which is still nothing). Though if they try to scam me they don't get a cent of course.