Bits: Avis £9.99 one-way rentals, Zipcar one-way rentals, Hilton Visa / Uber deal

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• Nick says:

  23 Mar23 March 10:03

  OT:
  Anyone struggling with seeing their Amex contactless journey’s on the TFL website?

  Never had a problem, until my Amex Plat expired, i removed it and added the new one – and now cannot see any journey history at all

  • Alan says:

    23 Mar23 March 10:14

    Showing up OK for me last week, including historical data from before I added the card to my account.

• Roberto says:

  23 Mar23 March 11:04

  O/T but cab related I noticed a £10 Addison Lee promo offer attached to my BA amex today.

• will says:

  23 Mar23 March 14:16

  can anyone please tell me how long the Hilton Gold lasts once you get to £10k hilton Visa spend in a calendar year?

• TGLoyalty says:

  23 Mar23 March 14:25

  Love Uber it’s so easy when you are on holiday or in a city you don’t know.

  Driver takes advantage or drives you half way round the city you have proof rather than getting the wool pulled over your eyes. Only issue is places where data costs an arm and a leg.

• Jchand says:

  23 Mar23 March 14:40

  When uber stop the slave wages, start paying U.K. Tax , and have fleet insurance rather than relying on a guy earning 60p a mile paying for his own expensive hire and reward insurance then maybe I will use. Not until then.

  • Andy says:

    23 Mar23 March 15:26

    I can’t see them holding a gun to anyone’s head to work for them.
    But hey, don’t let that stop your rant

    • Jchand says:

      23 Mar23 March 17:21

      Not ranting Andy just got a different moral compass to you.

  • Rob says:

    23 Mar23 March 15:32

    To be fair, the driver gets 80%+ of the money and the driver is paying tax and NI. Uber wouldn’t be paying tax anyway, even if it didn’t funnel the money offshore, due to its massive losses.

    Same with Amazon – it loses so much money that it is actually irrelevant where it books (sic) its revenue.

    There is a whole generation who are growing up without experiencing the joys of smoke-filled minicab offices with dodgy clapped out cars and drivers who often didn’t turn up. Which is good news. I would be very surprised if those guys were earning more than they would via Uber (what cut does a minicab firm take? More or less than Uber’s 20%?) and the drivers can’t log in and off as they please. These guys also paid for their own insurance etc as they do with Uber.

    • RussellH says:

      23 Mar23 March 16:22

      Uber have lost their case in the industrial tribunal, though, implying that their drivers are not, as they claim, self-employed.

      If Uber are happy to lose so much money, surely they could afford emploers NI, holiday pay, maternity leave etc too?

      • mark2 says:

        23 Mar23 March 17:59

        Do many of the drivers want to be employees with the inflexibility that that involves?

        • RussellH says:

          23 Mar23 March 18:57

          Clearly the ones who took Uber to the industrial tribunal do want the advantages of holiday pay, maternity leave, redundancy right etc. Plenty of people like the security and reliability of income of being an employee.

          Other Uber drivers I heard being interviewed at the time liked it just the way it is, but I suspect that they cannot have been wholely dependent on Uber for their income.

      • mark2 says:

        23 Mar23 March 18:53

        Did not a similar tribunal rule that a supplier to Pimlico Plumbers was entitled to employee benefits although he provided his own van etc. and was registered for VAT?
        Do they operate in a parallel universe?

    • Fenny says:

      23 Mar23 March 18:51

      Amazon are opening a warehouse where I live. So they will be paying business rates and employing a bucket load of people, who will all be earning and paying tax. It’s easy to complain about Megaglobalcorp not paying tax, but they still provide employment. If Amazon don’t pay as much as all the other local logistics warehouses, they won’t get the staff.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        23 Mar23 March 22:35

        Surely if UBER didnt earn the driver the same as a Black or Mini Cab they wouldn’t work for them either?

        My take on it is its a free market and people are free to offer their services to those that offer them the best package.

        These tribunals are interesting as the self employed are happy to do it when times are good, as take home wages are usually higher, but when the sh*t hit the fan they want to claim being an employee.

        In my experience you can’t have the remuneration and the benefits there’s always a trade off.

      • Jchand says:

        24 Mar24 March 04:09

        Maybe so but how do companies that pay their tax in the U.K. Compete . It is not a level playing field.

        Was there not an article in the FT ( or another) saying that Uber subsidies rides in the U.K. Around the 50% mark. .

• RussellH says:

  23 Mar23 March 16:18

  O/T but interesting:

  An article in The Week, quoting The Guardian, saying that UK based airlines could not only be forced to move their legal base to an EU country if/when the UK leaves the EU, but that they may have to force some UK shareholders to sell up. Apparently, to be allowed to fly between two different EU countries, an airline must have both a significant base on EU territory and a majority of their capital shares must be EU-owned.This even affects Ryanair, as once UK shareholders are excluded, only 40% of shareholders are EU entities. EasyJet could be better off at 49% EU owned, if they are allowed to include Stelios (UK + Cypriot nationality apparently).

  • mark2 says:

    23 Mar23 March 18:55

    On Brexit I would regard the Guardian to be as even-handed as the BBC.

    • Anna says:

      23 Mar23 March 19:48

      What about Swissair and Norwegian?

      • TGLoyalty says:

        23 Mar23 March 22:41

        The EU in this context is actually the EU, EEA members plus Swiss as they are part of the common market / free trade of people.

        The current plan for Brexit seems to be for us to leave all of that and be wholly independent and control our own borders/trade policies.

        Ofcourse there’s a negotiation process and all of this is probably open to discussion

      • TimS says:

        24 Mar24 March 01:58

        Norwegian also has an Irish AOC (Norwegian Air International) and a UK AOC (Norwegian Air UK), and is in the process of seeking an Argentinian AOC as well (Norwegian Air Argentina).

        However, Norwegian & Swissair are included in EASA as, in addition to the member states of the EU, the countries that are part of part of EFTA (i.e. Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Iceland), have been granted participation under Article 66 of the Basic Regulation.

      • RussellH says:

        24 Mar24 March 10:48

        I cannot comment on Norway (though others have below), but I do know about Switzerland, being a Swiss National.

        CH / EU relationships are governed by a huge number of bilaterals, which in theory are separate, but in practice if one agreement breaks down, there is potential for the whiole thing to collapse. For the last two years the Swiss Government has been tied up in knots trying to reconcile the constitutional change voted through over two years ago banning ‘mass immigration’. This is clearly completely incompatible with the bilateral agreement with the EU guaranteeing free movement. There will be two new referendums on the matter soon, one to re-inforce the banning clause and one to completely remove it from the constitution.

        I do not imagine that our beloved UK government is expecting anything like this in their negotiations with the EU, but perhaps they should be.

• the real harry1 says:

  23 Mar23 March 20:32

  Laptop ban:

  Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at security think-tank the Royal United Services Institute, said: ‘This risks being seen as a form of pointless ‘security theatre’ which causes great disruption with little benefit to aviation security.’
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4341482/Germany-Switzerland-Spain-snub-UK-s-cabin-gadget-ban.html#ixzz4cBPsDwgk

• WilliamPH says:

  24 Mar24 March 00:10

  O/T – Has there been any update on the integration of Fairmont and Raffles Hotels into the Accor Hotels loyalty program? I’m looking at booking some of the deluxe Rocky Mountain hotels (Banff, Jasper, Lake Louise), and the site tells me I won’t get any points or benefits from my Accor membership. If I’m lobbing out 400 pounds a night, I’d like some benefits back. I’m wondering whether to enroll in Fairmont’s Presidents Club – has it got much longer to go?

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