It was announced yesterday, by Transport for London, that Uber would lose its operators license in the UK’s capital from October, stating that the firm is not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license. Responding to this, the new Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, has emailed employees saying there is a high cost to having a bad reputation.
In the email, the Uber CEO wrote:
“While the impulse may be to say that this is unfair, one of the lessons I’ve learned over time is that change comes from self-reflection. So it’s worth examining how we got here. The truth is that there is a high cost to a bad reputation … Irrespective of whether we did everything that is being said about us in London today (and to be clear, I don’t think we did), it really matters what people think of us, especially in a global business like ours, where actions in one part of the world can have serious consequences in another.”
Khosrowshahi reiterated that the company will “vigorously” appeal the Transport for London’s decision to revoke the company’s license but that it should also build trust through its actions and behavior in order to become more acceptable, given is awful track record so far.
Following the decision, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, tweeted out to followers that an innovative service like Uber can’t be run at the expense of the safety of Londoners.
The timing of the ban couldn’t have been worse for Uber. A day before the announcement, one of Uber’s biggest rivals in the UK, Gett, announced a partnership with Citymapper to bring Black Bus 1 to the streets of the capital.
Source: International Business Times
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