Imagine for a moment you got into a taxi and instead of the meter, he had an hour-glass with tick marks on the side and a bike odometer. Would you feel secure about what you're being charged?
Most of the Uber drivers use iPhones, which (especially the older models) have notoriously bad GPS. If it skips off to the wrong street for a few blocks and adds 1/4 mile to my trip, and I don't notice by staring at his screen, how would I know? Normally, I trust the cab company because that little meter is tracked, registered, and supposedly regularly audited.
Phone-based GPS, really?! They probably should be taken to task by weights and measures.
But why is Uber even metering the trip distance? If they incorporated the destination address to the booking, they could calculate an exact price based on time of day/projected congestion/etc. Then they'd have even better consumer protection than a taxi cab (where the driver still has an incentive to go a more expensive route).
They know your start location because you call them there. They use GPS to determine your end location, to save time.
Uber doesn't really even publish a rate schedule for how much you pay, and it doesn't have stable prices. They go up during periods of high demand, for example. So it's unclear why you'd object to the GPS, except to mess with them; you don't know what you're going to pay in any case.
So make the destination address optional while booking, and if given you'll get an exact price ahead of time. This doesn't exactly conflict with demand pricing either - Uber just has to be a bit smarter ahead of time.
The fundamental problem is "you don't know what you're going to pay", and I'm not surprised they're being called out for that under consumer protection laws. The point of taxi regulation is to prevent people from being cheated on the spot. Uber is in a position to do even better than what regulations are capable of, with market pricing, and they should aim for that.
They meter the trip distance because the faster route may be a lot longer. Charging based on "crow flies" distance would align driver and rider interests, but for those "can't get there from here" destinations, the drivers would be underpaid and perhaps more reluctant to accept the fare.
Peruvian taxis don't run on meters, so you need to arrange a price with the driver before accepting the ride. Taxi drivers usually try to overcharge, especially when confronted by a foreign tourist. If you have no idea how much the fare should be, try reducing the driver's price by a small amount (if the driver says 12 nuevos soles, offer 10). It's always a good idea to ask someone beforehand, such as a hotel receptionist, how much a taxi to your destination should cost."
Most of the Uber drivers use iPhones, which (especially the older models) have notoriously bad GPS. If it skips off to the wrong street for a few blocks and adds 1/4 mile to my trip, and I don't notice by staring at his screen, how would I know? Normally, I trust the cab company because that little meter is tracked, registered, and supposedly regularly audited.