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Have You Ubered Your Way There Yet?

Imagine a great evening catching happy hour at your favorite neighborhood establishment.  Chiming from your pocket, you hear the familiar sound alerting you to a text that finds a handful of friends at the trendy new spot across town.  Wondering how to get there, you glance over to see the tired old list of taxi numbers, a handwritten paper taped to the wall.  Before dialing, you remember that this is the Twenty First Century, there has to be a better way than calling the same old cab!  Meet Uber, a tech savvy independent car service designed to get you there for cheaper and nicer.  Available in major cities worldwide, a ride is a few taps away. With investors chomping at the bit for what is becoming one of the most often discussed IPO’s for 2015, the speculations are running rampant for the $41 Billion dollar valued private company.  Investors think that ride-sharing is going to be worth many times more than the entire cab industry.

Over 14,088 cars are already running in New York City alone, 501 more than 13,587 registered Yellow Taxi Medallion cabs. With your neighbors operating as private contractors in their own vehicles, this disruptive mode of transportation is seeing an upswing in interest as a viable source of income.  A pickup truck, a weekend and a home improvement superstore seems to invite opportunity for the entrepreneurial minded.  Anyone living in a tourist town should consider thinking about the possibilities already sitting in the palm of your hand. Available from the Google Play app or the iTunes store, access to ride on demand technology is literally moments away on your digital communication device.

Is it the hippest new way to get around town? The residents and visitors to Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to think so.  Drivers have their fair share of entertaining stories and experiences. Setting the scene for your Go-Pro and other webstream footage, this could be a live preview of next year’s reality tv and game show circuit.  Riders get lucky too.  We have already seen a handful of celebrities such as Miami Dolphins defensive tackle A.J. Francis, Deadmau5, Liam Neeson, Jimmy Fallon and Nick Jonas surprise travelers as personal chauffeurs, making that snapchat with Morgan Freeman seem pale in comparison.  Want to arrive in style? Then there is UberX, and UberSelect for when you just must have the luxury vehicle experience by getting picked up in an Cadillac, Mercedes or BMW. And then there is UberSUV for when you want a Hummer.

So far, the demand for an alternative locomotion solution is prevalent. The reasons why you need to get there are numerous.  Simple question? Simple solution.  Needing a way home from sports practice, suburban soccermom has a new play to get kids home from after school or the park on those days when there are too many errands to make.

Uber isn’t the only game in town. The copycats to the industry are already here. Offering service alongside and in non-covered areas, will competitor and rival company Lyft be this sector’s Pepsi?  Conan O’Brien even opened his talk show with an impromptu segment bit in a Lyft car riding around LA with rapper turned actor Ice Cube and comedian Kevin Hart.  It is hard to beat free advertising from Team Coco. With operations ramping up in nearly every city and town, we are witnessing a niche market going mainstream.

In certain areas drivers are registered with both Uber and Lyft at the same time, therefore it is considered bad etiquette to book both services concurrently on the hope for a faster pickup.  On the most part, they will know if you did.  It’s all in the app.  In the taxi business, this is referred to as stacking calls.

Your friends are waiting for you. Your new ride is just around the corner.  Click the app, and for less than the next round, you could be where the action is.  You can say you “Ubered it there.”

In case you are looking for a promo code that will get you a free $20 ride, you can enter promo code 9UZUI

Simply download the app from the mobile app store and set up your account. After you have done this go to the menu and select “promotions”. You can enter the code 9UZUI and get a free $20 credit. Now you are ready to Uber!