Sunil Paul, John Zimmer and the Art of the Lie

While Sunil Paul (photo, left) certainly deserves credit for creating the original lies, imaginary factoids and false advertising that helped peddle his product to a misinformed public, it would be remiss of me not to give Lyft President John Zimmer (photo, below) his share of the credit for fraudulent marketing – especially in light of the fact that Zimmer appears to be succeeding where Paul failed.

Indeed, it's hard to draw a precise line where one high-tech shyster starts and the other leaves off. If one of them came up with new scam, the other would soon borrow and use it himself. In the end, they both have imperiled the public with similar bogus claims.

Paul rightly takes the credit for:

• spuriously using the word "rideshare" to describe his faux taxi service.
• falsely calling Sidecar's fares "donations" then blackballing any passenger that didn't donate.
• being among the first to redefine a "sharing community" as being an anonymous group where one person keeps all the profits while others in the community take all the risks and pay all the bills.
• Inspecting vehicles to be used as Sidecars by having the new drivers upload a photo of their vehicle.
• taking the lead in Greenwashing by claiming that putting out thousands of taxicabs with no emission controls would help reduce green house gases.
• creating a smokescreen (deliberate bad pun) by joining numerous environmental organizations to hide the fact that his company was a major polluter.
• telling the local mainstream media's "journalists" that SideCar carried a "Million Dollar Guarantee" so that these dedicated, in-depth "investigators" wouldn't bother to investigate and thus discover that Sidecar actually carried no insurance at all.
• telling his own drivers that they didn't need to carry commercial insurance on their own SideCar vehicles which meant that they would be uninsured in an accident – as of course would their customers. 

John Zimmer aped most of Sunil's spins and added a few twists of his own.

The Media Catches Up With Lyft, Sidecar & Other Illegal, Faux Rideshares

Here are links to recent media articles concerning the hazards of riding or working for Lyft , Sidecar and other illegal taxicabs (see driver in photo). These posts are a welcome sight after a year of unabashed adulation by techie rags like TechCrunch and the local papers. Did I mention uncritical?  Most of the coverage could have been written by the marketing departments of the fake carsharing corporations. The less-than-intrepid reporters did little more than take down bogus statements of Lyft CEO John Zimmer & Sidecar CEO Sunil Paul et al like brain-washed groupies quoting their gurus.

(To read the articles click below)