Is Uber Killing Cuenca? The Dark Side of the App

If you spend more than ten minutes scrolling through local expat forums or listening to neighborhood gossip, you'll quickly learn that Uber is apparently the downfall of civil society in Cuenca.

We've all heard the passionate arguments: It's an exploitative, bloodsucking corporate monster. It's draining money out of the local economy. It's destroying traditional, honest livelihoods. Some well-meaning folks even advocate for a total boycott to "protect" the local ecosystem from the cold, mechanical grip of Silicon Valley greed.

It sounds like a classic, noble battle of good versus evil. There's just one tiny problem: the people loudest about the boycott aren't the ones actually trying to buy groceries in Cuenca.

Let's look at how this "horrible" company is ruining lives — starting with a man named Freddy Josué.

I met Freddy when I hopped into his car for a quick ride home from a friend's place. He's 25, born and raised right here in Cuenca. Thanks to years of hard work and sacrifice, his parents managed to put him through university, and he graduated as a qualified optometrist. He's married, and he has a young daughter who just finished elementary school (escuela básica).

Earlier this year, Freddy was hired by a local óptica (eyeglass store). It was opened by a close friend of one of his relatives, which is how a lot of hiring happens here. But as many expats quickly learn about employment culture in Ecuador, a job description is often more of a creative suggestion.

Instead of doing eye exams, Freddy's boss told him to hit the road. He was tasked with driving a company car to nearby towns, tracking down brand-boosting marketing firms, and organizing teams to hand out pamphlets and set up promo stands. Not exactly optometry, but a job is a job.

Then, destiny took a sharp left turn.

The company car broke down. With no backup vehicle, the store's stream of regional clients evaporated overnight. The employer instantly halted operations and told Freddy that until the vehicle was fixed, he couldn't employ him anymore.

Freddy accepted the blow with the quiet resilience you see in so many young Ecuadorian men. But when he asked for his month's salary, his former boss gave him the classic line: "Venga después, y le pago" (Come back later, and I'll pay you).

Three months later, Freddy is still waiting for that paycheck.

When you are 25 with a wife and a little girl, you don't have the luxury of waiting three months for a rogue employer to fix a car. His wife was bringing in what she could on the side while managing the household, but in Ecuador, reality hits fast.

When income stops, the timeline to disaster is brutal: savings (if any) vanish in the first month, utility bills pile up in the second, and by the third month, debt spirals and desperation set in.

Freddy was completely against the wall. When I asked him what his options would have been without a rideshare app, his answer was chillingly simple: "Nothing. Just waiting to see if I would ever get paid the money I'm owed. There is no work, or it takes a long time to find another job. I would be in heavy debt."

Enter the "monster."

Freddy had a friend, Diego, who was using his own car to drive for Uber. Diego told him it was actually paying off his car loan and keeping his head above water — provided he kept his vehicle clean and his customer service rating high.

So Freddy found a friend willing to rent him a vehicle per day — a tough setup that adds immediate overhead before you even turn the key. Yet, despite renting the car, Freddy's reality completely shifted.

"We earn about $70 on a normal day," Freddy told me. "On a good day, we can make $100."

In Cuenca, consistently clearing $70 to $100 a day — even after paying daily car rental overhead — is an incredibly solid baseline for a young family.

But surely, this is where the corporate vampire strikes, right? I asked him how much Uber takes from his fares, expecting the usual bloodsucking margin you'd find in traditional transport monopolies that leave drivers struggling for crumbs.

"Just 10% of the fare," Freddy said.

Ten percent.

In fact, because of this "horrible" app, Freddy and his wife are currently sitting down to discuss whether they can afford to enroll their daughter in Colegio Suramericano — a prestigious private school in the city.

Freddy's story isn't an outlier. The more you talk to Uber drivers in Cuenca, the more you realize the platform has quietly become something the city's formal employment system has consistently failed to offer: flexibility, dignity, and a real income floor.

Ibeth Maricela runs a small licor store in her neighborhood. Most evenings, her 15-year-old holds down the store while she gets behind the wheel for Uber. The extra income matters — but it's not just the money that keeps her coming back.

"The people who use Uber tend to be a certain type of client," she explained. "They are not problematic or dangerous. I feel secure." Three months in, Edith hasn't looked back. Her Uber hours don't compete with her business — they fill the hours when the store runs itself anyway, and she does it at a level of personal risk she finds genuinely comfortable. For a woman working alone in the evenings, that's not a small thing.

Luis Miguel has been driving for four months. He doesn't do it full-time — he has other commitments — but the extra income fills gaps that a fixed salary never quite covered. "It helps pay for gas and maintenance," he said, "and a little more at home." For him, Uber is exactly what a side gig is supposed to be: no fixed schedule, no boss, and real money on a real timeline.

Three drivers, three completely different life situations. The common thread? Uber absorbed the income shocks that Cuenca's formal economy left wide open.

Here's the context the expat forum debates consistently skip.

Uber launched in Cuenca in November 2025. Within 24 hours, EMOV — the city's transit authority — launched enforcement operations, sanctioning drivers who lacked a título habilitante (commercial transport permit). The penalty: 8-day vehicle retention, a $940 fine (equivalent to two basic monthly salaries), and 10 points off the driver's license.

Here's what the anti-Uber narrative never mentions: the sanctions are not for using the app. Alfredo Aguilar, head of the Municipality's General Mobility Coordination, was explicit: "The app itself is not prohibited. What is not permitted is offering paid transport in a vehicle without commercial authorization." The legal gap is in a decades-old ordinance that was never updated for digital platforms — not in the existence of the app itself.

Meanwhile, the "local alternative" being championed — Azutaxi, the taxi union's own platform — operates under those same legacy rules. The very system the boycott crowd wants to protect has been documented, in community posts and press coverage alike, for meter manipulation (the same route costing $3.00 with one driver, $3.50 with another, $3.75 with a third), route refusals during peak hours and holidays, and pre-ride interrogations where drivers decide whether to accept your fare before you even get in.

One community post, widely shared, put it plainly: "Con Uber al menos no roban." (With Uber, at least they don't steal from you.)

The debate isn't "big tech vs. local heroes." It's "a transparent, GPS-tracked, rated system vs. an unaudited one." And Cuenca's own citizens — the ones using both — are making their choice.

• Uber itself is legal in Cuenca — only unlicensed commercial transport vehicles face sanctions

• Uber's driver fee is 10% of the fare — significantly lower than traditional cooperative structures

• Drivers like Freddy, Edith Maricela, and Miguel use Uber as a flexible income floor that formal employment hasn't provided

• Documented taxi abuses — variable meters, route refusals, holiday absences — are what pushed many cuencanos toward app-based transport in the first place

• Regulatory reform is the real need: a modern permit category for digital transport platforms, not a boycott that removes income from the people it claims to protect

• The next time you feel the urge to jump on a high horse and boycott a service based on internet rumors or town myths, consider looking at how things actually shape the local economy.

  For many young, industrious families in Cuenca, these apps aren't an existential threat — they are the only safety net that actually works.

  The real question isn't whether Uber is killing Cuenca. It's whether Cuenca is ready to update rules written for 1995 to match the reality of 2026.