Taxi drivers and car hire services would have been cheering after an outage on Uber's system on Friday night knocked the ride-sharing service out of action.
For about two hours on Friday evening - one of its busiest nights of the week - Uber customers in Sydney were unable to book a ride through the mobile app.
Disgruntled users who were left stranded by the service vented their frustration on Twitter, coining the term 'ubered' to describe their predicament. The hashtag #ubered was trending in Sydney.
UBER APP IS DOWN! #endoftheworld my cab driver doesn't know where Mrs Macquarie's Chair is. @Uber_Sydney we need you!— Kirsty G (@kirsty_gilfo) April 17, 2015
"Sorry for the delay. We had some trouble connecting but should have you moving shortly," read a message that greeted Uber app uses when they tried to log in.
@Uber_Sydney can't log into the app, is it down? pic.twitter.com/DoVc0iwqdW— Eddie Cliff (@eddiecliff) April 17, 2015
By 8.30pm Uber still had not responded to complaints from customers on Twitter, which started about 6.30pm.
@Uber_Sydney what hell is going on with your app. Talk about messing an evening up!— Niki Glastras (@AndroGee) April 17, 2015
UBER SYDNEY - no apology tweet for thousands of customers being let down by their app being down today WTF ? #ubered NEWS - yep not to us ;)— Russell (@freespeaktweet) April 17, 2015
Uber Singapore's Twitter account responded to a Tweet from one customer, saying "Yep, we're experiencing an outage right now. We'll let you know as soon as it's back up. Sorry about that!"
Car hire service OnTap took advantage of Uber's misfortune, reporting an "unprecedented demand" for its own ride-sharing service.
OnTap's Twitter account replied directly to people Tweeting disgruntled Uber users and offering their services.
Hi @kondro we are experiencing unprecedented demand - but we're getting everyone to their destinations. Have emailed you.— OnTap (@ontapsydney) April 17, 2015
Brilliant real-time marketing by @ontapsydney due to @Uber_Sydney #app being down & no comms from them. Opportunity knocks #nimble— Temi Lasade-Anderson (@temilasade) April 17, 2015
The disruption came one day after taxi drivers were ranked eighth on a list of the worst Jobs of 2015.
The US Jobs Rated Report, who put together the list, said taxi drivers had Uber to largely thank for their ranking because the service had carved out a massive slice of the market.