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NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) – It’s a case of David and Goliath and who was here first.
Two Austrian sisters who started the Manhattan-based Uber Inc., a graphic design company, have had enough of Uber, the car service company.
In the past few years, Uber has taken off in New York City. With similar names, people often call the wrong number to complain about a variety of issues, all directed at the wrong people.
“We started to get sporadic calls from people who had questions, but as you can imagine over the years it has gotten more and more and now we get about 20 calls a day,” said Herta Kriegner.
Uber Inc. employs 3-5 people on any given day. Uber boasts thousands of employees around the world.
Unfortunately, for Uber Inc., you can’t have a patent on a corporate name.
“We ran into those guys a few years ago at a trade show when they were still small in New York and we explained the problem to them and the recommendation was ‘we think you should change your name because we’re growing.’ Why do we have to change the name?” said Herta Kriegner.
While it doesn’t seem likely Uber will change it’s name any time soon, the sisters say they’re slowly being pushed over the edge.
“I got subpoenaed to appear in front of the Workers’ Compensation board because I refused to pay workers compensation for a driver injured on the job,” said Herta Kriegner.
For now, she’s enlisting her sister, Elena Krieger, a jewelry designer who she shares office space with, to help field the calls.