One of our Montreal correspondents writes:

Just tried [Uber] today for a small round trip … going in went fine, coming back I was stopped by the Montreal Taxi Police. They were online monitoring cars moving on the Uber page and when we moved to a certain corner they stopped us.

They took my info and gave me the steps to get the money back. The Police Officer was guiding me on the app actually. Told me the driver will stay with them for a while and asked me to leave and find a different service or use Uber taxi which they showed me on the app. Got my money back in less than an hour though.

The driver received a big fine which uber will pick as I understand. So these guys operate illegally in areas till this area changes its laws and the pick heavy fines for the sake of market penetration. A very weird model but interesting.