I will never use Lyft again, and will advise others against using them, too. This explains why:
I sent this to Lyft just now:
We set up a ride on the evening of 10/24 for the following morning. The driver never showed up on 10/25. We only got a text message that no driver would be coming an hour after he/she was supposed to arrive. By then we had already driven ourselves to the airport and had to park in long-term parking, as it was the only option available to us. It cost us $91 (receipt attached). The ride would have only been a few dollars, as we live within two miles of the (Monterey) airport. We should be refunded the $91 we had to pay for parking. Send the check to:
Clay Shannon
[my address]
Monterey CA 93940
…and I included a copy of the receipt, showing we were charged $91 for 7 days of parking.
Will Lyft pay up? I will let you know what happens either way…
And by the way, we couldn’t get hold of them (via the Lyft app) when our ghost/zombie driver was late. Nobody answered. So we did not know what was going on — was the driver on his way, or what? The driver was supposed to pick us up between 3:55 and 4:05 (Tuesday, 10/25), but it wasn’t until 4:44 that we got a text from Lyft that no driver was available — after confirming the night before that someone would come.
UPDATE
Lyft responded to me with this email response:
Hello Clay,
Thank you for contacting Lyft Support.
In order to look into this for you, please provide the following information:
Your driver's name
Date and time the ride was requested
Pickup and/or drop-off locations
To find these details, see the 'Ride History' section of your app.
I'll be looking out for your reply!
And, after getting the information that I could from my wife, I responded to them with this:
Hello again,
My wife set up the ride. This is what she said:
I never received the driver information. Just a notification that I would receive driver information.
I requested the ride on Oct 24 at around 7:18 pm for 4:00am on Oct 25th.
From 412 Dela Vina Ave to Monterey Regional Airport.
...and here is a combined image of the screenshots she made of her communication with Lyft (attached).
Here is the screenshot:
UPDATE #2 (11/5/22)
After several emails to them, they still have provided no satisfaction. They only continue to write back to the original email address (which I told them is not as reliable as another one) saying I haven’t responded — when I actually responded (from my other email address, to which I forwarded their email) to both their general support email address and the ticket-specific email address.
It seems they are just stonewalling so I will eventually give up. And it will probably work, because what else can I do?
You can bet every dollar in your wallet, though, that I will actively campaign aghainst Lyft from now on. I will recommend any other method of getting a ride. Take Uber, take a taxi, pay a friend or acquaintance to drive you, just don’t take Lyft.
This is the latest thing they sent, and my response to it. If anything changes, I willl updated again, but I think I’m stuck in an endless loop here.
I have replied multiple times from the email account (axx3andspace@gmail.com) I told you is more reliable than this one. I replied from there both to your general support email and the issue-specific email address. You had to have gotten at least one of them.
-- B. Clay Shannonbclayshannon@att.netOn Nov 5, 2022, at 2:03 AM, Lyft <support@lyft-new.zendesk.com> wrote:
##- Please type your reply above this line -##Our support team recently reached out to you, but we haven't heard from you yet. Please reply to this message if you need assistance. Thanks!This email is a service from Lyft. Delivered by Zendesk
UPDATE #3 (11/10/22)
I finally got a reply from Lyft that actually sounds a bit promising (although STILL replying to my on-again-off-again email address, after requesting multiple times to reply to a different one):
We’ll see what happens after my wife contacts them…
UPDATE #4 (11/18/22)
My wife corroborated what I had told them, and gave them all the information they requested. That was several days ago, and we haven’t heard from them since.
The rift between us and Lyft remains in effect. I will steer people away from Lyft from now on.
UPDATE #5 (11/22/22)
There has been no further contact from Lyft. Apparently, they have “closed the case” and are just hoping we will forget about it. Sadly, that’s pretty much what will happen, because we’re at a point where we’re thinking, “What else can we do (other than simply steer people away from using Lyft [no pun intended] whenever possible?”). So it’s another case of big business running roughshod over its customers, basically with impunity — similar to when Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Groceries (is there such a term?) raise their prices precipitously and know that you will growl but bear it because you can’t stop driving, taking your meds, or eating.
Unless Lyft does contact us again, this will probably be my last update to this post.