My one brief experience trying Lyft

[cos]

We're going to the airport. Unlike in Boston, the trip to the airport in Seattle is long and annoying with public transit, so if we have large bags we drive or take a cab. Maybe we could try Lyft this time?

I open the App store on my iPad and search for Lyft. Uber app pops up as first hit; no Lyft app. Oh, maybe they only have an iPhone app, and the app store is stupid... I change preferences to look for iPhone apps, and there it is. I install it.

Open up the Lyft app, and it asks me to enter my phone number, which it will verify with a text message. I enter the number of my Android phone and it just does nothing. Maybe this is one of those ridiculous apps that verifies by sending itself a text and checking for it automatically, which of course can't work on iPad because you can't SMS an iPad? But it has a "log in with Facebook" option, worth a try.

Try logging in with Facebook. It complains that there's no Lyft account associated with this Facebook account, so I need to create one first, using a phone number.

I'm not going to use an app that can't be used on my iPad at all, but maybe I can register on my Android phone and then log in to the same account on the iPad? I find the Lyft app for Android and install it on my Android phone.

Open up Lyft on Android, again the prompt for a phone number, but this time it suggests a number! Without looking, I say yes, and nothing happens. I try again, nothing happens. Then I realize - wait, this is not this phone's number! This is the phone number of my old Treo phone!

Okay, so I reject the suggested number, and now it prompts me to enter one. I enter my Android's phone number. It turns red and the app complains, "please enter a valid phone number". I double-check the number, it's correct. Try again, same thing.

We call a taxi company, and they take us to the airport.

P.S. Does anyone know of a decent app-based taxi/rideshare service we could use in Seattle? In Boston, we use fasten, but they're not in Seattle. Uber has been too loathsome a company, I'd feel too icky using them. Lyft's app is crap. Anything else we could try?

Comments

[ckd]

That's really frustrating. I've had good luck with Lyft, but I signed up with the iOS app (which may get better attention from the devs) on a phone with a number that's never not been with a traditional wireless carrier (Verizon, then ported to T-Mobile) rather than a Google Voice/Project Fi number so I probably got the best-tested normal code path there is. I've never tried using the app on either Android or my iPad, though.

I'm really unhappy with Zipcar, who proudly announced their one-way service in Seattle a couple of years ago and sometime this year silently stopped providing it. That was by far the best way to get to/from the airport from Ballard IME; I could usually do it in a 30-minute minimum reservation by picking up during the 14-minute early grace period, so it cost $5.30. ReachNow and car2go charge $5 just for using the same WallyPark garage Zipcar does.

[tylik]

FWIW, I've been using Lyft on Android (as have most of my labmates - I dropped Uber a while ago, and then bullied most of the other senior members into doing so during the big everyone drop Uber kerfuffle a bit ago - we use ride services a lot when we're at conferences, so it's a thing) and I haven't seen problems. I'm interested in the hypothesis that it has to do with the phone number type - I have a long held t-mobile phone number (it's a long story). I used them not infrequently when I was last in Seattle, which has ride sharing, which was nice. (Cleveland doesn't, but then Cleveland fares are still fairly cheap.)

Re: Lyft

[cos]

The phone number my Android Lyft apt insists is invalid is a T-Mobile number I've had since 2012.

Later, after we called a cab, I noticed that it did send an activation code to my other phone (which can't run the app, it's a Treo), and I was able to use that code to get through to the next screen on the Android app. But I didn't try to see if I could link it to my iPad, I was pretty fed up with it by that point.

[nacht_musik]

Once again, you are cos! No one but you can use fasten anymore, at least not in the USA; they suspended operations earlier this month: http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2018/03/05/fasten-shut-down-boston

fasten shutting down

[cos]

Oh no! Terrible news :(
We last used them in January.
Now I guess we have to find another service for Boston, too. Any suggestions?

[drwex]

I'm trying to understand the value of using these apps and services over a traditional cab company's services. Clearly it's imposing a cost on you; are the rates so much better that it's worth paying this additional cost?

in Houston I used zTrip, a cab-calling app. Similar are Taxify and TaxiCaller. Each of them imposes a surcharge that I found annoying, but since the company was paying and most of the cab services have signed up for zTrip I still use it from time to time.

[vvalkyri]

Weird. I used Lyft on my iPad long before I had a smartphone