A Week in the Silicon Valley: "Funny" Lyft

After spending a week in the Silicon Valley, it was time to go back home (I was eager to see my wife and kids). As I've done many times before, I requested a Lyft to take me to the airport: I was going to take a plane from the San Francisco International Airport back to Seattle. Just to be fair, I've used Lyft countless times and every time I had an impeccable service, usually with very nice drivers. This time turned out to be very different!

My Lyft arrived, and the driver barely spoke any English at all. Like, just a few words with a very thick accent. Nothing against that, when I arrived in the United States from Brazil my own English was just like that. However, it made so that it was quite hard to communicate with him. Once we were on the move, things started to get... strange. First, the driver asked if I was going to the San Francisco International Airport or the San Jose International Airport. That's weird, because you pick your destination on the Lyft app and there is no need to say where you're going. I confirmed, repeatedly, that I was going to SFO. After that, it followed a very broken conversation where he was asking how I was "going to pay for the trip". That was even stranger, given that you pay for the trip through the app. After I repeated that answer a number of times, he finally said that "Lyft money no good", and we left it at that. I may be completely mistaken (and I'm sorry if that is the case) but my impression is that he was trying to tell me that I needed to pay extra if I wanted to get to the airport. In any case, he didn't speak a word to me anymore afterwards.

Once we got to the highway, he did something that honestly made me feel uncomfortable: without saying a word, he turned off his phone.  He didn't put this phone in the lock screen, or switched apps, or anything like that: he purposefully turned off his phone (to be clear, that was the phone that was displaying the Lyft app) and then removed it from the car mount and hid it away. At that point I checked the Lyft app on my own phone and I could see that the map was showing the car location as being stuck at the point where his phone was turned off. So... Lyft wasn't tracking us anymore.

Frankly, I should have said something at that point. But I was tired, I was catching an early flight so it was really early in the day and I hadn't slept much, and I was just looking forward to be back home. I should have said something but I just froze. A quite uncomfortable time passed and we finally got to the airport. He stopped at the departures area, and I (very quickly) gathered my things and got out. After all that heavy silence, he just said "Give five star and good tip" in a less than welcoming voice. I just barely spoke "yes" and got the hell out of there.

Once inside the airport (and in view of security guards) I checked the Lyft app. It still showed that I was in the middle of my ride. I couldn't find any button in the app that would allow me to say that the ride had finished, so I just gave up, checked in my backpack and went through TSA. After that, I got to my gate and only then I was prompted by the app to rate my ride, signaling that the ride had finally finished. I rated it as one star (the minimum rate possible) and marked the ride as "unsafe".

That triggered a process in which I received multiple messages from Lyft. They asked (always via text messages in the app itself, not via regular texts) if I was safe (yes, I am, thank you) and what had happened. I repeated the whole story above a number of times and received an interminable succession of apologies, we care very much about your safety, we're very sorry, etc. However, for all the lip service, the only consequence that seemed to have happened is that I will not be paired with this driver again. That's it. I still had to pay for the trip (with no discount), I didn't get any coupon for future trips, and I haven't heard anything about that driver, who may be very well still driving people around.

One practical advice I can give people from this situation, then, is to get to know the "panic button" in the Lyft app, as I found out later. As you see in the picture, when you're riding a Lyft, there is a "Safety Tools" button at the bottom. If you press that, you can contact ADT (the security company hired by Lyft) to call or text them that you are in a difficult situation. You can read more directly from Lyft. Next time, I will not hesitate to speak up and use the "panic button" if needed.