While my story is anecdata I wonder if it speaks to a broader issue: I'm an Uber super-user. I used uber 400+ times per year in 2015, another 400 times 2016, and then again 400+ times in 2017. Then my rides per year went to 0 in 2018 and 0 in 2019 so far. It wasnt about price, the app just became too buggy to the point of being unusable. The customer service became unresponsive. I simply switched to Lyft/Careem/Via.

Certainly this didn't just happen to me. I wonder how many people are in my situation and how many users Uber has lost. It is nice they are devoting engineers to far-flung projects like food delivery, helicopter rides, ML-as-a-service projects (Michaelangelo), and GPU Databases (AresDB) but I honestly just wish they would fix their main money maker -- ride hailing.

I know this sounds like a sob story, but here are real points:

1. Cant add a credit card, just get a generic error. No error code that I can give customer service, just a generic error.

1b. For a while, didnt even get a credit card entry form, just the stupid green scanner box to photo-scan the card, which didnt work on any of my cards despite me having a top of the line iPhoneX camera

2. Cant add any credit cards no matter how many I try. Reach out to customer service and I get a generic response "I see you cant log into your app."...umm no. I'm already in the app adding a credit card obviously I can log in.

3. CAN add credit card, thanks for customer service, probably only because I started adding Dara Khosrowshahi
@dkhos on my irate twitter messages....but when I try to hail a ride, "Payment Failure" regardless of how many cards I try. This is the worst error, because it is a silent runtime failure ...who wants to risk those when you're at the airport desperately needing a ride.

4. Pickup locations stale (SFO Airport changed ride hailing to the roof of the airport. Lyft immediately updated their app but Uber had stale pickup locations. Lyft had a service rep standing at the pickup location helping customers with the transition, Uber was nowhere on this -- in their own home city airport!)

5. Customer service provides useless generic responses and never closes a ticket. I understand customer service was outsourced to another company, which I wont name.

6. I'm a VIP customer in a sense. 2000 rides in a short period of time! Come on...if you are going to ignore people at least see if they are an early adopter / megauser and court your top customers!

7. Tried the pre-pay option using multiple cards...Bam! Payment Failure. Please take my money!

8. Within the span of a year in 2017, I used Uber multiple times at airports in SF, LA, NYC, Singapore, Taiwan. Given all the ML prowess at the firm, don't they realize I'm a price-insensitive business user? Come on...this is the cohort you want on your platform. Didn't all the ML segment me into the most valuable cohort?

Sometimes I feel like i'm trapped in some bad A/B test they are doing. I even tried to delete the entire account and start anew with a new email and new credit card, but it almost seems like my name itself has been blacklisted. No response from customer service.

If Uber/Lyft were public companies, i'd be shorting Uber and go long on Lyft. I love both, but I can already see the disarray.