Why was my Lyft driver account DISABLED
I started driving with Lyft in the Washington DC area back in the summer of 2015, things were great, at first, easy sign up process but kinda long compare to Uber. I think this whole car share concept is quite cool, either you have a car and few hours a week to spare or be full time with it.
I have had a pristine driving record with lyft, with ratings always higher than 4.9 stars which is considered EXCELLENT by lyft.
But this month, January 2016 and during the blizzard that hit the US northeast, Washington DC has seen the worst of it with over 2 feet of snow.
I drive a Toyota Camery 2014, so driving was quite a challenge, but I didn't drive during, I waited till it has gone through.
I went back on the road after two days, snow every where, horrible roads condition, snow cleaning was slow causing traffic to be at it's worst.
I signed on my lyft driver account, started getting requests, the problem is when you get a request, the lyft app gives you an ETA based on the distance only, it does not factor in the extra time caused by traffic, for example, you get an initial ETA of 7mn and the pick up location could be 2 or 3 blocks away, but when you switch to GPS to start heading to pick up your passenger, it shows 20 to 25 mn.
So it happened with most rides requests I got that night. I guess with the roads conditions and public transportation running slow that day, the demand for rides was extremely high. So what I would do when I see that it will take me about 20 mn on average to just go pick up my passenger, out of courtesy, I would send a text message to the ride requester to tell them that my ETA is long and if they can cancel and request again for a closer driver to their location, and they end up canceling. But because lyft doesn't have as many drivers, the app would still dispatch drivers even if they were far.
After a while that night, I received a text message from lyft stating :
"Lyft alert: You've exceeded our limit for ride cancellations, and we've had to suspend your driver account."
I was shocked when I read it, but then I thought it could be temporary and it was just their algorithm, it would allow me back into the system later on. Nothing happened the next day so I wrote an email to lyft support to find out about my account status and explaining the reason behind those cancellation.
In their reply, they seemed to have ignored my side of the story and told me that their decision was final.
It was so frustrating and disappointing to hear that from lyft, they have not even consider my driving record with lyft and how well I did with all my riders, you would think that will get lyft to appreciate the value and contribution we, great drivers bring to lyft by getting customers to trust the company, but it doesn't seem to be true.
I wrote them again, and still waiting on their reply. All what I can say to lyft is they were unfair and they have lost one awesome driver to Uber.
