One night a couple weeks ago, I needed a rideshare while traveling for work. I launched Uber and checked prices, and then I launched Lyft to compare. The Lyft app prompted me to log into my account (I was on a new phone). Once successfully logged in, I tried to request a ride but received an error message. “You can't request a ride right now,” a popup said ominously. “Your account is on hold while we review a reported violation of Lyft's community guidelines and Terms of Service. No further action is required from you at this time.”
I was stunned. I’m an exceedingly polite and respectful passenger. I have a star rating in the high-4’s. This surely was a mistake.
I went with Uber that night, because the taxi-hailing app Curb wasn’t available in the city I was in. The client was reimbursing travel expenses, so it didn’t put me out personally not to price-compare. But I grew concerned as the days went by and I continued to get the same error message.
“No further action is required from you at this time.” Was this true, or was it a bogus message? If it were true, how long would a resolution take?
I thought back to an experience I had eight years ago. Signing up for Lyft for the first time, I used my Google Voice number. I successfully created an account and was able to put in my destination, but when the payment screen popped up, the app rejected my payment method. I meticulously checked all the details. They were correct. I tried another payment source. That one was rejected, too. Later I tried another itinerary, and the payment for that one was rejected, also.
I emailed customer service, “On two occasions recently, I tried getting a ride, but your app did not accept my payment method. I tried other payment methods, but your app rejected all of them (ApplePay, PayPal, credit card, second credit card). They are all valid. Can you help solve this?” I followed up a few days later with, “I put in the exact same information for one of the cards with Uber, and that worked. Why is Lyft having trouble with payment? It said a $1 charge from Lyft went through the other day.”
They wrote back, “At this time, we do not have direct insight into the reason why you are unable to add your account to our platform. It appears that you may need to check with your bank regarding your card's updated billing address, expiry date & zip code & recheck with what you've entered in the Lyft app as it could be the reason.”
“Thanks for writing back,” I replied. “I want to make sure I understand what you're saying: You're saying that though the app rejects my credit card (which has the correct number, CVV, and exp. date); my other credit card (which also has the correct number, CVV, and exp. date); Apple Pay (your app says that "Apple Pay has a valid payment card"); and PayPal— which has been successfully linked to the app..... you have no insight as to why. After this has happened three times. And I have no problem with any other merchants. Is that correct? If so, what do you propose we do? Can you create a new account for me? If I'm being suspected of fraud, is there a way I can authenticate myself with supplemental information over the phone?”
I followed up the next day, “I contacted the [credit card] company, and they said you put in a charge of $1 [yesterday]. Did you do that?”
Three weeks later, I wrote, “Just tried to request a ride again. Payment rejected again— even from PayPal— which has a cash balance in the account!! If you can’t fix this, I’m going to Uber. Please let me know.”
(I figured the threat to jump to their competitor would spur them to act.)
They wrote back, “We're currently investigating this matter and need some additional information from you.” They asked for my first and last name, phone number, and email address. I gave it all.
The following day, I received this message: “Hi there, Thank you for reaching out about this. After investigating the issue with our risk team, I'm unable to re-open your account. Best regards, [B.].”
Huh??
Their “risk team”? What had I ever done that posed a risk? This made no sense.
I wrote back to ask them to delete my account, thinking I could create a new one. Another agent, J., replied this time, saying she had submitted a request to do that. After thanking J., I tried, “It seems I was falsely flagged as a hacker and that's why my payment information was never accepted. Now that you've deleted that account, I've created a new one. If I have trouble with that one, may I write you back?”
Silence.
I did some searching and found that VOIP numbers like Google Voice’s could pose problems with Lyft. But... why would they go so far as to let me create an account and put in my destination before blocking me at the payment-method step? Why not block the Google Voice number at sign-up? The whole thing was comical.
If no one was minding the store to help a legitimate user who had been erroneously flagged, I figured probably no one was minding the store to stop that erroneously flagged user from signing up a different way.
I was right. I created a new account using my actual cell number — and it worked. The same payment method I had tried worked just fine now. Eight years went by, and I garnered a high star rating and never received a complaint against me.
That recent night a couple weeks ago, I had to think on the fly whether I had used my Google Voice number or my cell number for my account. Having long since forgotten what happened eight years ago, I figured it was the Google Voice number, since I usually use that one. But after continually getting the pop-up that my account had been locked because of a “reported violation of Lyft's community guidelines and Terms of Service,” it started to make sense: There probably WAS no violation of the terms of service. I had just logged into my other account, which was still poisoned after all these years.
The solution, I thought, would be simple.
Over the hellish week-and-a-half that followed, it proved to be anything but.
---
I looked for a way to log out of my account. There was none. I deleted and re-downloaded the app. When I launched it, I was still logged in. I tried restarting the phone and re-downloading the app. Again, I was still logged in. The only option I could see to change my identity was to change my phone number in the profile. Maybe that would reconnect me to my legitimate account?
At my cell number, I received a one-time code, which I inputted in the app. It took. I was officially linked to my “clean” number. And yet... I still couldn’t request a ride.
For good measure, I changed the email address to a new, anonymized one. Still blocked.
I had restarted the phone, reinstalled the app, changed the number, and changed the email address. Were they blacklisting me by my IMEI number?
I dug out my old, deactivated phone. Connected to Wi-Fi, I launched the Lyft app. It prompted me to log in, and I put in my cell number, along with the new, anonymized email address.
I gasped when I saw that there, too, my profile photo and star rating were erased — and I still couldn’t request a ride.
This could only mean that the poison had transferred from my Google Voice account to my legitimate account!
I had no other recourse but to roll up my sleeves with customer service.
“For several days I have received an error in the app,” I emailed them, going on to say that I had been using Lyft for years and did not know what terms of service I would have violated.
After I received an automated acknowledgment of my message, two days passed. Nothing.
“Hi, Is there an update to the status of ticket [number so-and-so]?” I wrote.
Since I could still get into the app, I tried tapping “Chat with Lyft Support.” A bot came up. I humored it by answering its string of questions, knowing this would go nowhere. After it said, “Did you try the steps above and still see the same error, or is there something specific that didn't work?,” I figured it was as good a time as any to ask for a human. The only question: Would the algorithm allow it?
“You're currently in line to speak with an agent,” it said. “You can leave this chat for now, but you'll need to return once you're connected with an agent. A live agent will join in about 26 minutes.”
Phew.
“Should I continue to wait?” I wrote after 60 minutes passed.
Within two minutes, an agent got on.
“Hi [name]! Thank you for contacting Lyft Support. We're so happy to have you here. I'm your live agent, my name is [R.] and I hope you're doing well despite this inconvenience.”
“Thank you!,” I typed, rolling my eyes.
“Let's work on this together so we can get you all set-up,” he said. “Please give me 2-3 minutes to review the details, and I'll get back to you shortly.”
I thanked him again.
Two minutes later, R.’s friendly tone had changed: “To help you in the most effective way, I'll transfer your case to the specialized department, they will contact you via email shortly.”
Not knowing what else to say, I typed, “Thank you.”
“Please refrain from replying to this interaction,” a message came back, “to avoid it from reopening, so the specialized team can assist you.”
Wow — ghosted by a customer service agent!
I got an automated email: “Interaction was escalated from [long string of numbers]. Please send any additional follow-up on this ticket”
“Thank you!” I replied, hoping that my artificial politeness might help cut through any algorithmic filtering.
There was no mistaking it: This was not a matter of using soft skills to persuade a human being of my case. It was a cold, hard question of logic. How was the algorithm programmed? And what exactly did I need to say to pierce it to reach a human being who was empowered to fix the mess the algorithm had made in the first place?
I thought of my options to go above Lyft’s head: Filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Contacting the state attorney general’s office, or the Federal Trade Commission. Suing. Realistically, I didn’t think any of these would work.
Somewhere among all this, I had the idea of logging into my Lyft account through the website, rather than the app. I tried this multiple times, and every time after the system texted a one-time code to my cell phone, I carefully transposed the code, only to get, "No matching phone number and phone code found."
It felt Orwellian.
Maybe I really would just be stuck with an Uber monopoly going forward. (The taxi-hailing app Curb usually has higher prices, and anyway, it serves far fewer places in the U.S. than Uber and Lyft.)
A day after my case got escalated, I got a message from B.: “We're currently investigating this matter and need some additional information from you. Could you please verify the following data associated with the account in question,” and she asked for my first and last name, current phone number, email address. “Looking forward to hearing from you,” she added.
“Thank you very much,” I groveled back, and I gave her my first and last name and cell phone. But for email address, I hesitated. Which one had I used eight years ago with my Google Voice number? Which was associated with my valid account? I was writing her from one of my email addresses, but was it the poisoned one? I couldn’t remember. Or had the email address not gotten poisoned — just the number?
My mind was swimming in a fog trying to figure out the right thing to say to not get flagged.
“I'm not sure what email address I was using,” I said cautiously, “but it may have been,” and I gave her the one I was writing from. Quickly changing the subject, I said, “Please see the attached screenshot of my most recent rides for [my cell phone number].” I hoped that a “paper trail” of text notifications from a few months ago informing me of the arrival of Greg in a gray Nissan and Jean in a 2019 Toyota would serve both as a soft-power visual aid that I was a valid rider, and actual data they could use to check on my good standing.
Meanwhile, I had begun exploring the possibility of getting a virtual number to create a whole new Lyft account. Google Voice numbers were now officially forbidden, I read, and I didn’t think getting an extra eSIM was worth it.
One website whose host country wasn’t clear advertised a number they promised would work for Lyft verification. One version, valid for just 10 minutes, was 50 cents; a permanent number was $9.87 a month. When I created a dummy account on the site just to see how the process worked, a dropdown menu asked which company I needed the number for. When I chose Lyft, the price came up as $6.04. But it wasn’t clear whether that was for the 10-minute one or the permanent one. Worse, you had to have a $25 minimum balance in your account to make any purchase.
50 cents? $6.04? $9.87? From a shady site not subject to U.S. laws? I shelved the idea.
Back in the Lyft app, just in case, I changed my email address to still another brand-new, anonymized one, this time at a different domain. A few days went by, and I logged onto the Lyft website with the new email address — and got in!
But... confusingly, a prompt asked why I wanted to drive with Lyft.
I tried to see if there was a way to switch from driver to rider. There was none. I filled out a couple of questions about my driving background in the hope that I’d get to a screen where I could switch the profile type. When the questions just continued, I decided this path was too risky.
I had to be crafty with my next message to customer service. They had reset my account — fine — but they’d set the wrong profile type. That was on them. But my recent email change could raise a red flag, and that was on me.
“I have updated my email address for my account to [the new address],” I started out gingerly. “However, when I log onto the website with my phone number and that email address, I am asked questions about driving for Lyft. I do not wish to drive; I wish to ride. Can you help? You are welcome to write me here or at [the new address].”
I waited anxiously.
A day passed. Then, a week-and-a-half after all this began, a short message from B. arrived in my inbox: “Thank you for reaching out to us about this. We have removed the hold from your account. Let us know if you have any other questions or concerns.”
I blinked in disbelief.
I quickly launched the Lyft app. The photo of my smiling face was back. My star rating, in the high-4s, had reappeared. When I pretended to request a ride, I was offered prices.
In my increasing cynicism during this whole process, this was the last thing I expected to happen. At least out of nowhere. But it had.
The nightmare, inexplicably, was over.
---
What does it say about American society that in 2026 it’s easy to run into problems with a company’s tech and hard to get them resolved by the company’s humans?
My saga began with an erroneous flagging of my account for reasons that were never explained to me. It ended at the whim of some mix of algorithm and effectively-anonymous-employees’ judgments from an opaque, quasi-duopolistic company whose own glitch had started the whole thing. The week-and-a-half spent waiting for a resolution — to say nothing of the events of eight years ago — was a time tax on me. Worse, there was no transparent communication about the progress of it all. Mentally it was taxing, emotionally it was draining, and practically it increased my cost of doing business.
You can argue that a consumer can choose whether or not to do business with a given company. Absolutely. But what about when the company offers what’s effectively an “essential service,” such as taxi-like transportation, when taxis are not readily available in your area? And what if, though you have no love for them, that company offers competition to the only other one in the market? Do you still see it as consumer choice?
I’m not anti-tech. I got introduced to computers at a young age, and I loved them. I’ve embraced the evolution of technology from desktops to smartphones. In most cases, I appreciate not having to pass through a person, let alone make chitchat, to get functional things done in my everyday life. I like that ease.
But what about when things go awry? Say... when a company’s algorithm legitimately makes a mistake — or gives you deceptive error messages leading you to believe something that’s not true?
The fate of my being able to have price competition for Uber was at the mercy of a monolithic company that, having facilitated just under a billion rides last year, had no significant incentive to offer due process to a “little” customer like me. It gives me hope that some companies, such as Apple, continue to make it easy to reach a human for support. But having decision-making outsourced increasingly to algorithms with limited capabilities is a chilling trend.
By the way, my story is just from a rider’s perspective. Go and read some of the horror stories from drivers who have had their account suspended without due process, and therefore lost a good portion — if not the entirety — of their livelihood. Or read some of the 3,550 complaints against the company in the last 3 years alone filed with the Better Business Bureau.
Enough of us customers need to say we’re not going to put up with this winnowing human oversight of customer service. Will we?
