I wrote in this post about the ‘green light’ system that Blue Bikes uses to confirm for a customer that a rental has been closed out. As I wrote (ranted?) in some detail, although the green light is all we customers get, the system doesn’t officially recognize it as a closure. This asymmetry leads to a predictable problem – customers will have trips remain ‘open’ long after the mythical green light and Blue Bikes will treat these open trips like stolen bikes until the matter is resolved.
This problem has come up for me a few times over the years. If I aggregate all the time I’ve spent on the matter, I’d get somewhere around three to four total hours. I’ve had my membership for just over four years so to be even more precise the time I’ve spent is just under an hour or so a year. This time comes in the form of sending emails, calling customer service (and waiting on hold), and sometimes walking from one station to another in a bumbling attempt to solve my own problem.
I’m writing about this topic today because just recently I had my annual encounter with this longtime issue. Historically, I usually don’t find out about the problem until I go to rent a few hours after I’d docked a bike. At this point, I’ll have my key rejected and the familiar thought runs through my head – here we go, I have an 'open rental'. These days, I know the fastest way is to call customer service. Most of the time, I’ll learn that the problem is ‘a system issue’ related to a station not relaying and distributing rental information correctly across all docks. Sometimes, I proactively provide this explanation over the phone and I’m often told that I’m correct – I’ve had this problem so many times I bet I could train the customer service team on its intricacies.
Anyway, after I clarify the problem, a little investigation reveals that a station where I’d recently closed a rental was ‘down’ and therefore all bikes docked in the station have not had their trips closed out. We’ll close it out now, sir! Great, I respond with the enthusiasm of a vegetarian unwrapping a box of cured meats on Christmas morning. I usually stay on the line until I've confirmed the closure processed (by being able to take out a new bike).
My most recent encounter with this issue came just at the start of summer. It was a rare moment for me because I needed to get somewhere. Naturally, my bike key was rejected for the first time in months. I called in and explained the problem – it’s a system issue, you see – but this time, I couldn’t get the trip closed out. My phone call rose prodigiously through the ranks of the customer service hierarchy until I ended up on the phone with The Supervisor. He was knowledgeable and he was eager and he was a patsy. I felt bad for him – his role in this organization was to enforce an inanity and most people have to dumb themselves down quite a bit to carry out such a function with any effectiveness.
His solution to the problem I had explained to him was to have me walk across town, almost twenty minutes away, to see if the bike I rented was in a specific station. I stayed on the line while I walked and he shared a variety of other sources of system trouble to kill the time. I filed these notes away in what I'm sure will someday become an internal Blue Bikes FAQ (including that rodents sometimes ate through the wiring of these docks and caused system outages). He knew so much that apparently there was no room in his brain for any relevant information – like how, as I learned later, there had been a massive system problem that same day which had impacted close to thirty stations.
Of course, at the time I just walked and walked and The Supervisor talked and talked, neither of us coming a step closer to solving the issue. I reached the next station and confirmed that my bike was not there at which point I was able to get my trip ‘paused’ so that I could take a new bike. The Supervisor concluded the call with an unconvincing remark that I should expect to hear again about the ‘next steps’ regarding my now 'lost' rental.
It was too late for my plans so I got on my new bike and rode back home. I had very little going through my mind until a moment of inspiration took me to another station I had used much earlier in the day. Sure enough, I found the ‘missing’ bike I’d just been instructed to look for docked at this station, right where I'd left it much earlier that afternoon. I called back into the customer service line ready for a fight. Alas, the fates connected me to a person who somehow knew even more than me and she informed me of the major issue the system had experienced throughout the day. It was very regrettable, I was told, that I had been asked to walk across North Cambridge when there obviously was – and I mouthed this next part as she said it – a system issue.
