TL;DR the reservation system is absolutely unreliable, and without the Uber Pass, is just not worth it.

I’ve been using JUMP bikes and scooters with the Uber Pass for a few months now, and the free 30 minutes a day absolutely made it worth it for me. There were a couple of issues though. Frequently I would encounter bikes with non-working e-assists. Even more annoying though, I would go up to bikes and scooters (I would check that they were available on the app), try to reserve them, and get hit with mysterious errors that they weren’t reservable. The issues seemed to have gone away over time.

I got an email in November telling me that the Uber Pass program was going away, and there was no replacement. Oh no!

Now, bikes would be $3.00 + tax to reserve, with 2 minutes free, and $0.15 a minute after that. Scooters would be free to unlock, and $0.33 per minute. I was thinking, this wouldn’t be so horrible. The other scooter companies in SF are running about $1 to unlock, and $0.29/minute, so if I have a short ride, the scooters are still a good deal. The JUMP bikes I would use if I was going a longer distance, or needed to carry something in the basket.

One particular rainy day though, the reservation issues came to a head. I kept walking up to bikes, and 3 in a row just came back mysteriously with “Cannot reserve.” I ended up walking an extra 6 blocks in the rain to get a bike, which was really frustrating. And the bike didn’t actually start, the lock was open and when I tried to power it on, the app would fail. I pedaled 15 minutes with a heavy unpowered bike in the rain. I couldn’t even complain since technically my ride never started. Later in the night, I tried to get 5 scooters in a row, which all came back with that error. I ended up walking the 7 blocks instead in the rain.

These are really just not justifiable customer experience if JUMP is not free anymore. I wouldn’t recommend JUMP for now unless one happens to be right next to you.