Bolt: Request a Ride 4+

I have had several Bolt rides now , mainly to and from airports but also some to collect my car after servicing it. I feel I know the setup good enough to write a review. The plus points are that they are reasonably fast to respond to my requests and l can see where the cars and drivers are on the app. The bad points I have encountered are that some drivers just sit in their cars while I , an 75 year old man has to struggle with my 15 kilo luggage to put in the boot of their car . That trip was yesterday from Uxbridge to T5 Heathrow. There was a slight drizzle of rain then. I feel that should not be the case. Have any if you experienced that? I would like drivers to help out not bloody well sit inside their cars while customers struggle to load their luggage . Helping a customer is the least that you can do. When we arrived at T5 , he again did not get out of his car but l had to take my luggage out of the back of his car! I am in Santorini now after just arrived . The Greek driver greeted me and others in my party , took my luggage up some steps , loaded our 4 pieces of luggage, drove us to our apartment , then unloaded our stuff. He was pleasant and talkative unlike the one who drove us to T5 . What a contrast in civil manners! Bolt should reach their drivers some of those simple manners. I will have more to contribute when I visit Budapest , Rome and Sorrento to see what their drivers are like in comparison to our UK ones.

Bolt has a lot of potential with the great prices it offers compared to Uber. However, I’ve had several trips in a row now in LONDON at peak times where there are no drivers available to pick up. I’ve waited 20, even 35 minutes, to have someone pick up the ride, then have to cancel and use FreeNow or just take public transport and accept being extremely late from these apps failing. No one wants to take the drives or if they do, they wait til waiting times time out and the prices go up due to the “demand” once or twice, til the same nearby drivers finally accept. Even scheduling rides is extremely expensive and still heavily unreliable, as no one may pick up your ride til 25 minutes after your scheduled time, will take 10-15 minutes to get there, and will still charge you for every minute you take extra even if THEY ARE LATE ON YOUR OWN SCHEDULED SLOT 🙃🙃🙃 Feels like an absolute scam, waste of money, and especially of time. These companies need to communicate better with their drivers and incentivize them to take more rides; otherwise, they’ll be losing A LOT of customers from their terrible reputations. I’m so close to deleting the app and will def stop recommending friends to use it if these things don’t change.

I actually have no words. i’ve done about 80 trips using bolt from a range of places. overall, the service hasn’t been too bad. the issues that i have had over that period of time, has mainly been that the drivers don’t seem to arrive at the pickup spot which means i have to walk to them but i get charged extra for the waiting time. also, some drivers are asking about my personal life a little too much which is weird but i don’t know if that’s just a taxi issue in general. i also found that with bolt, the original agreed fare almost never is the amount that i actually end up paying in the end. recently, i booked a bolt and i felt quite unsafe. it was 5ish in the morning. the driver yet again, was not at my pickup point. it was still dark outside. no apology, nothing. he kept saying weird things which made me uncomfortable. and didn’t even end up dropping me on the right side of my location. i contacted bolt support and they offered to reimburse me 30p for my waiting time fee that i had been charged. it was so uncomfortable and awkward at the time. keeping in mind, usually im on call to somebody whilst im in taxis because i feel safer but at that time; nobody was awake on a sunday morning. yet when i contacted bolt support, they didn’t even bother to ask me anything more. they just mentioned being reimbursed £30p and that they can’t do anything else