Well, so much for my first (and possibly last) try.
I had a 6AM flight out of Reagan, staying in a hotel in East Falls Church, a ten-minute walk from the Metro. Unfortunately, I learned last night that the Metro doesn’t start running until 5AM, and the first train wouldn’t get to the East Falls Church Station until 5:10, upon which I’d have have at least a 27-minute trip to the airport, not counting time to switch trains in Rosslyn. In other words, I had to find a different way to the airport.
I’ve never used Uber, but it’s, shall we say, been in the news, and a Washingtonian friend recommended it in a DM on Twitter. I signed up last night, downloaded the app, and opened it up to check it out. It gave me a search window, into which I typed the hotel address. It came up on the map, but with no indication what to do next. I tapped on the screen and instead of asking me for a destination, it jumped to a different departure address a mile or so away. I dragged the “pin” back to where it needed to be, and it finally opened a new window to destination. I put in “DCA” and it came up with a reasonable fare and time, and said that there was a car two minutes away, and did I want to go? Since my flight was several hours away, I ignored it, but left the app open in the hope it would still be ready to go in the morning.
OK, come time to leave, I open the app, and it insists on starting from scratch. OK, I’ve got a few minutes, I can do this again. But this time, the map comes up in a smaller scale, not showing me the neighborhood, but most of the district and north Virginia suburbs. I try to focus it with my fingers, and all it does is move the departure point to some random address, without a scale change. Finding the right address with the “pin” is like trying to locate and pick up a single atom with salad tongs. I type in the address, at which point it goes to the right place, but once again without asking me where I want to go. If I touch anything on the screen, it once again changes the address to some random location in northern Virginia. This goes on for fifteen minutes, amidst much cursing (I’ve moved outside of the hotel lobby to spare the ears of anyone else up at that ungodly hour). Finally, panicked, I give up, and ask the desk attendant to call me a cab, which he does.
The cab arrives about quarter after five and gets me to the airport at 5:30. I’d checked in by phone when I got up, but my mobile boarding pass wasn’t TSA pre-check (as I usually get, though I’ve never actually signed up for it). This turned out to be the fatal blow, because the regular line was very slow. I got to the gate just in time to see the plane being pushed away.
Bottom line, had to rebook. Good news: they put me on a non-stop to LA that arrived about the same time as I would have if I’d made my original flight through Chicago. Bad news: I had to pay $75 out of pocket for the changes (I could have stood by for free, but I would have had crummy seats, and not necessarily gotten on the flight at all).
I said I had used Uber “possibly” for the last time. It’s possible that my problems were a result of my flaky phone, so after I’ve replaced it, I may give them another chance. But not before.