Thread by @frodofied

1/ That feeling when all the walls have closed in and are about to tumble down is not pleasant. I have been here before, three or four times in life perhaps.

But I was younger then and better able to withstand the pressures. I was more able and more willing to fight the fight.

2/ I have been driving for Lyft in their Express Drive program since June. It has been a bad experience that has slowly gotten worse and, recently, suddenly gotten much worse. I doubt it's a coincidence that this sudden dip coincides with my sharing my experiences here.

3/ I have struggled from the beginning with how to pay for gas and tolls while driving when I had no income to support such costs and with LYFT withholding all of my earnings until the weekly $275 rent was fully paid.

It's been a horrible cycle.

And it's almost broken me.

4/ I have spent so much time worried and afraid that it's caused my health and mental state to further decline.

Last week was not a particularly good week for me. I was very sick from Christmas through the New Year and was unable to safely drive through most of it.

5/ Lyft's Express Drive week runs Monday - Sunday and as the 5am Monday morning deadline quickly approached I felt that familiar twinge of dread start to overcome my spirit.

You are expected to get at least 20 rides each week no matter what. If you do not get 20?

6/ They make you return the car. No matter what. You can still rent from them usually, but just not that day. They make you return the next day to get a different vehicle. In my case I had to travel 60 miles each direction, each time and hope someone could drive me back.

7/ Trying to maintain a positive attitude about life during this whole time has been a challenge.

So, as Sunday approached I was still too unwell to drive. I tried on Friday and Saturday to drive and managed to get two rides in toward my required twenty. That left Sunday.

8/ 18 rides in one day is a huge challenge. Especially when you live 50 miles from the nearest metropolis. But Sunday is a busy day, and I've managed it before.

And I gave it all I had, but, as usual, chance and error confounded me. Ugh

But the Lyft app itself was my undoing.

9/ At 7:30 Sunday morning I had a scheduled ride. I completed that ride at 7:53. I had been online for only about 35 minutes. That time is important.

I then drove back home and attended church before setting out for the rest of my rides.

10/ Lyft requires a mandatory six hour break after 14 hours of being online. Not driving necessarily, only having your app open and on. I am always conscious of this limitation and have never come close to running over my time.

11/ At midnight on Monday morning I had to complete seven more rides and while that number seems like a lot, I have a backup system in place to help ensure I get the required number of rides in before the 5 am deadline. This involves having friends "hire" me for rides.

12/ A few friends here have helped me do this a few v times including @Only4RM and @dcasapwarren. They've each saved my skin this way.

At 1245 i got a passenger going all the way to Elgin. This was good for getting enough i cover my rental fee, but bad for my ride count.

13/ But i knew could still do it and after completing the ride rushed back toward Chicago.

I found it troubling that i was getting no rides after about an hour. But then i noticed my app was off. I couldn't believe I had made such a mistake with so much on the line.

14/ I immediately turned it back on, only to have it switch itself off moments later. This back and forth continued for some time until received the following text at 3:05 am.

15/ I was flabbergasted. There was no way i was approaching 14 hours. At most I around 10.5. So, now after 90 mins of fighting with the app I was realizibg that I had only two hours to go to get 5 more rides on a platform that wasn't allowing me to even turn its app on.

16/ Though i understood the fruitless nature of trying to contact driver support at Lyft, I gave it a go. I almost wish I hadn't, because when I finally reached an agent I was sure within 30 seconds that I was being forced off the platform.

17/ I explained that it was impossible for me to have gone over 14 hours because, and here I shared with him my day. He put me on hold briefly and then came back and informed me I had been online for long stretches of the day that I had not. Some of which my phone was even off.

18/ When I objected he began simply repeating the policy over and over until i gave up. So, defeated, with only 15 rides and still $89 short of the rental fee, I began the 1 hour and 15 mins drive back home at 4 am.

How much worse could it get, I shrugged?

19/ Well, it turns out it can get much worse. I slept through most of Monday. It had become a familiar ritual. Drive drive drive on the weekend and then collapse.

It wasn't until i woke up and then got up, not necessarily at the same time, that a new reality came into focus.

20/ When I looked at my phone I almost lost it. Notification after notification from Lyft, none of them good and each worse than the last. The first (expected) informed me that I had not fulfilled the required 20 ride minimum and would need to return my vehicle immediately.

21/ Then I was reminded that I did not earn enough from my rides to cover the rental costs and that $88 would be deducted from my account.

Then I learned for the first time that my account had three toll invoices that would be deducted today.

Invoices totaling almost $1400.

22/ Now, trust me that i didn't not pay $1400 worth of tolls in the last six months. If any went unpaid it was a fraction of that and happened because no one informed me of this "service" either casually or officially. Not a word.

23/ As these three invoices, all of which went straight to my Spam folder( because HertzTollProcessing... sounds, um, fake), show almost half of the total are "convenience fees."

Totally convenient, yeah.

24/ But the best was yet ro come.

First, let me state that prior to this year I had not been involved in an accident and had not received a traffic violation ticket in twenty years. I also want to note that I have a 5.0 rating on Lyft and have maintained that for 550 rides.

25/ Bearing that in mind, I received the following email from Lyft yesterday.

It indicates that because of two accidents that showed up on my driving record my status as a driver w/ lyft was now under review.

That review was very quick and apparently required no input from me.

26/ The thing is that these two accidents, both of which were actual accidents, one of which was probably mostly my fault and the other of which was the best possible outcome of a horrible situation that might have caused great harm, both happened while I was driving for Lyft.

27/ Lyft has known about both of these accidents for months and both were reported directly to them within minutes of their happening.

I logged into my account this morning to learn I have been "deactivated," from Lyft because of information that they have had for months.

28/ All of this occurred in a period of 24 hours and are not mere coincidences.

I had started a gofundme in order to get my own car to allow me to get off the express drive program. But now that effort took a giant step backwards today.

I am out of ideas and hope.

29/ I really don't know how to fix any of this.

But i love all of you who tried to help me through.

Tonight is not a good night for me...not a good night at all.

XO

@frodofied