Gira. Bicicletas de Lisboa

I love the idea of Gira, and the bikes are mostly great. However, the app has many bugs that make it difficult to use. I’ve used it for years but recently just got an “unknown error” when I tried to login, even after resetting my password. I uninstalled and reinstalled the app and now it works. Other bugs I’ve experienced is it slow loading, the app crashing if you lock your screen and unlock it again, and it simply not unlocking the available bike. If the app had fewer bugs, more people would use it and Lisbon would have less traffic and happier people. People would make gira shirts and hats because they would love it so much. I’d love to see it happen.

After solving many problems with the login system, I finally got this to work. Unfortunately, the daily pass expired after 24 hours, and it was not possible to renew (even though I had topped up my account). I have since discovered that you must subscribe to the daily pass each day - including another €300 deposit each day! As I am a tourist who wants to ride for several days (and the daily pass is my only option), I would theoretically have to submit €1500 do ride for 5 days. Each deposit is returned, but each €300 deposit will take up to 5 days to be returned. This is crazy - developers, you need to fix this. Please make it possible to use one deposit for as many days as each person wants to ride - requiring multiple deposits is not reasonable. This doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Really wanted to give this a try, but the sign-in process is terrible. First, the sign-in form asks for “Vat”. No idea what that is. The only Vat I know is the British term for sales tax but is makes no sense for the seller to ask that to the buyer. Then, over and over the process would tell me that the account could not be created because I had entered info existing in another account. Tried the option to recover the account instead, and the system told me that no account existed with that data. Frustrating waste of time. Something is very wrong when you can’t even register a new customer. I use 3 other bike rideshare systems in other countries and the registration and usage has always been buttery smooth. Such a shame. EMEL, you have some fixing to do here.