Empower - Your ride, your way

I am extremely disappointed with Empower and the repeated safety issues l've experienced using this app. One incident involved a driver who parked across a highway instead of coming to the correct pickup side even though I have ordered rides to this exact location several times and drivers always arrive on the proper side. When I texted him asking where he was and pointed out that he was across the highway, he responded, "This is where it took me." I had to run across a highway to reach the car. That is extremely unsafe and unacceptable. Another time, a driver placed all of my bags on the ground instead of handing them to me or assisting properly, which was unprofessional and disrespectful. Most recently, a driver hit a curb while driving straight, popped his tire, and ended the ride early. He told me to order a new ride and did not complete the trip yet I was still charged full price. I had to walk 15 minutes to work and pay for a ride that was never finished. I have messaged customer support multiple times about these recent incidents and have received no response. The only time I received a reply was about a lost item a month ago. There has been no accountability and no refund for a ride that was not completed. I have never had this many problems with drivers until using Empower. Between the safety risks, unprofessional behavior, and lack of support, this experience has been extremely frustrating and disappointing.

I’ve been using this app for 2 months, it is cheaper than the competitor and it’s good the driver keeps the entirety of the cost. The biggest problem with this app for me is that the wait times are not accurate and i’ve had experiences with drivers not moving for many minutes. For example, it will say driver arrives in 4 minutes but 7 minutes pass and the driver is still nowhere near, other times driving away from my location, and even have cancelled when arriving to my location. This makes the app very unreliable for me, especially if you’re in a rush. I’m not sure why this is a big problem with Empower and not as much with other apps. When you cancel the ride because of these things, they don’t even give you an option to select why you canceled and immediately charge you a $4 cancellation fee. This is not always fair. They also put a hold on your card for a higher amount than what the ride is and they claim it’s for the tip (they do end up adjusting the amount later on) but when you leave the tip it’s a separate charge. This doesn’t make any sense as to why they’d hold a higher amount if the tip charge is separate. This app would be great if these things change.

These people are ridiculous! I’ve been using empower for a while, and then one day when I try to book a ride, they randomly tell me my account has been locked due to fraudulent activity. I review my rides and see they are all accurate, no fraud. I email them telling them my rides are correct and there is no fraud and they say “ Your account has been locked due to suspected fraudulent transaction activity and is subject to deactivation. Please note, Empower reserves the right to take steps necessary to reverse or undo the impact of any fraudulent transactions. If you wish to provide any information, please do so by responding to this email.” I respond telling them there isn’t any fraudulent activity and the rides are correct, so I have no information to provide. They then respond saying “ Unfortunately, we can only advise that we are unable to unlock your account at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” I keep asking why and they won’t give me any information at all, just telling me they can’t unlock my account and can’t provide any further information at this tune. It’s extremely frustrating because I’ve used them often, and I keep telling them my rides were all accurate!! It’s not like a filed a dispute with my credit card company or something. They just locked me out and won’t let me create a new account for no reason!!