Iris - A Ride KC Partner

Are you kidding me? I have a ride scheduled to pick me up at 3:00-3:15. I keep getting notifications saying my ride can’t be fulfilled, I called the number asking what’s up with that, and they say “yeah, a driver has picked up the ride, but it won’t be there until 3:47! That could update, yeah, it just updated now, now it’s saying 3:50.” This is information I don’t have. I can’t see that, all I see is pickup time: 3:00-3:15, arrival time: 3:33. Where did that time go, I don’t know. Customer service is rude and snarky, they keep changing my pickup spots, so now I was to walk NOWHERE NEAR where I said I wanted to be picked up. Drivers cancel your rides, even if they’re looking dead at you, one driver snatched my card out my hand and tried to manually type in my information. I had to snatch it back to get it back. Seriously Iris, don’t hype yourself up, if you aren’t actually any good. They also, never drop you off at your drop off spots. Every time I call customer service about this, they blame me. Every time, without fail. Never once, have I ever written a review but this, is the worst app ever. 0/5 if I could.

Having taken several trips with Iris I will say this - it works - It is cheap With that though come drawbacks, and for anyone who has used any of the big rideshare apps, they will seem very frustrating. - You will have to walk - You will have to wait - You will have only a 15 minute window letting you know when your ride will arrive, and no real-time telemetry. Generally, they show up at the end of the window in my experience. This last point is what I find most frustrating. Any modern transit app should have vehicle telemetry. Even the bus tracking apps have this. The lack of information leaves you standing on a street corner for 15 minutes or more. Eventually, a car pulls up. So, if you can live with these points it works. I understand what they’re going for, essentially a bus-taxi hybrid. Even with that model though, there are improvements that could be made to make the user experience much better.

So this app was created, mainly for the Gladstone area whenever our KC Metro bus system was taken out of Gladstone. And two weeks ago they allowed rides outside of the Gladstone area. And I just got off the phone with them and they informed me that they are not offering rides outside of the Gladstone area if your pick up location is in Gladstone like got so messed up like how are you gonna be taking away the transportation option that was put in place because our best system was taken away. Like this app really does need to do better because there was a lot of people relying on the app to be able to go to places outside of Gladstone, and it’s especially irritating. When rides were available literally like 4, 5, 6 days ago and now they’re not and we’re not even being notified of these changes like who’s making the changes. Like I was using this app to help me get back-and-forth to work to a good paying job so I could save up to get a car and now they have taken that option away from me and now I have to not work there and now I have to wait longer to get a car because now I have to find a new job.