Bay Wheels Reviews

I have used BayWheels for a few years. The bikes are poorly maintained garbage, but sometimes, I want to make a one way trip via bicycle, and this is not possible if you use your own bike. Much better to use a city bike instead of locking yours outside the store. Do not ride these bikes if things like “brakes” matter to you. Bent pedals, nasty seats. Docks are often non functional, empty, or full. The best part is when they scam you! “You parked wrong,” said the agent. That’s why they had stolen $25 and change off of my second credit card after the first card declined their fraudulent charges. “I didn’t park wrong, and I have pictures.” “Oh, in that case, sorry for the inconvenience.”

Bought a one-month pass. Bikes generally in poor conditions. On my third ride, a component of the bike’s lock fell off halfway, and I found I could not lock the bike and stop the timer.
Contacted support, was told to flip the seat and leave. But the timer has never stopped since then, so I cannot start any new ride.
It has been 10 days till now (the timer says 228hr), I have called support a few times, but always been told it will be resolved “tomorrow”.
Overall, extremely poor product and support. Supports are just trying to delay the problem, giving out fake promises to end the call, instead of actually trying to solve the problem.

I used the dockless bike yesterday and had a lot of issues.
First, the bike location which showed on BayWheels didn’t have bike at all. This happened twice before I could find an actual bike in the location.
At last, after I locked the bike, the timer was still running. I waited for 5 mins as the servers could take time to refresh. But thetimer was still continuing.
Later I called customer care and was put on hold by the automated voice for 15 mins and then the automated voice asked me if I would prefer to receive a call back as the representatives were busy. After 10 mins, I received an automated call back and informed that their representatives are still busy and can’t be connected and asked me to leave a voicemail. But it didn’t allow me to leave voicemail. It just hung up.
Overall, a very frustrating app and the customer service! Need to fix a lot of bugs.

Recent app update is gigantic. Takes forever to load and they made it like the Lyft app. Makes you authorize a new card charge on every ride, even with a paying subscription, super unnecessary. There are no ebikes in the city after 8 months because they want exclusive rights to make more money off riders. Sickening to see them hold back ebikes for so long. At first it was technical incompetence (batteries started on fire), now they have them ready but it’s just greed. Enjoy seeing a description on every station showing how many ebikes are available. Spoiler alert: there are 0!

The bikes are rusty junk. The seat post wouldn’t stay up. Prepare to get covered in bike grease trying to make it work. The gears are completely impractical. There is no specific setting for 1, 2, 3. It’s a continuous sliding scale with no visual indicator of which gear you’re in. You stop at traffic lights, do you need to drop down to 2nd gear? Good luck finding the right gear until you try to pedal off.

They managed to charge me through ApplePay for the first $2.19. Then harassed me for a week because their transaction for the remaining few dollars didn’t go through. Their rude and incompetent customer service people just send the same automated reply. You’ll have to do all the work to get it resolved.

I’m so sorry I tried this terrible service. They do not deserve to take up so much space in our city. There must be better companies.

The concept is cool but not well thought out. I was left having to pay a $112 charge for a 30-minute ride because of their system.

Leaving Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park, they trucked in hundreds of bikes for festival goers to ride home which was great until you needed to dock the bike at a station just like hundreds of other people and every docking station only took maybe 20 bikes.
I had no choice but to leave my bike next to a docking station after riding to a second location that was also full. BayWheels DOES NOT ALLOW YOU TO END THE RIDE UNTIL YOU DOCK THE BIKE AT A STATION - different from Lime or other ride services. Even after reaching out to support that same night while standing next to the undockable bike, my "ride" continued for 26 hours - even after I flew home to Seattle, BayWheels thought that I rode the bike to Seattle and was still timing my ride.

I reached out to support via email and phone and was told that I would not receive a refund per their policy because the bike was not docked.

I feel like I was ripped off and left with very poor support from their customer service. Very unfortunate.

I love biking but the experience of riding these bikes is truly joyless. Unless you want to arrive at your destination later, more tired, and several dollars poorer than you would have if you’d walked, don’t take one of these!

Every time I have used BayWheels , I have encountered broken bikes, docking issues, etc. but truly it’s the times BayWheels has worked and I’ve actually ridden one of these bikes that I most regret. They are heavy, slow, uncomfortable and not geared to handle even the slightest of sf’s many hills. Rides that should take 15-20 minutes easily take 30+ so riders end up getting charged premium prices. The entire southeast side of the city has almost no docking stations so lots of equity issues too. I don’t recommend!

I rented a bike from SoMa to Caltrain station to catch my train. When I was about to arrive my home in Hillsdale, received an email telling me that I haven't docked it and I’ve been riding it for more than an hour! In fact, I did that just after 7 min. of ride. It turns out that the dock was not working properly. (requires more push than suppose to be.) I immediately called the customer support and they wanted me to return back to San Francisco! She also added i’d be charged $1200+tax if the bike gets stolen. So I had to go to San Francisco for just a little more push!!! I rented the bike to save 10 minutes but at the end of the day, I lost 1,5 hours!

This has to be one of the more poorly managed bike share programs and associated apps that I have used. As an international airline pilot and cycling enthusiast, I have used bike share programs in cities all over the world. This one in San Francisco left me hanging after it took my money. I downloaded BayWheels , followed its prompts at a bike share location, and then after it took my credit card payment, it asked me to then create a login password. I did just as instructed and it confirmed I had met all requirements but then said unable to continue for “Unknown Reasons. Please try again later.” I didn’t have another day to try and their helpline wasn’t able to resolve the problem either. Time and money wasted.

The recent app update made the checkout experience much worse. Now, despite having an annual pass, I need to authorize a $0.01 charge in every checkout. This is fiddly and takes extra time. And, now, when returning a bike, rather than sending an app notification that obeys notification settings, I get an annoying out of band text message.

Update:
There was a recent update to “improve member checkout experience” but there was zero visible change. Still need to go through an unnecessary $0.01 charge authorization on every ride.

I use Bay Bikes every single day, usually 3-4 times per day. The old version of BayWheels displayed so much more key information, making my morning search for a bike easy and predictable.

The new version no longer allows me to see at a glance how much battery charge a parked bike has. I almost always need a bike that’s near-to-fully charged, as I ride fairly long trips. Sure, you can select a bike and then see the charging/mileage range info at the bottom of the screen, but it was so much easier to have the green charging bar as an instant guide.

Also, the way the rack inventories are displayed no longer allows you to instantly see how many e-bikes are among the total number of available bikes. Like the clunky workaround for the disappeared battery charge bar, you can select the rack and get a detailed breakdown at the bottom of the screen—but why the extra step when it was formerly so easy to simply see the exact number of available e-bikes?

I really enjoy my daily commutes and shopping trips on Bay Bikes—it’s one of the unexpected upsides of pandemic-reduced MUNI service. Please bring back the easy functionality of the “old” app, and you’ll make this loyal customer very happy.

I’m a big fan of the bike sharing program, but BayWheels is finicky and difficult to use. It’s not clear how to pay, or how to unlock a bike using BayWheels as compared to a credit card or clipper card. Also, the day pass option does not appear to be available from the kiosk even though it’s advertised on the outside of the machine. The bike share in San Francisco is much more difficult to use than other cities where I’ve used it. On the other hand, there are plenty of bikes around and that makes the system very practical if you can figure out how to use it.

Been using Bay Wheels since it’s inception in SF. When Motivate ran the program the bikes we’re maintained well. Since Lyft took over the quality of breaks, batteries, and overall bikes have gone down month over month.

My biggest frustration recently is they’re promotion of the new annual membership program. I have tried signing up multiple times through BayWheels using Apple Pay, but it won’t register the membership or accept my payment. When I reached out to support they said use the website and that they wouldn’t refund the past few rides I paid for since attempting to sign up for an annual membership.

This is clearly Lyft squeezing every dollar and trying to circumvent BayWheels Store fees.

First I want to say I really love this service and look forward to seeing the number of stations and area served expanded. I have used it over 50 times to date.

The only reason I give it 3 stars is I would like to see better trip planning built within the service. Ultimately it would be great if I could give a start and end point and it would guide me to the closest dock with bikes, provide a bike route taking me to the dock closest to my endpoint and walking directions to my end point. If you could make it support multimodal transportation like Google and Bing maps for the above then even better.

Very often when BayWheels says there are available slots in a dock you will arrive a minute later and it’s full. I’m not sure if this is a data problem or if the conditions change so rapidly. It would be useful to “reserve” a slot in a busy dock in advance so you can be sure you will have place to put it when you arrive.

Also, it would be helpful to support Siri shortcuts so you can do things like set up a command to check for the availability at a specific dock. Then you could “hey Siri...” so BayWheels can verbally confirm that there is space to park your bike at your intended destination without having to take your phone out of your pocket. If you’re wearing mic’d headphones you just ask anything. Good idea, right?

Love Ford GoBike! Yes, I wish there were more stations near me, I wish the docks I wanted to use always had bikes etc - but it’s such a great way to see the city! I have almost 💯 rides from 1.5 months of riding. I ride from north beach to the mission to the panhandle and even sometimes (regrettably) over russian hill. But its a great exercise, great way to commute, its almost as fast as an uber/lyft, I feel like I know SF so much because of biking, and I don't worry about my bike being stolen. Thank you Ford GoBike!

I’ve only been using go bike in San Francisco for a few days but I have extensive experience with bike share systems in other cities and countries. As far as I can tell this is a pretty well organized system with well-maintained bikes and a well working app. On top of that, being able to ride electric bikes in San Francisco is just so much fun! Definitely could use more stations around Golden Gate Park, north beach and generally further south. Keep up the good work.

Ford GoBike annual memberships have changed my commute (and life) for the better! The ease of unlocking, the benefit of getting 10 Alaska airline points, and the confirmation that I locked the bike properly after: all huge selling points.

I ended up signing up for the service on a computer because it wasn’t as easy to sign up with a corporate discount using the iPhone app.

Spending a few months in SF for school and got the Bay Wheels membership. Such a fantastic way to get around the city; it’s better than walking and is almost always faster than taking an Uber.

I also joined the Bike Angels program and was able to earn points that I redeemed for weekly membership extensions. Highly recommend joining (it’s free), as you can also redeem for Lyft ride credit and other nice rewards.

For $30 I’ve had 2 months of unlimited free bike rides everywhere - can’t get much better than that!

Don’t let negative reviews fool u. This is an excellent app and I used it multiple times for a 3 night stay in beautiful San Francisco. If memory serves, it even has a trip planner so that u will know where to pick up and drop off a bike. I tried both non electric and electric bikes. I recommend both!

Also try the Lime app for electric scooters = recommended!