Umo Mobility Reviews

Why do I need to make an account. Why do I need to give you my credit card info. Terrible user experience. Can’t sign up with email. Did the developers even try this once?

It’s been taking $0 payments though to verify my card, even though everytime I enter my card details it says the information is “incorrect”

Fix the rather big problems

No matter what card I try to use, it says the details are wrong. I’d give it negative stars if I could.

Has been overcharging me the past two days.

Won’t let me login with my TouchPass phone number

At first I made my account and added $10 worth of fare money onto UmoMobility to use on the ORBT bus (the only bus I ride) and the first trip worked out alright, cost $1.25. Then a few days later the remaining $8.75 disappeared from my account so I emailed their support and never heard back. I then found ORBT on twitter and commented my issue on one of their tweets and a few days later they helped me out reimbursing me the full $10 as well as offering to have the money put onto a physical card which I did! Once I received the card in the mail, I wasn’t sure if it was activated or if it had the funds added yet so I went back to the Umo app, tried to sign in but my account username/password was wrong? I changed the password and tried again to sign in but it would not let me sign in no matter what. After deciding to go to their kiosk at the 24th and Dodge stop to pay for a pass there with the card the machine declined the Umo card. What the heck. At this point I don’t even care about losing my money. I’m just going to go back to paying for a pass whenever I need one at the physical kiosk. Not worth all the technical problems.

UmoMobility is trash, for many reasons. There’s no live tracking of the buses like nextbus used to do. Not only seeing where the bus is on a map but now the estimate of minutes till arrival is gone. Which overall makes UmoMobility pretty useless. If I wanted the set schedule of the bus, I would check the bus’s website. So, if and when a bus is early or late, too bad for you because UmoMobility won’t tell you. There’s no interface to show you all the nearby buses at once. So when trying to decide which line to hop on, you have to toggle between the map and clicking that individual bus stop. IF you already know where the stop is. Next, the stations map automatically puts you where you were when you last used it, instead of where you are at the moment, which is not intuitive? Not these tech people, who have probably never ridden a single bus, make an app for people who rely on transit to get around and make it 10x more difficult. And no I don’t want your boiler plate reply, “we appreciate your feedback” - just fixing your trash app.

For some reason, all of a sudden, I don’t get updates anymore for the buses

UmoMobility came along, unwanted and unexpectedly, as a replacement for Nextbus. It’s a poor substitute. It’s most annoying feature is that it requires you to state a destination as well as a starting point. Once you’ve done, it only shows you how long it will be before the bus arrives at the pickup spot and the route between pickup and destination. All other information on the busses along the route are not shown. Are there three buses coming in a row? Is a second bus way behind the first or close? UmoMobility won’t tell you. It also makes you jump through a lot of hoops to see the entire route, and even then doesn’t clear information on the route. 👎🏻👎🏻👎🏻

UmoMobility never was particularly easy to use with the need to scroll endlessly thru transportation organizations far from my location. It did allow for the saving of common destinations and then would recommend the correct transportation service available.

Recently is stopped tracking on of the two more common lines that I would use. Then today it dropped the saved locations entirely with no apparent way to create them again. The only thing it was allowing me was to hail Uber or Lyft, with no information being available about transportation stops near me, or even ones I’d manually selected. If I scrolled thru the dozens of localities services that have no use to me (taking more than a few minutes) until my own services were available all it would tell me is that that line/service is no longer available. This being untrue as I watched busses and trains roll on by.

Maybe this will be fixed in an update, maybe UmoMobility will go away later today. Who knows, and I don’t care. It is completely unreliable and poorly constructed UI makes it painful to use.

UmoMobility insisted that my bus was only .4 miles away, but failed to mention that it required me to walk through an impossibly thick patch of woods.

So yeah, I walked 3 miles in the 90° weather today and was late, even though I left the house 45 minutes early.

I’m sure there are other functions that work, but I’m not trusting a navigation app that can’t give simple directions.

I just want to check using real time tracking when my bus will come to my stop. I can’t do that easily. It’s very frustrating because UmoMobility seemings well designed but completely fails to just let me see when my bus is coming.

It’s clear the developers live somewhere urban with many transport options and try to provide rich solutions for transport. However, for those of us who don’t live in San Diego it’s excessively complex to the point of being unusably frustrating to check a live bus arrival time. Incredibly disappointing an app with this much work put into it fails to deliver the most simple task. I don’t want to have to sort through 15 bus lines at a potential stop, I want to just check one bus at one stop, I don’t want to have to tell you where I live to check that bus or where I’m going. I just want to check for my bus.

Why no integration

UmoMobility is handy to use and easy to use. I would suggest that maybe they add a little more detail about where to find the specific numbers if busses at the stations. The transit district I use has alphabetical bays, but busses are identified by number. The station itself could do a better job of identifying where to find specific bus numbers, but it would help to have UmoMobility provide the bay letters to find busses at stations as well. It would also be handy to have a better idea of where the bus is in the route to better determine if the bus is running late when not at a specific stop when expected or if maybe clocks are off and the bus had already gone by.

I’m a long time commuter who likes to bike/walk to the bus or train and take public transportation the rest of the trip. My previous go to was Google Maps when I lived in Sydney and then Transit when I moved back to America. Lately, however, I find myself using Umo more often than either of those apps.

Umo always recommends multi-modal routes that the other apps won’t for some reason. Additionally I’ve found it’s usually more accurate than the alternatives. More than once in the last month I’ve caught the bus after a bike ride, making my connection and shaving time off my trip.

Umo may be having growing pains, but I’m finding it extremely useful and full-featured. It’s clear that the developers have listened to feedback and made improvements to address pain-points in UmoMobility . I have to believe that many of the negative reviews are from folks that missed the in-app notifications that real-time data wasn’t yet available in their neighborhood.
As a software interface professional, I might quibble with some of the minor design decisions made, but all-in-all, I find it quite usable. Regarding the complaints about UmoMobility being too dense, bear in mind that UmoMobility is displaying information for *all* the transportation options in your area, e.g. bus, lightrail, heavyrail/train, ferry, bike, walking, and ride sharing services like Lyft/Uber; that’s eight categories and each of the transit options may have multiple routes. If you want to narrow the choices down, try using the Filter drop-down menu that’s above most lists of route options. Once you find the route or station you’re looking for, you can favorite it so it’s super easy and fast to locate again.
Kudos the the developers for tackling a challenging problem—with tens, if not hundreds of use-cases—and delivering a very accessible and relatively easy-to-use solution.

Accurate, convenient app to ride the bus!

Great

Easy, convenient.

App provides intermodal connected journey planning with the ability to make preferences on modes offered and gives the power to pay and reserve in advance. A must have app for any traveler either as a local or tourist.

This is the biggest upgrade to public transit in a while and it makes this soo much easier no more hassle with having the exact change works great with social distancing as well ect... love Umo

I visited a new area and was a bit lost and unsure which bus line to take. UmoMobility made it super easy to find the fastest route home. Probably would’ve gotten lost without it!

Looking forward to using UmoMobility. I live in New York so it will certainly make things easier

Even in dark mode

Hate the app and North Carolina! I'm from Oregon made a first time user human mistake and bought a pass for North Carolina instead of Oregon. They refuse to give me a refund after a week of being told who to contact for it. I was nice and patient I'm pissed! Below is the email I received thank you Michelle for your kindness and understanding on HUMAN error. Your perfect...Again I TRIED TO AND THEY SENT ME TO YOU MICHELLE YOU THINK I DIDNT THINK OF THAT! "Good morning Ms. Jolly, You will have to contact the state in which you purchased the pass to see if they are willing to refund your money. Please be advised they are not required to do so because it is the responsibility of the passenger to make sure you are purchasing from the correct system. Michelle Hunt" Senior Customer Service Representative