There's an opportunity for Lyft to be "Uber, but for not scummy business practises" here, but I suppose most users don't really care. Austin would have been a good test of that, but Lyft withdrew along with Uber.
I've been a longtime Lyft user because of the stories that surfaced a few years ago about Uber considering blackmailing reporters and politicians with their ride data, but the last time I had to use the app, Lyft for some reason just wasn't working - their auth service seemed to be broken. I ended up downloading Uber and signing up because I had to get somewhere in a hurry and didn't have the time to look up another rideshare service. Their text notifications about driver arrivals are also always off, on the order of up to a minute or two (I don't know if Uber is better, but I would assume it is.)
FWIW, I'd also sunk something like $300 into Lyft rides just two weeks before that for business travel, and I didn't experience a problem once.
From where I stand, we have great engineering and product talent. Perception is tricky - I see that we're very agile with (sometimes far) fewer resources, from the view I have.
I'd be glad to dig into the auth issues you ran into if you're able to ping privately with a few more details.