The one time I took Uber Pool in Brooklyn the driver refused to let a black couple into the car, which we all protested and complained about, but nothing came of it.
In New York Uber isn't necessarily safer or less racist, although I'd concede it probably is in other countries.
For what it's worth, my girlfriend has taken an uber in NYC 100+ times, and has never complained about any kind of harassment from an Uber driver. She's complained to me about sidewalk/subway harassment, and workplace harassment, so I don't think there is a reason she would hide Uber harassment from me.
Also: Regular car services were horrible pre-Uber...which is why Uber took over NYC car transit.
It was basically: Call up a number, get answered by a guy with a heavy accent on a low quality landline, tell him what you want, and hope and pray that he understood what you said and the car shows up. If it doesn't, call another company and repeat.
Just curious to what extent you protested?
EDIT:
I mean, they can start out driving for both, but if you get fired by Lyft, you can't ever come back in most cases.
Lyft requires newer cars, which could bar totally broke drivers.
I have perfect background check, of course.
Lyft is definitely hands-on when reacting to passenger complaints. They likely have sentiment analysis software for comments by passengers.
Lyft passengers are ruthless in ratings. It took me a while to recover from initial ratings while I was learning. At least your ratings are a rolling average of last 100 rides so you can fix the problem of bad ratings with new rides. Last week should help: got 17 5-Star ratings and no negatives.