The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone | Hacker News Reader

The special hell of Bolt, Europe's Uber clone

brandur.org

40 pointsMetalnem79 comments

> I arrived in Lyon recently and figured, hey, this is Europe, why not try the European app again, and used Bolt.

A bit off topic but IMHO your first thought should instead be: "hey, this is Europe, why not try the train?"

In Lyon, the train from the airport to the city takes half an hour, same as a car. My guess is that you'll have a vastly better experience than taking the train in North America, and also a better experience than at least the OP had when taking a Bolt.

Having a train from the airport isn't a given in most US cities.

Lyon is not in the US.

True, but I think we can be charitable and forgive Americans for defaulting to "apps" versus actual infrastructure, given the poor state of public transportation in the US and the lack of exposure to quality publicly funded infrastructure.

The problem isn't Bolt. The problem is Lyon and the turf wars between taxis and we-pretend-we-arent-taxis like über and bolt.

https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/r...

https://www.ledauphine.com/faits-divers-justice/2025/01/24/t...

https://actu.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/lyon_69123/voitures-bru...

In Chiangmai the main ones are Grab, Bolt, and Maxim, and Bolt is pretty good, works well, well priced.

> "hey, this is Europe, why not try the train?"

I have two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each. City trains are poor for this and subways are worse, but I am here for two weeks - I do need clean clothes.

That sounds like a huge amount of luggage for just two weeks.

My wife does not pack light either. She loves giant suitcases. It is always an argument that I rather bring four carry on size suitcases so I can manhandle them up the many stairs in Europe. Instead of two jumbo suitcases.

That's still a fair bit of luggage, however subdivided. Can't always be avoided but still hard to navigate on trains, etc.

It is her chance to dress up. She packs ten different outfits…

I can handle the FrecciaRossa and SNAV with all that the luggage. Can’t do it on local bus or train. I was pleasantly surprised by Rome’s buses. Now I tap my credit card. No more having to go to a local shop to buy a ticket or pay by cash.

You have never met my wife.

However, it’s not that much. Two weeks in one carryon is tight for me; she has trouble doing a weekend in one, and that doesn’t include hanging clothes.

Well, what do you carry for two weeks and two people across variant climates? I will be impressed if you can do it in one each.

I’ve done it with one luggage and one small backpack each, with no discomfort. If it’s a single warm-ish climate it can even be done with one backpack.

The key is to plan on washing clothes.

Washing is not always nor easily available.

Pack two weeks in one carryon. No washing.

I've done that too, but it is indeed harder in winter.

It does mean you have to plan for wearing everything you bring, no extra fancy clothes you may or may not wear. But it doesn't require other sacrifices.

In general, a lot of luggage doesn't work well on public transit on any continent. I've generally moved towards packing lighter but it isn't always possible. For two weeks in cities I can mostly do carryon. If I'm hiking/camping, yes, I may need more.

> two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each

Well, there's you problem. I have traveled the world, including many trips of 6 weeks or more, with only a single. carry-on. Laundromats exist everywhere.

Snark aside, a bit of planning and organization w.r.t. packing pays off handsomely in terms of flexibility when traveling.

Spontaneous weekend trip to a remote island when carrying only a backpack - sure. Add two heavy suitcases, and it becomes an impossibility.

Please don't tell other people how they should live.

Personally I love travelling light (<10kg carry-on pack for 2 months last year to South America) but it isn't for everyone.

> Laundromats exist everywhere.

Only if you value your time at nearly $0. They are incredibly annoying when travelling - too often a 10 or 15 minute walk each way to one. Great for backpacking, but a complete waste of time if you only have a limited amount of time for your holiday.

Having just got back from a 8 week European vacation, with a wife+kid+me.

There's also the small issue of it being was 95F degrees outside at 75% humidity (southern France). This means 1 outfit isn't lasting more than a day (sometimes only 1/2 a day) before becoming unbearably stinky. x3 this means laundry needs to be done every other day or packing a ton of stuff.

Depending on where you are going, ridesharing provides much better point to point service. Also, if you are not familiar with a city or it's language, sometimes trying to understand the public transit on your first day can be a nightmare.

I love taking public transit, but also, after a really long flight I can understand not wanting to think really hard about getting to the hotel.

Apple Maps, Google Maps, and I’m sure anything else under the sun will tell you specifically which train to take, in which direction. Usually, also with platform information, and in some cases even pricing/ticketing information.

Yes, traveling is a skill. It gets easier (and more comfortable) the more you practice it.

In most major European cities I have been in the airport to train connection is pretty subpar unless traveling light.

There is typically no integration of the airport baggage handling with the train baggage handling. So you need to move everything with carts that you can't take on the train.

An international trip to Europe for a longer duration is also a significant trip and not something you want to "one bag". Add in jet lag, multiple young kids, car seats, stroller etc. and it quickly becomes easy to see why the train is cumbersome for the initial airport to lodging connection.

I assume young kids, car seats, etc. change the equation. As an adult doing basically urban travel, a few weeks with carryon is perfectly doable in my experience,

Sadly I have encountered this on multiple different kinds of European tech platforms. There is some deep cultural disconnect on understanding how/why American tech companies are successful.

Most often they seem to ape most of major US tech platforms functionality but critically somehow miss the "make something people want" and instead make something that:

- Sort of works? Has all the major screens but the whole experience just feels off and not well thought out.

- Is basically a way for locals to prey on tourists. Or is easily abused to scam etc.

Bluntly that is not a viable business model. Additionally tourism as a whole will not build a durable and innovative economy.

There is this distinct disinterest in serving the customer. Making the experience delightful, frictionless, feeling good is oddly foreign. I basically gave up trying to use local things unless I have to because when things go poorly customer support is basically non-existent.

I know Uber, AirBnb etc for better or worse. I don't want to deal with whatever surprising edge case or unexpectedly subpar experience is normed on the local platforms.

It's interesting to claim that tourism in Europe won't be "durable" at a moment when tourism in the US is sharply declining..

Anyway, Booking.com is a European company and has many more customers than AirBnB.

Apples and Oranges. Booking.com is an aggregator.

Also, Booking.com is unbelievably exploitative and rife with dark patterns.

But great for its _users_, so just like the US companies then.

> Also, Booking.com is unbelievably exploitative and rife with dark patterns.

So it seems that Europeans have no issue doing the same thing as American tech companies?

How so? At least Booking.com shows me the total price for an accommodation up front, without any additional fees or surprises coming up later in the booking process.

The same cannot be said for AirBnB: if I go to the home page right now it lists a bunch of bookings for e.g. "€ 80 for 2 nights", while when I click through the total price is €160. So apparently what they meant is "€80 per night". I'd call that much more of a dark pattern than anything I've seen Booking do.

Bookings.com runs some incredibly evil tactics. Generally they take about 20% of the booking fees. But they will do things like delist you if you have lower prices anywhere else, and then undercut your prices on their website.

My parents ran a small motel - the only hotel for miles around. But on top of the fees, if they weren't paying for additional promotions Booking would find unrelated distant hotels even when searching in the area. People would sometimes mistakenly book for a motel states away.

Fair enough, I'm willing to believe it's doing evil things to hosts on the platform, indeed.

But FWIW, the EU is at least making an effort to regulate the company: https://nltimes.nl/2024/09/19/eu-court-says-bookingcom-wrong... (which claims that Booking can no longer prevent hosts in the EU from offering lower prices elsewhere).

I don't understand what you are trying to claim. 1. Booking.com is owned by Booking Holdings which is an American parent company. 2. US GDP growth has been massively outperforming the EU since 2008.

I am saying tourism is not something governments should want to heavily optimize an economy for. No amount of taking money from people on vacation will translate into building a more competitive or innovative economy.

Apparently Priceline.com Inc. took over Booking.com (founded in the Netherlands) for € 110 million, and then changed its name to Booking Holdings to reflect the fact that Booking.com was much bigger than Priceline.com. Indeed a great example of "American innovation" :)

> It's interesting to claim that tourism in Europe won't be "durable" at a moment when tourism in the US is sharply declining..

Sorry to shatter your illusions, but for April 2025 (most recent month with final data) <https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2...>, Canadian visits are down 20% yoy but overall worldwide visits to US are up 1.3% yoy, including 17% yoy rise in Mexican visitors.

Full data <https://www.trade.gov/i-94-arrivals-program>

I know this is an anecdote but I was curious if Europeans can tell me if this is a one-off experience or if there is something more to do this.

I was booked to catch a DBS train from Brussels to Berlin at 9:45 am. I get to the station at 9:25 looking for the train, can't find it. I go to the counter and get told the train came early at 9:15 then "Not my fault" (the first words out of the DBS attendant's mouth").

I got this same thing from a Swiss Air attendant when something happened. Nearly the first words were "Not My Fault"

I'm not sure I've ever heard that from a customer service rep in the USA and it was shocking to hear those words as the first like conditioned/scripted words from these reps.

I only brought it up because of it seemed to fit the previous comment of poor customer service.

Wat? Trains departing early? How does that happen? Seems easy to fix, you just need a clock...

Sounds completely made up to me.

I travel a lot by train and I can’t remember once this has happened.

I actually have with Eurostar. They changed the schedule and then it was kind of a mess to rebook with lots of finger pointing. (They had sent an email but it didn't land in my primary Gmail tag and I never saw it.)

So there had been information beforehand?

Well, yes, assuming I read every bit of random email that arrives somewhere in my inbox.

No I've never heard that. I'm an American living in Europe for 20 years. For Swissair you're more likely to hear "it's your fault" because Americans don't understand some concepts that are normal here, like reserving your seat , or, nor swissair related, wire transferring your chalet fee bank-to-bank rather than going through a third-party like Airbnb.

I think there is some cultural difference between the US and Europe where in the US it's seen as somewhat OK to hold the customer service agents as personally responsible for the failings of the company, and treat them accordingly. Customer service agents in Europe dealing with Americans may feel the need to point out that they're not personally responsible for fear of said treatment. That (hopefully) doesn't mean that they won't try to help you, just that they hope you won't be angry at them personally.

It may sometimes be useful to verbalize this explicitly by saying "I know you're not responsible for this, but can you please do XYZ to solve the issue", and if it's a reasonable request I assume they'd be happy to comply. Depending on the country and culture, you may also need to be slightly more direct in asking (nicely!) for what you want, rather than hoping that the customer service rep will "make it right" by guessing what you want. You may perceive that as bad service but I think it's mainly about differing communication styles.

So, it seems like there is some kind of national variance here? Bolt works well in Portugal, I've used it in Porto, Lisbon, and even Caldas da Rainha (smallish town an hour north of Lisbon). All told, we've taken more than a dozen trips, I think.

- Someone else says it's good in Portugal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640459

- Someone says Malta is good, France is bad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640424

- Someone says Northern Europe is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640369

- Another saying Denmark is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640111

I'm just going to throw this out there but maybe, just maybe, this is all about local culture?

Certain cultures have apparently have different attitudes on customer service and taking advantage of people. In Japan, many times, cab drivers have shut off the meter early because they made a mistake in their navigation and felt guilty for both the time lost and the extra cost if they'd left the meter on.

Conversely, cab drivers in Rome, Turkey, Thailand have a much worse reputation,

Yep, there is an enormous difference in regulations with regard to these types of services.

Europe is a collection of countries, not a federation of states (yet).

It’s not the Bolt issue. It’s the market-cares-too-much-about-profits-fuck-you issue.

I’ve never had troubles using Bolt. But I had similar to TS’ issues with other services, including Uber.

Business doesn’t care neither about drivers nor about riders. Everyone tries their best to survive. And most people just wouldn’t care to struggle through support bots. Proper support service is a unicorn nowadays.

> Proper support service is a unicorn nowadays.

Preach! Was impressed when I called Chewy (USA Amazon for pet stuff) and someone picked up right away and was super knowledgeable and friendly.

Have used Bolt in Malta hundreds of times with no issues. But in France it’s the same disaster for me as well. Not sure why.

> I was in Latvia a few weeks ago. Riga’s one of the Europeans cities without a good transit link from the airport into city. Snooping around online, I found that the recommended way to get a ride was the use of an app called Bolt, a European clone of Uber.

Here's the bus that goes from the airport into the center of the city: https://saraksti.rigassatiksme.lv/index.html#bus/22/a-b/1541...

Pretty much all public transport here is also covered by Google Maps, both the buses, trams and others (although I think the micro-buses might have a different ticket thing going on, I don't really ride those).

You can pay for the ticket with an app, by scanning a QR code on the inside of the vehicle (or inputting a code), allows paying with Apple Pay and other similar methods for buying tickets. A single ticket costs 1.50 EUR.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flutter.rs...

https://apps.apple.com/lt/app/r%C4%ABgas-satiksmes-koda-bi%C...

Or just buy an e-talons card for any number of rides you need: https://www.rigassatiksme.lv/en/tickets-and-e-ticket/types-o...

On that particular route you have to press the button for them to stop at any given stop, but otherwise it's no different than any other public transport route.

Source: I live here and took that route in the last month.

As for Bolt and Bolt Food, my experiences with both have been fine. Though tbh both the rides and also food deliveries end up being way more expensive than the public transport (around 5-10x, depending on the route and time), as well as either getting meals from the local stores or just cooking yourself.

I'm happy they exist though, can't really speak for what they're like in other EU countries though, sounds like the experience really sucked.

Had no issues with bolt so far tbh. But had issues with Uber drivers canceling a few times. I guess it all depends on the country and luck.

Same here, used it all the time in Portugal, worked great for rides.

However, tons of issues with using their scooters.

Bolt in Portugal works much better than Uber (more drivers, lower prices)

Exactly my experience too. Many many rides. I often check both but mostly end up with Bolt. The experience is the same.

This is a random rant. I’ve been using Bolt for years almost every day, never had problems.

This.

After lazily splurging on bolt for a few years after they offered service in this central European city, the only problems as a user that I've noticed were price increases over time on fares in general, and peak hours pricing that increased pricing 3-7x. Uber was and has been always more expensive and rarely used for that matter.

While these seem to be standard issues in the tech world, this is nothing compared to the horror stories one can find on /r/doordash.

https://reddit.com/r/doordash

Back in 2015ish Uber we liked to emphasize everyone building at the company to never forget about the long tail [distribution].

When your N crosses gets above N per day, even the 0.1% edge cases happen several days times a day. When this has real world implications, even a single instance can matter a lot.

How does Bolt retain customers? Why would they burn customers to get 1-3 x €7 fees? If OP's account is representative then wouldn't all the customers switch to Uber and never look back?

It doesn't make sense to me so it feels like there's relevant information is missing. From a quick search, it has a 4.8 on the Apple and Google store. So I'm leaning towards this being an isolated experience.

I've used Uber 100s of time. One time I had 2 drivers cancel on me back-to-back during a surge in the rain and one of them drive off forcing me to cancel and it was a very bad experience. But it's not a representative experience of my other rides.

bolt is quite smooth experience anywhere in north europe, not sure why you had such a haunted experience. haven't been in riga airport though, in the city it was fine..

https://actu.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/lyon_69123/voitures-bru...

In a recent trip to Rome, I tried using FreeNow which I had used many times in the past. My success rate of actually getting a ride was 0 out of 7. By which time I gave up. I was more successful with Uber. I was able to get about 12 rides in.

I think with the Jubilee many drivers just switched to Uber.

I also took rides in official taxis. They all wanted to negotiate the fare, refused to run the meter, and absolutely refused to take credit cards.

Side note: always check uber and bolt, whenever both are available. Price differences are pretty big at times.

If the OP is to be believed, there might be a good reason for the price difference...

tbh I never had single bad experience with Bolt anywhere in Europe…

As an American in a relatively large city this sounds pretty normal but instead of Uber and Bolt it's Uber and Lyft. I think the only real difference is that Lyft (at least in my case) doesn't seem prone to charging if I cancel when they're clearly not coming

How is this different from e.g. LAX? [1] From the article: "Drivers waited for hours to snare rides — “unicorns,” they called them — that would pay them a decent wage of more than $1.50 per mile."

I encounter this here in my city (in Czechia) too - especially at night, drivers will cancel on you whenever, or you simply wait and watch in the app (be it Uber or Bolt) how driver after driver simply ejects your request.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44022305

It's more the drivers than the app. I know that in some countries drivers have found ways to play the hell out of Uber.

Trust me, it's not incompetence, the drivers absolutely know what they are doing.

I'm all about trashing Europe when it's needed but I think this post is an hidden PR post.

It seems so fake to me and so far from the experience I have here in France.

I have had the same issue with Bolt recently in Lyon airport. Had to wait 45 minutes with a driver who wouldn't answer message or call and was waiting the other way of the airport. Bolt support was awful to reach during those 45 minutes. Driver should be held accountable of those actions by the platform too.

Not specific to bolt, most drivers have 2-3 apps at all time to maximize revenue

I used Bolt many times in Estonia to rent e-scooters, it was extremely smooth.

I think it's a drivers market. When the ridesharing apps cannot afford to fire drivers in fear of losing market share, that allows the drivers to pull of scummy behaviour for maxing profit. I heard uber drivers go out of their way for 5 star reviews in America. Sounds like the balance of power is on the plaforms side over there and in some specific markets in Europe.

Unfortunate. I used Bolt in Denmark, IIRC, and it was perfectly fine and normal.

Reminds me of trying to book an e-bike in Paris in early 2020 - the app would only accept European credit cards so I was never able to get one!

i have worked in bike sharing, though not in paris, visa and mastercard were easy to work with but amex had exorbitant costs so we worked without amex

How is that remotely similar to the linked story?

European transportation app not working as expected?

Sums up European tech in general. Moving to Germany from the US made me realize how broken basic things are in Europe overall. But I was told Germany has it the worst, and it’s a bit better in other places.

I’ve encountered similar issues before and ended up switching to Uber permanently. Luckily, Uber is available where I live. The same goes for banking apps and brokers here. Half of them have a weird mix of German and English when you try to change the language, and most of the time they just don’t work at all. I guess the cliché that tech has never been Europe’s strong suit has some truth to it.

There are some countries in Europe that excel at technology.

Switzerland and Sweden for example.

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