Thank you for participating in the Bike Angels rewards program. Changes to point values for claiming a gift card reward are in line with our efforts to ensure the health and fairness of the program for all Bike Angels. Bike Angel rewards are intended to create community while helping out fellow riders. In addition to new gift card and charitable contribution reward options, we’re excited to continue offering valuable membership extensions, ebike minutes, and Lyft rideshare credits to Bike Angels.
Is there any way you can go into Tremendous and enable some more giftcard options? None of them really work for me (I'm on the Bezos boycott train, don't use Disney, AirBnB, DoorDash, no Walmarts nearby etc.).
I only see 6 gift card options and 8 charities, but I checked out the Tremendous catalog of options and filtered by the U.S. and they have got 168 gift card options and 50 charities. For sure I'm not expecting you to enable gift cards for Uber😝 but they've got airlines, Home Depot, Lowe's, Apple, Starbucks, Harris Teeter, Kroger, H&M, Macy's, Spotify ... I could go on but you get the picture. Maybe just enable them all?
That would make it a lot easier for me to use the cards or give them as gifts to people who I know shop at certain places, I would really appreciate it.
In general, the ability to get ACH was so much better. I don't give gift cards as gifts personally either (I put cash in a red envelope Lunar New Year style) because I know how annoying they are for people to use up without just feeling like they were spent on crap. I'm sure there was fraud in NYC (I've moved enough bikes to know what's feasible in the leaderboard by a normal human who is actually trying to help the system) and those people suck, the whole point is to make the system better. I don't know if that and the NYT article are the reasons for these program changes, just putting 2 and 2 together, but if it is, wouldn't it be better to stop the cheating? Based on their leaderboards it looked like it was maybe ~12 bad people each month. There are so many more Angels nationwide than that!
Most of the people on the leaderboard are working their butts off in the middle of the night. They are not cheating.
I was referring to the people feature in the NYT article.
Also...Amazon keeps charging my credit card when it is set to charge my gift card...so I have spent hundreds of hours fighting over that. They do not allow you to use gift cards at Whole Foods and you can no longer purchase other gift cards or give them to others either. So...unless you want to purchase the overpriced crap on Amazon (most of which has to be returned) there are few other options. Most people who bother to earn points do not do it merely to help others. You have to pay taxes on the earnings even if you donate that income. I would rather offer free tutoring to help out children than to move bikes for a for profit organization...if I did not need the additional income between DOE assignments. This is in line with the politicians who have no respect for DEI or consideration that some of us are beyond a certain age, and are merely trying to make ends meet as we wind down our careers. Altruism (and business) is far more complicated than the idealistic younger generations comprehend.
As you can see...bike angels do not perceive this to be "fair." While you may have "intended to create community" that is not the only reason people invest their time in the program. What does that even mean?..."Create community?" You do not want people moving bikes in groups and have deemed that "gaming the system." You may be excited to offer membership extensions, bike they are of no value to those who have no desire to ride ebikes and/or those who are using the bikes for business travel (for which they can write off the expense). You clearly do not know your customers and are not paying attention to the feedback you are seeing here. Again...what would you say if Lyft paid you 25% less than you had earned after you had worked your butt off to help them reduce expenses? That is why they developed the program...not to "create community."
Hi Jess, the change itself is one thing, but the complete lack of communication is what irritates many committed Bike Angels like myself that were blindsided by this update. I worked hard and fair for my recent 1000 points only for the reward to suddenly, and without notice be reduced by 25% before I was able to exchange my points.
It is only right to provide advanced communication of this change, especially for effort rendered under the previous reward structure - it's a classic bait and switch. Advanced notice was given prior to the removal of the ACH option, but not for this change, much to our dismay.
I'd like to request to have the $200 e-gift card option for my most recent 1000 points because those were the terms and expectations I rendered the work under. I understand that going forward it will be lower and accept that, but not for my previous points.
Update: Lyft honored my request and credited me 300 points today via a customer service request (https://lyft-bikes-scooters.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000807254).
Actually, advance notice was not given for the removal of the ACH option – it's just that somebody spotted it when redeeming their points, and looked at the fine print, which most of us do not do. If you did not redeem your points that month, you would not have known about it, as they still have not sent around an official notice or email about it.
You're absolutely right about the lack of ACH removal notification. It was the Bike Angel community that brought it up. My memory was being a bit too gratuitous to Lyft.
Exactly! Not to mention the fact that people have different financial situations and cashing in last year would have cost me money. There are tax considerations. It would be one thing to reduce the payment structure moving forward, but I earned far more than Red Dragon did...and worked my butt off to earn that compensation for dental work that I am going to need (which will offset the tax expenses). What would your response be if Citi bike paid you 25% less than you were expecting in your paycheck Jess? It would have been fair if you would have said the compensation (or available points) would be going down (which we have noticed as well over the past few months), however...to promise 20 cents per point when points were earned over the past year and a half and not compensate us as promised is completely oligarchical. Citi Bike is not a non-profit organization and to position itself as such is fraudulent.
