Why Lyft sent a $1000 gift card to Uber? Details here

Signing up for a ride-sharing app such as Uber or Lyft is usually a pretty simple and straightforward process. However, in one case where the user's surname was the same as the popular ride-sharing app, it became troublesome for the user. As it turns out, none of the members of a family with the surname Uber was able to sign up for an account with the Uber app. Surprisingly, Uber's rival ride-sharing app Lyft was quick to grab the opportunity to market itself and to take a dog at its competitor.

A Thread message has emerged online revealing that the accounts of the users of the particular family with the surname Uber were mysteriously removed from the same name ride-sharing app last year because of an unspecified violation of the terms and conditions. Again, while they tried to sign up for the Uber app, they were unable to do so, as an error message was being shown to them by the app, saying, “Given last name not valid."

This was possibly due to the algorithm of the Uber app that detected the surname of the user as erroneous, while the surname was actually correct. Clearly, nobody at Uber while developing the app, ever thought there would actually be someone bearing this same name as their surname, or maybe because of a security concern.

Here's where the power of social media came into play. When Uber's rival ride-sharing app Lyft came to know about the incident, it was quick to seize the opportunity to make a splash by offering the Uber family a $1,000 gift card that they can use for Lyft rides. The US ride-sharing app also posted on Threads, in which it took a dog at its rival app Uber. The entire story unfolded on the freshly launched Threads social media platform, where there was a photo of the gift card posted on the official Lyft account.