An AT&T connectivity issue caused serious problems for BMW’s car-sharing service this past holiday weekend, forcing the car-maker to hand out $10 gift credits to more than 13,000 users in Seattle.
ReachNow, BMW’s free-floating car-sharing program that debuted in Seattle exactly three months ago, is now fully restored after technical issues arose this past Saturday and continued throughout the week.
ReachNow CEO Steve Banfield told GeekWire that the problem stemmed from network connectivity changes made by AT&T, which powers part of ReachNow’s back-end system that allows people to rent one of 520 vehicles with their smartphone and drive from Point A to Point B within a “Home Area” that encompasses much of Seattle proper.
Customers began reporting problems this past Saturday, and by Tuesday, a majority of the vehicles were impacted, Banfield said. Users reported trouble with reserving, unlocking, starting the vehicles, and ending trips with both the ReachNow app and the physical ReachNow member card (you can unlock and lock vehicles with either method).
As a result, support lines became full, with customers wondering what was going on.
“It was a fundamental connectivity issue with the cars,” Banfield said.
@ReachNowUSA waited 10 minutes trying to unlock the door and complete reservation – ended up getting an @Uber_SEA #losingbusiness
— Wil Mulder (@wilmulder) July 5, 2016
BMW then worked with AT&T — Banfield called the company a “great partner” — to identify the issue. ReachNow shut down late for two hours late Thursday evening to allow AT&T to permanently resolve the problems.
As an apology, BMW decided to send a $10 promotional credit to all members in Seattle — there were more than 13,000 as of May 9 — for use during July 16-18.
Here’s part of the email the company sent to users:
This past holiday weekend, fireworks weren’t the only thing that exploded. Many of you attempted to use ReachNow, only to have issues reserving a vehicle or ending a trip. This outage, caused by our wireless network provider, impacted the majority of our 520 vehicles throughout the weekend. With so many cars offline, our support lines were jammed with members reaching out for help. We realize the frustration and inconvenience this caused, and as a company committed to providing a premium service, we sincerely apologize.
BMW also offered extra credits to individual users who reported problems, and Banfield said the company “did something specifically for our most loyal users,” too.
“Our goal is to make things as reliable as possible,” Banfield added. “BMW has worked for 100 years to make cars as reliable as possible, and at ReachNow, our goal is to make our service as reliable as those cars.”
Banfield, previously an executive at INRIX who joined BMW this past May, noted that his 20-person team is working to develop ways to more quickly detect problems that arise with ReachNow, which competes with Car2go in Seattle and recently expanded to cover more of the city.
“Part of this is that when you have big, complex systems that involve BMW and partners like connectivity providers, you need to have the right hooks in place where you actually know what’s happening where,” he said. “Figuring out a way to better pinpoint where the problems are helps make a solution easier to find. That’s an area we need to continue to improve on.”
He also said that ReachNow, which has its North American headquarters in Seattle, is looking to build more redundancy into the system, as well as adding in-app messaging to improve communication with customers when there are problems with the service.
Banfield admitted that BMW is going through “some growing pains” in the early days of operating ReachNow, which tallied nearly 300,000 total miles driven by members in Seattle since April 8.
“I feel like we are on our way, but we’re not there yet,” Banfield said. “We are going through some growing pains and have had things come up and go wrong. We really appreciate the trust and support we’ve gotten from early members and want to continue to earn that trust.”
Banfield told GeekWire in May that the vision for BMW is much more than just the free-floating car-sharing program. There are plans to launch a number of other services, including a concierge option where BMW brings you a vehicle, instead of you having to find one yourself; an Uber and Lyft competitor that will allow people to earn revenue by driving other users around in ReachNow cars; a way for people to drop off ReachNow vehicles at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport before boarding a flight, or to pick one up after they get off the plane; or a way for BMW owners to lease their own cars within the ReachNow network.
