Here is the story, as best I understand it. The JUMP app and the Uber app use the same login database. If you have or have ever had an Uber login, it is linked to a specific telephone number, and it assumes that you want those login credentials. There is no way to bypass this by using an email, it is phone number only. So, I had a JUMP account with a phone number and an email, and had at one time an Uber account with the same phone number and a different email. The JUMP app logged me into the Uber account, with which I of course had no credit and no membership.

Tech support walked me through over several days, with many back-and-forths, how to get back my credit and membership. It involved merging the two accounts. The user cannot accomplish all the steps, it requires tech support action at one or more points in the process.

So, if you have the same issue as I did, you will need to contact tech support to get it straightened out. Hopefully you will get one of the competent tech support people, which I did. I have been using the JUMP app for about a week now, and it correctly handles my membership and credits. Though I can’t see how much credit I have in the app, I can go to http://app.jumpbikes.com to see it.

When I look at the online portal, I notice that I am now a member of every single bike and scooter program that JUMP offers, both those I had joined before (San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles) and all the others.

On a related topic, the new JUMP app has some issues. It is very slow to zoom in and zoom out, and sometimes but less often slow to scroll. On the other hand, it seems to work better than the Uber app, even though they are both the same underlying technology. Last evening I was talking to a group of people frustrated by their inability to rent available bikes through the Uber app. They had been trying for quite a while, on a number of bikes. I suggested the try the JUMP app. They had it downloaded and were riding within a minute. I’ve come across a number of other people cussing at the Uber app. I think having cars in the mix messes things up, as the app is alway trying to move you to a car rather than bike or scooter. After trying the Uber app for a while, I deleted it.

When you are zoomed way out in the JUMP app, the Sacramento area is replaced by an icon, the ziggurat. For San Francisco, it is the Golden Gate Bridge, for Santa Cruz the lighthouse, for Los Angeles (Santa Monica) the ferris wheel from Santa Monica Pier, for San Diego a paraglider. The Tower Bridge would be a better icon for Sacramento, but that might lead to confusion with the Golden Gate Bridge.