I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but it's not a fundamental problem with the existence of these services. It's just a problem to be solved, perhap

I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but it's not a fundamental problem with the existence of these services. It's just a problem to be solved, perhaps through legislation on how suspensions and bans are allowed to work, and how people ought to be able to appeal them. The legacy taxi services had this problem too, though, as you note, not on a global level. Pre-Uber, there was one taxi service that stopped taking my calls. I have no idea why. I had no way to appeal this, or to even get in touch with them to find out what was going on. In the meantime, Bob still probably has public transit or local old-school taxi services to fall back on (which somehow still exist). Many areas even have local ride-hailing apps. Worst-case, Bob will have to rent a car when visiting other cities.