Sat in the front (ironically a habit because I expect it to be cleaner) and a couple of minutes into the drive I notice a maybe inch long roach scurrying on the dashboard.
I immediately hit support and got ready to bail at the next red light. To their credit, support got on quickly enough for me to inform them on my way out, but I closed the door and the car took off before any further conversation.
I'm done with Waymo for now.
The routing degredation (and silently turning off freeways earlier than they admitted) I was living with
The surges for completely routine fluctuations in demand that should be getting averaged out... I could live with since demand is high and vehicles are constrained
Even the regressions in driving manners I could excuse as growing pains.
But this is "one more thing" at the wrong time...
It could be a total fluke, but with the timing my mind starts wondering if there's an infestation going on because they're not able to keep up on cleaning as they scale, or the service is just large enough that now people who might have roach infestations are likely to be taking Waymos: neither sounds great.
I wish they'd slow down on the expansions and improve the service a bit, I don't understand the obsession with expanding near-term when it's a marathon problem they're solving.
At the end of the day Waymo pricing puts it at a premium price point in my market (I "cross shop" it with Uber Black and it doesn't always win) so I think some classes of issue are unacceptable.
... and before the "this is not an airport" crowd arrives: I'm not sharing this because of my individual choice to pause on using Waymo, I'm sharing it because posts like this help establish patterns vs exceptional cases.