Uber outage yields complaints throughout the US

Uber drivers and riders throughout the country tweeted out complaints Thursday that the ride-hailing service was down. 

Drivers trying to pick up or drop off fares were unable to log into the app, according to tweets from several accounts. Uber users in Las Vegas, Atlanta, New York City, Washington, DC and other major cities were unable to access the service, tweets said. Some accounts said Uber Eats, the company's food delivery service, was down, too.

"There was an outage for a few minutes today and we were able to mitigate it quickly," an Uber spokeswoman said in an email. "Our support team is already responding to users online to help resolve any issues." 

The company's user support account on Twitter feverishly tweeted out individual replies to the complaints, saying the issue with the app was now resolved.

The outage came as a civil lawsuit alleging Uber is using stolen trade secrets to develop autonomous vehicles entered its fourth day. It also comes less than two months after the company revealed it had covered up an incident in 2016 in which hackers had stolen user information.

During Thursday's apparent Uber outage, one Twitter user posted a photo of the error message displayed by the Uber app.

"We're having trouble reaching the Uber network. Please check your connection or try again in a few minutes," it said.