Sunita Somvanshi
Eight Black Airport Shuttle, a popular transportation service in Longmont, Colorado, suddenly shut down on Friday, June 13, 2025, leaving customers with unusable prepaid vouchers and scrambling to find alternative ways to get to Denver International Airport.
Owner Simon Chen blamed the closure on a “perfect storm” of rising costs that made it impossible to keep the shuttle running. These included higher insurance premiums, increasing airport and regulatory fees, and steep vehicle maintenance expenses.
“We simply can’t raise prices enough to cover those costs while still offering the frequency and schedule that our customers expect,” Chen stated in the closure announcement posted on the company’s website and Facebook page.
The sudden shutdown sparked outrage among customers who had purchased vouchers, some as recently as May 2025. These vouchers, which sold for about $32 each, were marketed as “fully transferable and guaranteed never to expire,” prompting many loyal customers to buy them in bulk.
John Rogers from Phoenix, who frequently travels to Colorado for work, visited the Eight Black office after failing to reach anyone by phone or email. “They owe me $150. They just closed down. They don’t answer their phone,” Rogers told local media, referring to his five unused vouchers.
Following intense customer backlash, Chen issued a second statement on Tuesday, June 17, apologizing for not addressing the voucher situation in the initial closure announcement.
“I sincerely apologize for not including information about how we would handle vouchers in our previous email. That was an incredibly difficult day for me professionally,” Chen wrote. “It is my full intention to refund every single customer, no matter how long it takes.”
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The company has created a voucher refund request form on its website, but warned customers that the process could take up to 12 months to complete. Those who purchased vouchers most recently will be prioritized for refunds.
This timeline has done little to ease customer frustration. Social media platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and Nextdoor have been flooded with complaints from people holding worthless vouchers, many of whom bought them too long ago to dispute charges with their credit card companies.
Basia Christ, a customer interviewed by local news, expressed her disappointment: “I feel cheated, I feel defrauded, I feel betrayed.”
Eight Black has been operating since 2015, according to the company’s LinkedIn profile. The business expanded in 2022 when it acquired Green Ride’s shuttle routes between Denver International Airport and the Boulder/Longmont area.
Some customers reported noticing a decline in service quality in recent months. Karen Modafferi, a Longmont resident and loyal customer for nearly a decade, had a ride scheduled for Tuesday morning after the Friday shutdown. She said no one from Eight Black contacted her to cancel the reservation.
“The service was getting worse and worse,” Modafferi noted, mentioning a recent trip that took an hour and a half to reach the airport from Longmont. “It would have been nice for someone to tell me, because I had to make last-minute arrangements to be picked up.”
Customers seeking refunds have several options. The Northern Colorado Better Business Bureau suggests filing a credit card chargeback (for recent purchases), contacting the Colorado Attorney General’s office, or filing a formal complaint through the BBB.
