
OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia - brisance
https://obikerefund.livejournal.com/341.html
======
dalbasal
I think it's becoming clear that (a) bike sharing is good to have in a city.
People want it. (b) neither an all public or an all private system can work as
well as we'd like it to.

The "all public" system means a municipality contracts a single vendor (or
owns it) to build all the stations and manage everything. This is what we have
where I live, dublin. It's a stagnant system. They don't add stations.
Problems with stations being full/empty at certain times of the day persist
indefinitely. Basically, you can feel the lack of competition.

The all private system (like they have in China) is more innovative. They use
technology better. You can feel the existence of competition. It's more
scalable with bikes, rides and users increasing all the time.

But... It makes a mess. Bikes everywhere. Companies can go bust, can chase
market cap & investment. Mostly, bikes end up abandoned all over the place.

This is fixable, for a local municipality that's willing to get clever and
design a market. Create infrastructure, mostly it's the stations or the
ability to rent space for them. Make rules, but not too many. Let competition
happen within parameters.

~~~
CaptainZapp
OBike dumped some 800 bikes in Zurich without asking, or telling creating a
huge mess.

The problem with those bikes, apart from the fact that they look atrociously
is that the quality is so bad to make them borderline unusable.

I have hardly seen them in use, but there are a lot of those bikes lying
around broken. There is no customer service, whatsoever and no point of
contact. Aparently the manager they put in place for Switzerland left some
month ago.

Add to all this that according to C'T they are a massive privacy violator with
all the data they suck about their renters.

Lime Bike seems to fare a bit better, alas the bikes are of better quality.

According to press reports they should be collected and removed. Reading about
the shenanigans of that company probably at the tax payers dime.

With that method, dump a shitton of crap bikes on a city and let them fend for
themselves, OBike created a hellishly hostile territory for the dockless bike
sharing concept.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Lots of reasons to dump on oBike. Their recent 'coin' public funding scheme
was a fraud apparently - the money disappeared, investors are feeling cheated.
Unsurprised to hear they polluted a river with the junk bikes, seems like a
pattern.

~~~
Sujan
I asked as a comment to original post already [1], how are the ICOs and oBike
directly connected? I didn't really understand that :/

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17440730)

------
sschueller
OBike is also pulling all 600 bikes out of Zürich, Switzerland but there was
no reason given, just that OBike will pay for the removal. [1]

[1] [https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/veloverleih-in-zuerich-o-bike-
zie...](https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/veloverleih-in-zuerich-o-bike-zieht-sich-
zurueck-publibike-waechst-ld.1396483)

~~~
CaptainZapp
Given their overall behavior I believe it when I see it that they'll pay for
the removal.

To me they seem like a totally dodgy company (which is consistent with the
blog post).

------
llampx
As someone who is not familiar with oBike or the situation, could someone clue
me in as to what happened?

My guess is that the company signed up a bunch of people, took a sizeable
deposit from all of them, and then cut and run? Where does the ICO (or ICOs)
come into the picture?

~~~
angerman
Bike sharing company in Singapore. Initially collected a S$49 to use its
service. With the deposit paid you were entitled to rent their bikes at
S$0.5/15min.

Bike were almost everywhere. Initially they had lots of free ride promotions.

A few days ago, they claimed that they ceased operations due to newly imposed
government restrictions. (To prevent bikes from lying/standing around just
about everywhere and have them be rented/returned at designated parking areas)

A while ago I think they dropped the deposit requirement, as other competitors
did not have the deposit requirement. You could ask for your deposit to be
returned. This would take up to 30days, but apparently took much longer,
according to some comments on Facebook.

They also offered a VIP subscription for 3years or so for S$49, which would
entitle you to a certain amount of free rides per month, I think.

All in all, I don’t know how I feel about my deposit. I’m pretty sure it’s
gone. On the other hand I’ve used the bikes a few times with all the
“free”/promotional rides, without giving them any additional money. After all
I got some value for the S$49. Did I ride for 25hs in total? I doubt it.

I guess the ICO stuff is just trying to draw a parallel defrauding scheme?

~~~
Cthulhu_
S$49 is I guess not that big a loss for a bicycle, buying one yourself is
probably more expensive.

What happens to the bikes then? I can imagine they're being stored left and
right now.

~~~
johannes1234321
I haven't tried oBike as I am already customer of two other bike rental
schemes in my town (Munich) but from what I see when looking at those and from
reports they are really bad in quality and comfort.

As an example here a (German) video comparing oBike and a "normal" bike
rolling down a small hill:
[https://youtu.be/9bTnwJc5gzc](https://youtu.be/9bTnwJc5gzc)

There are probably better ways to spend those bucks.

------
csomar
In kuala lumpur I was able to ride one of these. The experience to open one of
them was easy. No card required. The bike app still showed 0min after 2 hours
of biking. No deposit required.

The problem come when I wanted to lock the bike and finish the trip. It
wouldn’t allow me to lock the bike. The app didn’t recognize the parking
location and alerted to bring the bike to a one.

I ended up putting it somewhere on the streets unlocked. Anyone could have
made use of it.

------
plasma
In Australia, oBikes were often thrown in to trees and rivers. They've left
Melbourne. [0]

[0] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-12/obike-dockless-
bicycle...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-12/obike-dockless-bicycle-
scheme-to-leave-melbourne/9860314)

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Our building in Vienna Austria became a dump for those bikes. They keep
putting there on our bike stands but the bikes there are so broken that nobody
uses them.

~~~
vesinisa
We have a bike sharing system in my city, but one must always return the bike
to an automated bike rental station where the bike is locked. This is how it
works in London as well AFAIK. A bike left just somewhere is a violation of
the service terms and a penalty comparable to the fine for riding public
transport without a ticket is charged from your credit card.

I can understand why bike rental system without proper stations where the
bikes are stored would be considered corporate littering.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Vienna has docked bikes as well but almost entitely in the inner districts.

------
1ba9115454
I've seen these bikes in some crazy places. There seems to be a minority of
people who take joy in leaving them in not so easy to reach places.

2 examples I've seen.

\- In the middle of a forest with at least 2KM of trail before the bike could
be reached.

\- Inside a secure defence facility.

~~~
justinclift
> Inside a secure defence facility.

In theory, identifying who left it there should be feasible.

That may mean asking the defence facility people nicely (letters and
bureaucracy, etc).

------
Sujan
For some context, here is a reply of the accused / singled out person on their
Twitter account:

> Some fake news circulating around lately, to clarify: 1. I'm a shareholder
> of oBike, owning 23.58% stake, my title has always been Founding
> Investor&Chairman in that company 2. Avazu was founded by me sorely, my
> grandparents are 80+ and can't even handle computers

> 3\. oBike Singapore has been shut down due to economics, the decision was
> made among all shareholders, no need to generalize/personalize 4. oBike has
> no intention or need to run away with deposit, instead the company is
> proactively looking for a solution with the related parties

> 5\. I'm an investor and shareholder in 100+ startups and companies globally,
> I'm also the direct founder of DotC United Group, some of these ventures
> cooperate with other block chain companies, that doesn't mean all these
> companies belong to me.

[https://twitter.com/yishi888/status/1013667238191067136](https://twitter.com/yishi888/status/1013667238191067136)

~~~
dragonsh
We will know when the deposits are returned back. Let's see if the company run
away again legally with people's deposit. Given people waiting for deposit
return, it's a clear sign of fraud. Removing the deposit option from mobile
app is a direct indication of that intention. Crypto currency is not protected
investment, but the financial deposit taken in fiat currency should be, not
sure if Singapore govt will protect the poor depositors who may loose their
money and this guy will still continue to keep raking in money with Ponzi
crypto schemes.

------
robbiet480
It appears [0] that the deposit is "up to" $49 Singaporean Dollars or about
$35 US Dollars

[0]: [https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/obike-
working...](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/obike-working-to-
refund-deposits-collect-remaining-bicycles-10488270)

~~~
marcv81
It was SGD19 for students or SGD49 for anyone else.

------
cproctor
Maybe it's time for a raw materials recycling startup. Cruise around the city
with a van, pick up bikes, and sell them for scrap.

~~~
ensignavenger
This is how cities handle abandoned vehicles (sort of). While bikes don't have
us much recyclable material in them, they don't cost as much to pick up.

------
robbiep
It looks like there is only a couple million $$ of paid up share capital in
the paper trail. How did they finance purchase of so many oBikes?

~~~
stirlo
There’s a screenshot showing bikes selling for $199 RMB ($30USD) in China.
With a $49SGD ($36USD) deposit they could afford to buy one for every user and
still have cash left over.

~~~
robbiep
I’m aware that they’re low cost, they’re everywhere in sydney. I guess I just
am trying to look at the unit economics and reverse engineer the business
fundamentals. The bikes came before the users, and i guess even with a couple
thousand (probably high end numbers now I think about it) bikes in sydney,
Melbourne and then 10s is thousands (if that) in Singapore they could do it
with a small capital base, especially with almost no support on the labour
side.

Then again they ended up having to spend a lot of money in Melbourne cleaning
them up which would have buggered their modelling.

Bottom line of my comment above: the bikes has to come first with a reasonable
lead time before the deposit. I see now that they could have borrowed against
it as well but it doesn’t look like they had large inflows of PE or VC money?

~~~
justinclift
> I’m aware that they’re low cost, they’re everywhere in sydney. I guess I
> just am trying to look at the unit economics and reverse engineer the
> business fundamentals.

It's also possible they overestimated the real world demand for using these
bikes as well. From the article, it sounds like the main people involved are
from cities with a very significant bicycle using populace.

They may have thought they'd be introducing that culture elsewhere, and be on
the "ground floor" (pun intended). ;)

That they went with bikes so crap that no one wants to use them, sounds like
very poor research / product planning. :/

Subsequent reported problems all seem to stem from that.

That's not taking the shonky sounds bits into account though, which may have
become their plan B. Or been the real plan all along, of course. :)

------
Sujan
What's the connection between oBike and the ICOs (besides Yi Shi beeing
involved in both)?

------
wastedhours
Until these companies work out how to manage the squishy bit that sits on
them, the issues are only going to escalate - glorified litter the way some
users leave them.

------
icantdrive55
"Only in August 2017 had oBike pulled off one of the largest series B rounds
on record in Southeast Asia to raise US$45 million from a venture capital firm
linked to a co-founder of Russia’s Mail.Ru Group a mysterious “leading global
transportation platform” and several unnamed family offices in Southeast Asia.
"

1\. I bet they got payed off, or they got their money laundered in some other
way?

2\. So many Chinese companies seem to go out of their way to be fraudulent; I
don't have much sympathy for investors anymore.

3\. There used to be Investment Guys out there trying to expose shady Chinese
companies, companies like NQ mobile, but I just don't hear much from them. I
guess they figure if you invest with shady entities, don't expect your money
back?

4\. I love the back stories on these boy geniuses. Just lie until you thrive?

------
eggie5
obike shut down? I remember they were all over Amsterdam last year

------
the_mitsuhiko
I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to shut down one subsidary and not return the
deposits if the rest of the company continues operating.

~~~
tuukkah
In general, aren't the stock owners (the parent companies) non-liable for the
operations of the limited-liability corporation (the subsidiary)?

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
Most countries have a form of "Piercing the corporate veil" so that companies
cannot just make subsidaries default nilly willy without any repercussions.
And that even assumes that obike Singapore declared bankruptcy. In central
Europe for sure you cannot even use deposits to satisfy creditors unless the
deposit was made after the moment of insolvency.

I have never heard deposits not being paid back if a company ceases operation
by leaving a market.

------
hsnewman
I just got back from Portland Oregon and used biketownpdx.com several times,
it was fine. The only issue was that the bikes were heavy. $20/mo for daily
usage was great.

