The customers that have their bikes in for repair should be able to get the police to return their property back to them. I don't see why bikes would suddenly change ownership just due to VanMoof's bankruptcy. If VanMoof have no claim over them and cannot respond with when the customer can retrieve their property and are preventing access for customers to retrieve them, then isn't that intentionally depriving those people of their bikes which is surely theft.
The customers will get their property back, just not immediately. It takes time to sort out things when a company goes bankrupt. That's why the police don't get involved. If the door to a shop is locked and there are no employees, breaking in makes the problem far worse.
The problem is that the customers did not agree for their property to be locked away for an indeterminate amount of time, so it makes sense for the police to gain entry and return customer owned bikes that are in for repair. Bankruptcy proceedings have no bearing on bikes that are not property of the former Van Moof (Van Poof), so what's the benefit in preventing customers regaining their own property?
>The problem is that the customers did not agree for their property to be locked away for an indeterminate amount of time, so it makes sense for the police to gain entry and return customer owned bikes that are in for repair.
Things under repair being locked up until the curator determines what belong to who and if they owe money before it is returned after bankrupcy is standard practice under Dutch law. To the point that there are form letters available online to ask for your stuff back when a company has gone bankrupt.
>Bankruptcy proceedings have no bearing on bikes that are not property of the former
Well, not really. Bankruptcy laws can widely differ around the world, but for example if something of yours is on my properly and I go bankrupt then the bank puts a lock around my property then you must put a motion into the bankruptcy court to lay claim to and retrieve your property. It's likely you would be charged with trespass by both the bank and the land owner if you attempted to claim it.
Van Moof cannot even give you your property in most jurisdictions, the parties in the bankruptcy must agree that 'your' property actually belongs to you, and that the person going bankrupt is not committing some sort of fraud by giving away assets.
> The customers will get their property back, just not immediately.
"Just not immediately" is a big fucking deal for people in Amsterdam who use their bicycles as their primary means of transportation. Imagine you lived in Phoenix right now and the same thing happened with your car. You dropped off your Rivian or Lucid for repairs and -- surprise! -- they were actually on the brink of bankruptcy, so now the only way for you to get to work, pick up kids, etc. is to try walking, biking, or busing for miles in 110F+ degree heat until the courts figure out how to get your vehicle back to you.
If I depended on my bike for transportation -- as is the case for many people in Amsterdam -- then holding onto my bike for more than a few days for a repair is effective theft of my primary means of transportation. If the mechanic tells me they can swap out a part in a couple of days and needs to keep the bike for that, no big deal. The milk in my fridge won't spoil in that time, and I can WFH for a couple of days. Maybe take a while longer to get to and from daycare by walking and busing.
But if my bike becomes unavailable for much longer than that, at that point I would be forced to treat it exactly like a theft and purchase a replacement so I can travel the way I need to again. I still need to buy groceries and get to the office in a reasonable amount of time, and I don't have weeks or months to wait until the courts/lawyers can finally figure out WTF is going on with the property locked in the stores. Sure, chances are I'll eventually get my means of transportation back, but by then it will be too late, since I will have been forced to replace it by then.
>"Just not immediately" is a big fucking deal for people in Amsterdam who use their bicycles as their primary means of transportation. Imagine you lived in Phoenix right now and the same thing happened with your car. You dropped off your Rivian or Lucid for repairs and -- surprise! -- they were actually on the brink of bankruptcy, so now the only way for you to get to work, pick up kids, etc. is to try walking, biking, or busing for miles in 110F+ degree heat until the courts figure out how to get your vehicle back to you.
It's not remotely the same. You can buy a used €100 bike in Amsterdam easily (which should be no big deal to people riding around on €2300 bikes). You're not walking miles in 110F heat to the store in Amsterdam, more like a 1 km (max) walk in 22c weather.
I don't think you realize how common actual bike theft is in the Netherlands. It is in no way a big deal.
If thay were true, you could also buy a 500€ beater car if you can afford your own car... But i don't see that happening either.
Living in the next town over from amsterdam: many people use ebikes for a 20km journey between towns, both ways.
Alternatives?
- Cycling 3 hours a day on your 100€ used rusty bike
- tucking your two year old in your backpack while bringing it to the daycare (we put them on purpose-built kids seats byt that connector is stuck on the vanMoof)
- +-200€ a month of public transport cost (excl kids)
- 7,50 a day on top of public transport for a bike ticket (if i also need my bike in the other town and don't have 3 hours a day extra to cycle) (oh and you're not allowed during rush hour)
If i would depend on a bike, it would be a massive inconvenience to not have it at best, and would be crippling for my day to day at worst.
No, it's not at all like this. Bikes are so ubiquitous here that before given this bike in for repair, the people would already have secured (likely already had) a spare bike for the duration of the repairs.
And no, it's not theft, this is how bankruptcy works. All assets and _anything on the property_ is frozen, until creditors sort through it all. There's nothing illegal or dodgy going on, it's just that some people had the misfortune to have their bikes on the bankrupt companies property.
Not necessarily. Not sure about how it'll work in the Netherlands, but I've seen this happen in the UK and I believe customers essentially lost the items that were in for repair because they were effectively property of the company during that time, or something like that. I believe repair shop contents were sold off to cover debts.
A company doesn't take ownership of items that come in for repair/servicing, and simply locking other people's property into a room/shop/garage is hardly a basis for ownership as otherwise thieves could just nick something, lock it into a garage and then claim ownership.
I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't read the terms of service, just going on what I have seen happen to a local company here a few years ago. I agree it doesn't make sense.
> A company doesn't take ownership of items that come in for repair/servicing
While this seems unlikely, it's not obvious to me that this is not what "technically" happens for consumer electronics.
The concept at the center of this discussion, but which is not being discussed is called “bailment.” While every bankruptcy system has rules for unwinding those bailments entered into before filing, they vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and much of what we think would be workable or fair just doesn’t work that way.
John Gregory Dunne long ago wrote a piece about his wife (Joan Didion) wrangling with the IRS to get back his shirts from a laundry the IRS had seized. With a good deal of persistence, she managed to do it. When handing back the goods, somebody from the IRS told him, Your wife is a grouch--which hardly seems fair.
Yup. This is what happens when a company goes bankrupt. Customers are generally last on the list of people to be compensated when that happens and the police can't do anything about it.
You're morally and ethically correct, but not technically correct in regards to bankruptcy. As another commenter mentioned, all parties involved must examine the information available and agree that you actually own the property. Otherwise the bankrupt company could fraudulently give away assets by saying someone else owns them.
If the company's records are incomplete, you may need to file a claim because the people chopping up the company may not have sufficient information available otherwise.
Because it was a venture capital backed "bicycle+internet-of-shit". And this bankruptcy has reclaimed all these "shitty bicycles" as the company's property until when or if they send out firmware to permanently unlock them.
More likely, these assets will be sold to some other bottom-feeder.
All in all, point being: stay the hell away from any VC backed company peddling shit that ties you to their servers.
Edit: This is directly related to "Internet of Shit", with a phone-app that logs into their now dead servers, generates a rolling code, and then transmits the rolling code via bluetooth to the bike. This then unscrews the locking pin inside the frame and wheel. This could have been done OFFLINE, but they chose to tie it in their network, which makes these all de-facto company property.
The older (S/X3) generation generate a key serverside, but it is then cached on the client and doesn't require a connection to the backend ~ever.
On the newer (S/A5) generation, the key has a ~7 day expiration time, but there are also workarounds for that.
All of the bikes can also be manually unlocked by inputting a "unlock key" (3 digit PIN, basically) from the bikes physical interface, without any app whatsoever.
The situation with VanMoof is _bad_, but you don't have to pretend it's worse than it actually is by making stuff up.
I'm quite interested in an e-bike, but it seems like most/all of them have or require a smartphone app. That is an instant no-sale for me. I'm not interested in anything that will break when (not if) your company goes out of business or gets bored hosting servers or updating its app for new mobile OSes. So I haven't bought one yet.
I wish we could get companies to understand that connecting a Thing to the Internet is an enormous strike in the Con column.
Anyone know of a good e-bike brand that doesn't have the capability to connect to the Internet?
> Anyone know of an e-bike brand that doesn't have the capability to connect to the Internet?
Quite literally almost all of them? Just go to any bike shop and look around. I'm sure there's probably a lot of sponsored ads online for internet/app e-bikes, but an e-bike is just a normal bike with a motor and a battery. I live where e-bikes are extremely common and I have never seen one with any kind software included.
Ah cool. I've mostly been learning about them from reviews as they come in my Ars Technica feed. Here's the most recent four, all of which include an app, so I thought it was common. Perhaps that's just a factor of shiny new things that get sent out for review, versus old-reliable models that no one covers.
> If you want anything more than that, you'll have to use Specialized's Mission Control phone app, which pairs with the bike via Bluetooth. Once again, I had trouble pairing my phone with the bike
> Before my first ride, I paired the bike with the Trek Central app, which is available for iOS and Android. My first attempt failed, as the app had yet to be updated with the specs
Ars covers a specific type of e-bike, not the average commuter bike. If I look around the bike parking lot here, I see one VanMoof and few dozen bikes from various brands using Bosch or Bafang mid-motors. No app for those except for the dealership (for maintenance/repair). But that's in Europe, the market in the US is undoubtedly different.
I'm pretty sure radpower bikes still don't have internet access (mine is a few years old so not 100% certain). They come only partially assembled though, so if you aren't comfortable with bike maintenance, pay someone who is to do it.
In very much the same train of thought as in the necessity of intermediary banks, the property is yours the moment you pay for it. However, since the transaction didn't occur in person, it may very well be the property of the seller with the obligation to deliver the goods.
My wording may be a bit off, I'm no expert. But this is my interpretation of the matter.
I personally have a strict sense of "ownership". The easy proxy for it is: "Is there open firmware developed in FLOSS that I can replace the existing with?"
Obviously, that's not a 100%. Perhaps something like this is better:
"The thing is owned by me, when I pay for it, and it doesnt have irrevocable tie-backs to the company." Now, my strategy here isn't even foolproof, with auutomatic updates that can reverse features. Ideally, even automatic updates are a trap UNLESS you have a way to roll them back.
That's why I highly prefer hardware with FLOSS options. That's really the only way to guarantee my "ownership".
On a general level, depending on the incoterms. Specifically, it depends on whatever contract and term and conditions you agreed to as a customer. And whether or not those hold up to legal scrutiny.
Ownership is surprisingly well defined legally. And the general principle is actually quite easy to understand. The specifics depend. Hint: The police is only indirectly involved, if at all.
Property rights are not a binary, all or nothing thing, so the answer is complicated.
When do you have the right to use something? When do you have the exclusive right to use it? When do you have the right to eject others? When do you have the right to destroy it? Copy it? Sell it?
Some of these rights you may never have. Some you have the moment you pay, others are practically impossible to enforce until you take delivery.
