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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?



One of the problem was that they automatically and without customer consent converted the deposits to VIP subscriptions.

[Edit] Also this whole concept of dockless bikes is very unsightly. Singapore has changed the law to have the companies pay for the bike removal.


  Bike sharing company in Singapore. Initially collected a S$49 to use its service. 
In Zurich they initially charged a deposit of CHF 150 (later halved). That comes to S$206 and is probably three times the amount of what those atrocities are worth.


Right! A bike was cheaper than that 'service'. It made no sense.


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.


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

There are probably better ways to spend those bucks.


S$49 is around 30€.

German c't magazine did a review of various rental bikes in Germany and found OBike to be the worst by far. They also got their hands on an offer for their bikes. Apparently these bikes cost 69€ (S$112) if you buy 1000 of them.





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