I cancelled my deposit today will see if I get it back soon!
Main reason …bikes are heavy duty heaps of shit. If they had just spent a bit more on the bike to make it cycleable. So I think they don’t care about people riding them.
Other reasons…don’t seem to have a proper plan to maintain or work with the govt. Also lack of bikes near some MRT stations.
If they are around when the weather is cooler and they sort the parking and maintenance I will think about giving it a go again.
Please keep us posted! I am planning to cancel my deposit also.
Yes, please keep us updated. I got a few friends who have signed up and were thinking about getting their deposits back too.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/2017/07/20/499531/unwelcome-in.htm
Taipei City also said it would tow illegally parked bikes, but Mayor Ko Wen-je said that the “sharing economy is a global trend that cannot be stopped. It should be managed, not forbidden.”
So my previous research was true. It’s not illegal, just…frowned upon.
The problem is that oBikes has taken up the already much sought-after scooter parking spaces in the greater Taipei area, drawing complaints from scooter riders. That’s why the New Taipei City Government changed its stance to forbid oBike parking in scooter spaces.
I’m on the scooter getting from A to B and would be preeetty pissed off if an oBike was taking up a spot, but not to the point where I’d call 1999 and complain.
Let’s say you look for a scooter spot and find one with an obike occupying it. If you just remove the bike and put it on the sidewalk or the street, no one is stopping your, right? Could you be fined for that? Could the last user of the obike be fined/charged when the illegal bike is taken away by the authorities?
So do the bikes actually have GPS link inside or they just use your phone for GPS?
After you finish using the bike it locks via Bluetooth from your phone. Is that the GPS location?
What if you pick the bike up and move it 5 kilometres? Does its location change or does it not have the correct location identified until someone walks by and connects their phone to it?
Still like OBike. Feel its only getting the level of present scorn because it is an overseas tech company, rather than causing any real social problems.
This kind of brings us back to what @Rocket and I were talking about in another thread and how they can actually fine you by not being able to ID you.
We also add the assumption that no one is actually maintaining the bikes, so who from the corporation could actually find a way to fine you if you moved it 5m, 500m, or 5000m.
Our cycling LINE group was talking about this yesterday and we’re waiting for the first oBike to appear at the Wuling. It’s only a matter of time.
Legit questions, I can’t really find definitive answers for them also… but I can’t see how they can live track bike movement when it’s not connected to your phone for the Internet, even with a GPS chip built in.
Anecdotally I’ve walked to bike locations where no bike was present, so I’ll guess that people can move it without the location being updated. That or I need glasses.
Meanwhile in Melbourne…
You mean Hehuanshan Wuling? Nooo way anyone can ride up there with those bikes. If you mean someone drives up there with a bike in his trunk OK, that’s more likely. If anyone tries to ride those bikes in the mountains, the pedals will break at the first somewhat steeper climb.
Not exactly about oBikes, but some sobering news regarding Ofo bikes.
That’s for the rider to find out. I mean, some dude went up to Wuling with the Youbike…
In oBike news, I actually saw an oBike truck yesterday on my evening commute home, similar looking to the Youbike truck, with oBike’s name on them. Not exactly sure what they were doing, but it didn’t seem like they were picking up oBikes to be repaired since I passed a few on the sidewalk and the truck didn’t stop.
You hit the nail on the head.
It is crazy all the hate the bikes are getting from the authorities and public. Scooters take up far more space, pollute like crazy and are noisy as hell, yet everyone seems to think they are great.
This.
Guy
People are lazy, selfish and addicted to convenience. A lot of foreigners come from North America and a are used to relying in motor vehicles, so will defend the need to use scooters. There is nothing more damaging to the environment than the number of personal motor vehicles that we have on the planet right now. Banning plastic bags, recycling etc, it does nothing compared to prohibiting riding motor vehicles.
You guys are just judging a book by its cover.
Yes, it’s true scooters are an issue, everyone knows this, but that’s a discussion for another time.
The bikes themselves are
A bike that’s not maintenanced on a regular basis will have problems. When the bikes have problems, someone may get hurt.
According to a friend in the bike industry, those bikes retail for about 800-1000NT. So, you’re helping the company pay for their bikes while they take your deposit and invest in something else.
Tell me how the above are not issues.
Yeah just building the roads themselves for all the vehicles is incredibly damaging to the environment and roads take up so much space everywhere. Thats without factoring in the climate change issues and air pollution.
Sounds like defects in their business model, rather than a huge social issue.
Yeah the business model doesn’t seem to involve sustainability and their bikes are shit. Their outreach to communities and government is very poor. Big holes in the model.