When Will oBike Go Completely Bust?

[Deactivated] on 25/06/2018 - 16:40
Last edited 25/06/2018 - 16:42

oBike recently announced their departure from Melbourne.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5833193/oBike-pullin…

Likewise, they are departing Singapore (their home country).
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/obike-ceases-operatio…

We closed our accounts in Malaysia over 2 months ago, and have still not received the deposit refund yet.

Right from the beginning their business model seemed to me to be deeply flawed, a great cash grab but unsustainable in the long term.

They appear to be starting to pivot, and now selling e-bikes?? This seems like desperation.
They're asking for a $1,200 deposit on a $1,300 bike, a very high amount, why not just take the full price up front?
https://ev.o.bike/ Although the link doesn't work for me.
http://www.greatdeals.com.sg/2018/03/22/obike-evs-power-assi…

What are your thoughts?
I give them until end of 2018 before they're complete bust.

Travel

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oBike Australia
oBike Australia

Comments

  • Clear on 25/06/2018 - 16:45

    Go use the app in Melbourne and most of their bikes stop tracking at the Yarra.

    Their app is so dysfunctional though. I used it once and the app automatically unlocked my bike as expected. It never told me I had to lock the bike manually when I finished until several hours AFTER my trip had ended. Thankfully I was never charged for the extra time it took or the entire trip infact.

    • WreckTangle on 25/06/2018 - 17:13
      +3

      That’s because most of there bikes are in the Yarra from what i’ve seen.

      • Clear on 25/06/2018 - 17:37

        Yup it's the easiest place to dump them

    • picklewizard on 25/06/2018 - 22:35

      Where can you track the bikes in the app? I've never seen this. Seems like it would be a HUGE breach of privacy.

      • Clear on 25/06/2018 - 22:35

        You can't. I'm talking about finding a bike.

        • picklewizard on 25/06/2018 - 22:38

          What do you mean by 'stop tracking at the Yarra' though? Does that mean it shows the previous journey?

        • Clear on 25/06/2018 - 22:39

          @picklewizard: That was last tracked location of where to pick up the bike… in the Yarra river. scrimshaw has an example of it happening.

        • picklewizard on 25/06/2018 - 22:44

          @Clear: Gotcha. I was gonna say… I'd be very uncomfortable with that!

  • tsunamisurfer on 25/06/2018 - 17:52
    +16

    I think Japan is the only place for oBike to operate because the Japanese respect property.

    • try2bhelpful on 25/06/2018 - 18:41

      Dumping bikes any where you please is not a good business model. They needed to work with the council to have proper places to park the bikes rather than just dumping them anywhere they wanted when somebody had finished with them. The real problem is the company had no respect for the people who had to dodge around their property.

      • bobbified on 25/06/2018 - 22:05
        +2

        The real problem is the company had no respect for the people who had to dodge around their property.

        The bikes didn't park themselves in the middle of the footpath!

        • try2bhelpful on 25/06/2018 - 22:17
          +1

          the company had no plan as to how their bicycles would be parked by their users so they just became a nuisance; they didn't get the councils onside before they just put their bicycles out there. Funnily enough the blue bicycles haven't become the nuisances that the obikes became.

        • bobbified on 26/06/2018 - 06:57
          +5

          @try2bhelpful:

          the company had no plan as to how their bicycles would be parked by their users so they just became a nuisance

          The plan was to have a dockless system for users' convenience. However, that conveneience involves common sense from the users' end in parking the bikes out of way. Ultimately, the company didn't do enough research on the behaviour of our fellow citizens who think it's funny to toss them up trees and into the river.

          they didn't get the councils onside before they just put their bicycles out there

          What would that have done? The council doesn't have the ability to control people's behaviour. At best, there might've been a process to collect the bikes (with major costs payable to the council themselves) and at worst, the council red tape and costs may have prevented the company from even starting.

          Funnily enough the blue bicycles haven't become the nuisances

          There are key differences between docked and undocked systems and there are advantages and disadvantages of both. The undocked system requires user cooperation in its usage. It's pretty clear now that the undocked system wont work here because people here can't be trusted to use common sense.

        • Ozpit on 26/06/2018 - 08:43
          +3

          The real problem is the disrespect that Joe and Jane average have for property that is not their own, and a disrespect for the safety and convenience of their fellow Aussies by simply 'dumping' their hired bikes at the end of their journey, not to mention the vandals who find amusement in chucking their hired bikes into a river or sticking them up in a tree. If you treated a bike owned by any of them in a similar way, what reaction would you expect?

        • HighAndDry on 26/06/2018 - 09:55
          +2

          @try2bhelpful: You don't need the councils. There are places to park bikes for normal people almost everywhere. Most apartments have a place to park bikes in the carpark. As do most public parks, shopping centres, car parks public or private, train stations, etc.

          There's no shortage of bike spaces - there's a shortage of people being civilized when they know there aren't penalties for not being civilized.

        • try2bhelpful on 26/06/2018 - 12:27
          +1

          @HighAndDry: I live in the inner city and there aren't a lot of places for people to park these bikes if they are stopping at someone's house rather than the shops; people just dumped them in the street or stood them up against fences. The obike people were the ones making the money so they should've worked with the councils for designated areas for parking.

  • jjjaar on 25/06/2018 - 18:21

    Their business model was you ticked a box saying you authorise oBike and the app to watch everything you do on your phone and then sell that data to third parties. The bikes were simply a tool to get your data.

    • mskeggs on 25/06/2018 - 21:17
      +4

      I see this claim made repeatedly for these bike companies, but I've seen no evidence they ever sold user data for even a dollar.
      I think this was just a bullet point on a venture capital presentation on what might be a revenue model.

      Who would actually pay anything to know you biked somewhere? Why wouldn't they seek the same info from Facebook or Snapchat or Telstra and cover the non-biking majority too?

      • kasp on 25/06/2018 - 23:21
        -2

        You would be surprised at how useful that data is.

        They cross reference the bike data with age and demographics and work out some pretty crazy shit. Bike data by itself noone gives a shit about, however when cross referenced with other data it is very useful.

        • mooney on 26/06/2018 - 08:47
          +2

          Keep going kasp.. give an example of the crazy shit they will work out with age, bike data, and demographics? I am specifically interested in what the bike data will add to the others to make this worthwhile data.

        • HighAndDry on 26/06/2018 - 09:56
          +2

          Yeah no. Bike data would add nothing when people already carry personal GPS trackers on them 24/7. You know, mobiles.

    • picklewizard on 25/06/2018 - 22:37

      This isn't how phones work. No app can do this. oBike only has permissions to camera (for QR scanning), location (bikes don't have GPS, they rely solely on your phone's location) and storage (a common permission and cannot access data in non-common storage of other apps.)

  • HeWhoKnows on 25/06/2018 - 20:14

    Same with most bike rentals
    Its all in the deposit

  • scrimshaw on 25/06/2018 - 20:35

    Yeah, tried to use Obike in Sydney a few months back. I ran into some problems:

    1. bikes were vandalized
    2. the bikes are faulty and cannot be used
    3. Bikes that simply don't exist yet had a pin on the Map
    • Clear on 25/06/2018 - 20:49
      +1

      the bikes are faulty and cannot be used

      I learned this going downhill when the seat fell through. Ouchy.

  • bobbified on 25/06/2018 - 22:01
    +11

    I didn't ride the bikes, but it pisses me off to see that people here have f-all respect for other's property.

    And that is why we can't have nice things!

    • try2bhelpful on 26/06/2018 - 12:31
      +1

      these weren't nice things, they were terrible bikes and there was no plan on how they would be parked in such a way to minimise annoying other people. When people ride their own bikes then there is an incentive to maintain them and park them properly. The company did nothing to ensure their riders weren't causing issues to others and they have paid the penalty - good riddance - hopefully the next bunch will have a better business model.

      • bobbified on 26/06/2018 - 14:17

        When people ride their own bikes then there is an incentive to maintain them and park them properly.

        And this is exactly what I'm talking about. People are capable of looking after their own stuff, but go out and intentionally damage the property of others. You need incentive to maintain and park bikes properly? How about the simple consideration for others?

        Our councils realised this long ago. Look at everything such as benches, etc along the street - it's obvious that anti-vandalism features were a major consideration in their designs.

        hopefully the next bunch will have a better business model.

        Any suggestions? We've just proved that our shitty attitudes isn't compatible with a dockless system.

        • try2bhelpful on 26/06/2018 - 15:14

          The next mob can work with the council to have designated parking spaces so these things won't be left across the pavement. There is currently no area that is set aside for parking these things so people aren't given any direction on where they should be parked. If they had put in some bicycle parking areas in main streets that were marked for obikes then people would be more likely to park there rather than just dump them in the street. You don't tend to see the blue bikes just dumped everywhere like you do with Obikes, so there is, obviously, a strategy that will work. Myabe you think the people who rent blue bikes are just a better class of people than those with Obikes, personally I just think it is because the bluebikes have designated areas and an incentive to return them where they belong.

        • HighAndDry on 26/06/2018 - 15:46
          +1

          @try2bhelpful:

          The next mob can work with the council to have designated parking spaces so these things won't be left across the pavement.

          That still requires people to actually use those parking spaces. There isn't a shortage of bike parking spaces - you can find them at any train station, park, swimming pool, shopping centre, etc. It's the fact that people just don't use those bike spaces.

          If they had put in some bicycle parking areas in main streets that were marked for obikes then people would be more likely to park there rather than just dump them in the street.

          You're really reading people wrong. People were deliberately throwing them into the Yarra. Absolutely nothing compels someone to do that.

    • whooah1979 on 28/06/2018 - 05:40

      These bikes are a trip hazard and a nuisance. They’re an eyesore and littered everywhere the closer one travels to the cbd. The best thing for the city is the state government passing legislation that puts a $1 tax on each ride.

  • picklewizard on 25/06/2018 - 22:44

    Aren't oBike supposed to be pulling out? Seems there's still plenty of bikes around and the app still works!

  • DarkOz on 26/06/2018 - 09:18

    We have a very high proportion of (profanity) in Australia for this to work. The only way for a system like this to work is when/if the people respect others and this includes others' properties.

  • EagleKent on 26/06/2018 - 10:00
    +2

    I hope they do go bust. I hated these things while in Shanghai as they are everywhere and block already narrow and busy footpaths. Australia is lucky we haven't gone that far.

  • zzymurgy on 26/06/2018 - 10:41

    Requested my deposit back when they quietly pulled out of Adelaide. (No mention of this anywhere in the news, the papers are pitiful.) I'm not counting on getting it back. Pretty annoying when I couldn't use their service, the bike location was often wrong and there just weren't enough of them around.

    • Gav on 05/07/2018 - 17:05

      Chargeback with your credit card company (if applicable)

  • ozzpete on 28/06/2018 - 04:42

    When Will oBike Go Completely Bust?

    Next Tuesday I've organised a flash-mob of backpackers with vans. We shall be bike-napping all the obikes, and have lined the vans with foil to stop the GPS on bikes from phoning home to be rescued/repossessed

    • zzymurgy on 29/06/2018 - 10:22

      y tho

    • HighAndDry on 05/07/2018 - 17:44

      Lol. You're going to recruit backpackers to basically commit mass theft? I mean… have fun being deported. (Two birds one stone? OBikes off streets, backpackers outta Australia…)

    • [Deactivated] on 05/07/2018 - 18:13

      No staff left at oBike to track the bikes anyway

  • Gav on 05/07/2018 - 17:06

    oBike bye bye (don't say I didn't warn you): https://www.sbs.com.au/news/aussie-obike-customers-demand-re…

    Request credit card chargeback if you can.

    Also bye bye in Singapore: https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/singapore/obike-owes-over-dol…
    … and bye bye in Zurich: https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/veloverleih-in-zuerich-o-bike-zie…

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