Social Bicycles

Signed into the app easily enough and created an account. Here in Long Beach, CA there are stations everywhere which is great. However, at least half the bikes we tried were not functional in one way or another. The biggest pain is the keypads on the bikes are mostly old and entering account number and pin can be a frustrating and time consuming prospect. Because we are visiting we don't have time to get an RFID card. To properly rent a bike you have to find a station using the app, then approach the bike and see if the keypad lights up. Then you have see if the seat is adjustable, several bikes we found the stems were locked so tight we couldn't adjust them. Then you have to test the brakes and the shifter. Several bikes we found the shifters were busted. After the functional checks, then you get to fight with the keypad to enter the digits and you're on your way. When we found a working bike the price of the system is just right and it's super convenient with all the bike lanes and stations but it's too bad it's such a frustrating experience.

I got 3 days usage and about a dozen bike rides in. The app has all the basic features needed, but the downside is a complete refresh of the whole interface just about every time you look at it. (Imagine if Google/Apple maps reloaded your whole screen with a US-size map and then zoomed in every time you turned from one street to another). Showing locations of available bikes was good (as was their distribution). My success rate for actually unlocking a particular bike was just over 50% though (not clear if app or bike is to blame). When you find a bike/app/location that works, it works well, though, so try to dial that in and start/stop your trips there.

So I was renting one of the bicycles last night and I attempted to put the bicycle on hold. As instructed to do I inserted he U Bar into the frame but the keypad proceeded to tell me that I inserted it incorrectly. When I tried to take the U Bar out of he frame, the U Bar was locked into place, but still displaying the try again screen. After I had tried calling for support and reporting the issue, I tried unsubscribing to see if it would let me force quit from using the bicycle, I tried logging out and logging back in, I tried seeing if I could rent a different bicycle to see if it will stop using the initial one and none of these worked. I think these sharing apps are great and I love that they give us a free hour of use everyday but I’m currently am still getting charged and I haven’t gotten a response (I tried both email and calling). If the App has a similar thing as Bird does and allows you to disable the bike you were using from your phone, then I don’t believe I would have this issue. Yes I understand that I need to put the U Bar back in place at a registered hub area but I wouldn’t mind getting charged a bit more for this feature instead of being continually charged for a broken bicycle