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posted by chromas on Wednesday May 23 2018, @01:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the he-terk-my-bird! dept.

Electric Scooter Charger Culture Is Out of Control (archive)

Bird is a scooter-sharing company that launched in 2017 and has been dubbed the "Uber of scooters." Its goal is to alleviate congestion and allow people an easy way to travel quickly for short distances of just a few miles. Riders can locate and unlock scooters using the company's smartphone app, and after paying the $1 unlocking fee are charged 15 cents per minute during use.

Birds are available in a growing number of American cities including Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Scottsdale, Arizona; Washington D.C.; and Atlanta. The scooters are all battery-powered and dockless, so they can be picked up or dropped off anywhere. But when night falls, what most riders don't realize is that the scooters themselves are charged by a contract workforce. These people are known as "Bird hunters" or "chargers," and they're growing exponentially in number.

[...] Hoarding in particular has become a problem in these crowded markets. Bird and other companies will pay a $20 reward for missing scooters, so some chargers simply keep the scooters in their garage until they're reported missing by riders or the bounty goes up to $20, then claim the finder's fees. Bird theoretically polices this behavior, and Brandon says he's gotten a warning call from the company for hoarding, but the bad behavior has become commonplace and punishment is unevenly enforced.

Each scooter can also only be captured by one charger. In saturated markets, the race to quickly grab as many scooters as possible is fierce. "One time I pulled up to pick up a scooter, I got there maybe 10 seconds before the other guy did," said one charger in San Diego. "He started yelling at me. He picked up a Bird scooter and started beating my car. I got the hell out of there."

[...] As the charging community grows, some Bird hunters have sought to reduce their competition in nefarious ways. Several Facebook groups for chargers in different cities have cropped up. For one of them, in order to join, you're asked to share a screenshot of your settings screen containing your login name, telephone number, and email. Rogue Bird hunters attempt to use this information to shut down your account or charge under your name with updated billing information.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:58PM (10 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @02:58PM (#683122)

    One time I pulled up to pick up a scooter, I got there maybe 10 seconds before the other guy did," said one charger in San Diego. "He started yelling at me. He picked up a Bird scooter and started beating my car. I got the hell out of there.

    So, if you are en-route to a scooter, you should be able to "claim" it and hold it for a reasonable amount of time, say 30 minutes - that scooter is yours before you ever get there. This doesn't stop a sniper from beating you to it and then locking it up in his metal van blocking its GPS tracking signal and later collecting that boneheaded $20 reward for "finding" the stolen scooter.

    The app might mitigate this problem somewhat by not revealing precise locations of scooters that need charging (say: identify a 200m diameter circle) until the scooter has been "claimed" by a charger, then take that scooter off the chargers' map and show it only to the claimant. Bad actor claimants who don't pick up in a timely manner can be penalized (or, to be psychologically nice about it: good actors can be rewarded - same thing in the end.) Still won't stop snipers from spotting scooters without the app and stealing them, which is a problem no matter how you slice this puzzle.

    Scooter with ~$2K purchase price out on the street "earning" $0.15 per minute while utilized... needs 222 hours of paid use just to return the capital investment, at 4 hours a day that's around 2 months, then you've got to pay the chargers daily fees, I wouldn't bother for less than $10 per charged scooter, so that cuts the daily income from $36 to $26, extending ROC out from 2 months to more like 3. If a scooter can last on the streets for 3 months or 360 hours of usage before being stolen or seriously damaged, you've got net profit.

    In Miami in the 1980s, non-electric bicycles worth maybe $30 lasted an average of about 3 nights when locked up outside with heavy-duty frame+wheel locks. These things are heavier and have a GPS tracker built in, but they can still be loaded into a van and driven anywhere.

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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 23 2018, @03:15PM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @03:15PM (#683131) Journal

    You forgot the value of the tracking and targeted advertising in your ROI calculations. Without them, *all* bike share services are nett-loss propositions.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:02PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:02PM (#683149) Homepage Journal

    - driver.

    He wanted nothing more than to do right by his girlfriend and their baby, but if he should ever hesitate to cross certain palms with certain quantities of silver, the dispatchers would somehow never ever send him fares ever again.

    Neither would his baby, when such baby grows up to be a taxi driver themself, nor his baby's babies.

    That's how "Vendettas" worked in Renaiscance Italy: if someone murdered your brother, you could petition the court for a vendetta against the culprit, thereby giving your family to murder all the men from three generations of the culprit's family.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:07PM (7 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:07PM (#683153) Homepage Journal

    The bikes aren't available to the homeless because one requires a payment card to rent them.

    After payment the bikes are wirelessly unlocked. You can use the bike for as long as you wish then return it to any of dozens of wireless locking racks scattered all over Creation.

    The gadgetry alone must have set back the City Of Portland some millions of Samoleons.

    This while the San Luis Obispo Sheriff has I Shit You Not THOUSANDS of unclaimed bikes in its stolen bike impound.

    Quite likely one of those SLO bikes is rightfully mine!

    So here's what you do:

    Pay a long-haul trucker to tote a few hundred of those bikes to Stumptown.

    Paint them all yellow, just like Amsterdam's yellow bikes.

    Install high-capacity bike racks all over Creation.

    Install all the yellow bikes in said bike racks.

    Do not lock them.

    Do permit the homeless to ride them.

    Do not charge money to use them.

    ????

    PROFIT!

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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:38PM (6 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @04:38PM (#683161)

      Do not lock them.
      Do permit the homeless to ride them.
      Do not charge money to use them.
      ????
      PROFIT!

      This is a very economically beneficial approach, but it usually falls afoul of some "anti-freeloader" sentiment among the voters.

      Taking the bikes from the SLO impound is, perhaps, more politically appealing than just buying a container of new bikes from China, but the container from China also works from an economic perspective. WalMart can sell decent bicycles for $50 each at retail, a bulk container purchase by a city should get them for even less. A free bicycle on downtown streets will reduce traffic and infrastructure costs by more than it costs to provide. Of course, people will always find ways to take advantage, but at some point that's just down in the noise, like people stealing highway railings and selling them for scrap metal - sure: it happens, but not enough to stop using metal highway railings.

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      • (Score: 1, Troll) by Oakenshield on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:25PM (2 children)

        by Oakenshield (4900) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:25PM (#683226)

        You're not going to get a $50 bike from Walmart for an adult. You can still get a 20 inch kid's bike for about that, but adult bikes are rarely under $100 even at Walmart these days. Their cheapest men's bike is $89 online. Target's website had exactly one 26 inch men's mountain bike for $75 and everything else started at $150.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:57PM (#683245)

          I guess they've moved up-market from when we bought my wife's aluminum frame full suspension bike from WalMart for $89 - at that time there were cheaper bikes with less features.

          https://www.target.com/p/kent-terra-2-6-26-men-s-mountain-bike-21-speed-blue/-/A-49164631 [target.com]

          About this item: $75 - 21 speed with Front Suspension: unnecessary complication and expense, you might argue that 7 speed is worth it, I'd go with a 3 speed hub cassette or fixed gear for an inner city beater bike. Suspension is probably a joke on this bike anyway, but fixed forks cheaper to build and maintain.

          If you're buying a container full of bikes from China, you can spec them down from WalMart/Target levels of luxury. Just like Mercedes only imports top-end products to the US, I suppose that WalMart, Target, et.al. have decided that nobody in the US should be allowed to buy a simple, cheap bike anymore.

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          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:19AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:19AM (#683369)

            If I had to guess I'd say that cheap bikes weren't selling well anymore so the department stores stopped importing them. I dropped nearly $400 at a bike store on my son for a decent bike. I got tired of replacing $100 bikes every season when they fell apart. This one has held up well so far.

      • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:06PM (2 children)

        by Osamabobama (5842) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:06PM (#683251)

        The paid bikes in San Diego are causing perceived problems by cluttering up the sidewalks. Because people can leave them anywhere, they do. Other people (mostly pedestrians) sometimes find that location inconvenient.

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        • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:26PM

          by crafoo (6639) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:26PM (#683262)

          That's not a universal truth, but an unfortunate truth about the people and culture of San Diego. Quite a few populations would have no issue with the common courtesy of properly stowing the bike. Other peoples and cultures will steal everything not nailed down and murder families with a hatchet.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:32PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:32PM (#683266)

          Because people can leave them anywhere, they do.

          Beatings. Regular beatings on sight. Clean that place right up, like Singapore.

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