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Local bike-sharing company Anywheel has announced that it has implemented a new measure to deal with users who have been misusing their bikes.
He stated in a Facebook post on December 6 that he had hired agents to go after those who had been “stealing, personally blocking and tampering with his bicycles.”
https://www.facebook.com/anywheel.sg/posts/900442467159559
This action came after Anywheel received complaints from users about the misuse of their bikes. The company told Lianhe Wanbao that 234 bicycles were stolen or tampered with in April.
During the past six months, he received around 40 reports a day from people using their bikes for personal reasons. Most of these bikes were chained or left outside floors, empty decks, stairs, or alleys.
Anywheel decided to step in and recently hired a team of enforcers.
These plainclothes policemen will patrol on foot and “approach suspects to check if they have unlocked their bike through their app,” a company representative told AsiaOne.
These law enforcement officials are trained to “identify bicycle tempering and private lockout signs,” Anywheel said. If the suspect cannot prove that a bicycle was rented on his request, he will alert the police.
A week after implementing the new measure, the team has caught several roaming users. In one case, they found five of them in six hours.
Anywheel added that it was “surprisingly easy” for them to do so, as many of the suspects felt “very guilty about their actions.” These errant users would then be turned over to the police while the company would take additional legal action to claim damages.
Noting that the majority of those caught misusing bicycles were not sponsors of its service, the company added that it will ban the accounts of users found to have done so.
Responses to the new measure have been largely positive. Commenting on Anywheel’s post on Facebook, many netizens expressed frustration using the bike-sharing service, where the lack of bikes prevented them from booking a ride on the app.
Another netizen also gave some good advice to users on the proper use of shared bikes so as not to inconvenience future users.
However, there were some who expressed concern about Anywheel’s enforcers. For example, some questioned the execution process, as well as the background of these agents.
Others also expressed concern about possible interpretations of the measure, especially for delivery passengers who may have to temporarily leave their bikes while making deliveries.
In response to these concerns, Anywheel said that users would have to re-rent the bike and repeat the usual process of scanning the QR code on the bike to unlock it. If the bikes are left unlocked, the timer will continue to run at the 50 cent meter speed for 30 minutes.
After the success of the execution trial, the company said it will hire more agents to stop this irresponsible behavior.
“There is nothing to worry about if a person pays to use our service through our app and has no intention of keeping the bikes for their private use,” the representative told AsiaOne.
“We seek to provide our loyal riders with a good bike-share service by minimizing, if not eradicating, this illegal behavior. The people of Singapore deserve better.”
In July, the company was allowed to expand its fleet from 10,000 to 15,000.
