Wednesday, 12 December 2007

bicing send out a reminder again

It seems that people are still having problems with bikes getting used after they parked them in a station. (This is more or less directly from google translate)
Hello user, You remember that in the conditions of service use Bicing, specifies that the user is responsible for the bike from the moment that withdraws from a station until the anchoring correctly in the same station or on another station. The steps to return the bicycle are: - You identify an free anchor and make sure that the green light is on. - Plug the two-ball clamping located on the handlebars within anchorages. - Wait until the green light stops blinking and a red light fixed appears. - Make sure the bicycle has been firmly in place. - Should it blink between red and green, contact us at telephone 902 31 55 31. If you want to park at a station which is full, hold your card on the reader, it will show on the screen locations of the nearest stations with empty spaces. You will get extra 10 minutes at no extra charge to arrive at the station. If you follow these instructions correctly the system will recognize that you returned the bike properly. This will cost you only a few seconds and you save charges of penalties stipulated by the non-return of the bicycle: If excedes the usage time by more than 2 hours, the fee is 3 € / hour, and if not returning the bike in more than 24 hours, the penalty is 150 €. Sincerely, Customer Service
I have been lucky so far and have not been charged with penalties, but with the reliability of the system I wouldn't be surprised if I were. But I also notice that a lot of people plug in their bikes without waiting till the red light. Someone waiting at the station for a mistake like this can then easily steal or use this bike as much as he likes. So be careful.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've been fined, many many times. Usually it's for a slight delay in returning the bicycle, and for me this is invariably because the station I try to go to is full, and not because I'm flying around town on it. I notice bicing's advertised hold-the-card-to-reader-and-get- 10-extra-minutes-to-bring-bike-elsewhere is not something that has EVER worked for me, EVER - and I've tried a lot. I also got fined a rather large amount for leaving the bicycle stuck in a flash green/red light without reporting this to bicing, this was at about 12:15am on a weekday night, and before the freephone number came in, so there wasnt much I could do - but they still charged me.