Boris Bikes – Love them, getting a bit frustrated. August 9, 2010
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : London , trackbackYesterday, I took a Boris bike from Eversholt St down to the National Theatre. Cycling through Bloomsbury and the West End, on back streets with very little traffic is a real joy, and then over Waterloo Bridge, pedalling as fast as I could because roadworks mean there’s no room to move over and let the buses pass. Sorry folks, hope you enjoyed the view (the river, not me).
Going home though, I caught the bus. It’s not that I didn’t want to get a bike, but none of the ones in the rack outside the Lion King would open for me. I was worried – what if I hadn’t managed to dock the first one properly, and was now clocking up huge bills, or facing a £300 fine if it was lost. The call centre was no help, just a human answering machine to take details and ‘call you back’, maybe.
Back home, and on the website, it is clear that the bike had been returned, but I notice a few extras. A journey I hadn’t made, an annual subscription and an extra key, later reversed. My account page is a load of nonsense. I’m not out of pocket, but I don’t trust these people with my credit card.
Like our latin-quoting mop-top mayor, it all looks great fun, but once you get down to the detail, there are some serious problems which, if not dealt with quickly could turn the scheme into a PR (and perhaps real) nightmare. I hope there’s someone sensible dealing with it – it might be time to stop taking new applications, and certainly not to send transactions to banks, until the systems have been thoroughly tested. And from a PR point of view, it would be nice to hear some clear communication, rather than the email I got yesterday, reminding me that if I didn’t dock a cycle properly I’d be liable for the fine.
In the meantime, I guess a little caution is called for – perhaps take a photo of the bike in the dock when you return it (the receipt printers on the kiosks are apparently not very reliable), take regular snapshots of your online account.
I hope these are teething problems, and are sorted soon. This scheme is far too good an idea to let implementation botch-ups get in the way.
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