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news
The new red Boris bike livery (©Steve Bardens:Getty Images for Santander)Faulty Boris Bike docking station sees man charged £298 for 15-minute journey
A man from east London has been charged £298 for a 15-minute journey on a Boris Bike and now faces a 10-day wait to discover whether the money will be refunded. Nick Brett says the error has left him with £40 until his next payday on the 15th of next month.
Writing on Reddit, Brett explained what had happened:
“I recently hired a Boris bike for 15 minutes between Bow and Stepney, returned the bike, made sure the green light was on and the bike was locked, then walked away with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. However, when I checked my account today I have been charged £94 and £204 for this journey.”
Brett said that he had called Santander Cycles who had asked him whether he had made a 224 hour journey – “I confirm I did not because I am not an insane person.”
He was then told that there would be a 10-day decision process before he could be given a refund.
“I’m slightly concerned as today is rent day and it’s left me significantly out of pocket, leaving me about 40 quid until the 15th of next month when payday rolls around!”
Brett said he checked that the bike was docked correctly and that the display read ‘journey ended’. He told London24 how what should have been a £2 journey had become a serious financial issue.
“Through a faulty docking station, I am now significantly overdrawn and being charged by the day. I have been given a 10 day wait to find out if I’ll be refunded – yet they took the money from my account instantly without notification.”
Nick has since spoken to a member of the TfL customer service team, who he says was “very helpful and provided me with a lot of information,” but adds that this person “seemed to be hamstrung by the system in place.”
Earlier this month, an increase in bike hires during the Tube strike led to TfL putting on additional temporary hubs to cope with demand. It was reported that bikes were hired at more than double their normal rate as Londoners looked to alternative forms of transport to get around the city.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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25 comments
My advice would be to use a credit card if possible, so that issues like this are easier to deal with. However, credit cards are not a good idea for everyone
This seems like a very poor show. In situations like this the full amount should be refunded immediately and investigation should follow, not the other way round. We're talking about a sum of money that is unthinkable as a bike hire charge.
Get a bike from a reclaim yard or bike charity for £50 and tell boris to stick his crappy bikes.
Let's face it Boris Johnson has had f**k all to do with the concept and introduction of these bikes. All he has done is to introduce market forces and capitalism into the equation. Ken Livingston must be well pissed off with this current situation !
My wife and I, had the same experience £79 for a half hour ride, emails have been exchanged but no refund.
If that's his typical night out maybe he did ride around for 224 hours.
Sadly this is another "we'll keep doing it till someone sues us and we lose" deal.
Clearly Boris Bikes can cap rental charges to a day maximum. After that bill should be referred to a human for review - and follow up - not automatically stiffed.
Also - of course the chap should have just called his card company and reported a fraud charge - have them reverse it - because clear that is what this is. If you are the little fish - use one corp to fight another.
I had a similar situation earlier this year:
Hired a bike one evening riding back from my GF's. Docked it checking I saw saw the green light.
Went to hire one the next day and couldnt. Called them and they said I still had a bike on hire. The one I had hired was in the docking station and was docked properly.
Despite that, they had still taken £50 out of my account and eventually refunded it a week later.
£50 is a lot of LSD.
TBF he doesn't recommend exercising on LSD and maybe if your comment had been along the lines of "If he didn't spend all his money on drugs....." rather than disparaging everyone who couldn't afford to lose £300 unexpectedly.
Unfortunate event. Sadly all of these piece-of-shit large corporations operate in the "debit-instantly, refund slowly" way.
Hopefully Mr. Brett will also take a lesson in budgeting. You're in a pretty dire situation if being temporarily without a few hundred quid leaves you shafted.
IIRC the majority of the nation are 2 'pay days' away from homelessness and the guts of £300 would be more than a lot of peoples disposable income for the month. https://blog.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/only-10-left-the-disposable-incom...
Bit of a cheek that comment.
Fixed that for you.
Not really. Look at Mr. Brett's post history on Reddit (where the article originated from). In one thread he boasts of a drug-fuelled night out where he consumed:
40 mg Etizolam,
An entire bottle of Jim Beam
Nearing 200 mg of MXE
A few bumps of Ketamine
200 mg of MDMA
A few lines of Coke
In other discussions he boasts of exercising whilst under the affects of LSD.
I'd say he's made some pretty piss-poor budgeting decisions in the past.
....In one thread he boasts of a drug-fuelled night out where he consumed:
40 mg Etizolam,
An entire bottle of Jim Beam
Nearing 200 mg of MXE
A few bumps of Ketamine
200 mg of MDMA
A few lines of Coke
After that lot I think Mr Brett should consider himself lucky that Santander charge Boris Bikes by the hour and not by the parsec!
Bloody hell. That's going old school that is. You could do a decent proportion of a GC on that.
SOUNDS LIKE A BOSS NIGHT OUT THOUGH!
So what? He's chosen to enjoy himself how he likes, even if you yourself are completely tee-total and straight edge your judgemental attitude comes across as a little shitty and it's no reason for some company to allow their system to rinse almost £300 out of his account and leave him short of cash and then drag their feet when it comes to paying it back.
I'm pretty sure I'd be dead on just the legal elements of that night out, but your point is the main thing. It doesn't matter how you live your life, that is entirely irrelevant to automated charging systems that don't have a flagging system on them for stupid charges.
For my next trip into London I'm considering hiring a Brompton from Southampton. They have a £5 per day rental price. It'd take 2 months to build up that charge.
How's the view from up there on your high horse?
Just in case of any confusion, Santander don't run the bike hire at all. It's run by Serco, who are based in Richmond, west London. Santander subsidise it by paying £6.25m a year for the rights, with another £1m paid annually to promote and grow the scheme. We would have to pay this in hire charges if a 'piece-of-shit large corporation' was not willing to sponsor. Thank goodness they do. I consider this a very unshitty thing to do.
And thank goodness other large (piece-of-shit) corporations are willing to sponsor cycling teams and events for us to enjoy.
I'm not a great fan of the some companies but I think you have made a very good point here. I had a similar argument once with someone who disliked the idea of banks (Barclays) sponsoring Boris bikes. It was during the peak of the banking crisis. They suggested the bikes should be owned by the council/government/people as they saw it rather than the banks. Actually I'm not a fan of banks or the way they behave at all but my argument was that they have all the money so get some of it out of them rather than getting ourselves further in debt to them!
Ah Serco. Thank god no-one's ever called them a piece of shit large corporation who make their money out of profiting from the delivery of public services.
Ooops, hang on....
No confusion here. Serco are a piece-of-shit large corporation. So much so that they've recently lost contracts running prisons in Australasia due to increase of deaths in custody, self-harm and Serco staff beating prisoners.
They have a history of extensive cover ups of sexual abuse and exploitation. This is the same Serco that overcharged the UK taxpayer by £68.5 million for its prisoner tagging contract. They are the very definition of a piece-of-shit corporation. Unless, of course, you disagree?
and on which planet are Serco not a "piece-of-shit large corporation"
These outsourcing companies making a profit from running our public services (badly) while paying staff so little we have to top up their wages, make the banks look like benevolent charities