Recently, a netizen posted a video claiming that while traveling with her three children in Wuhan, Hubei, she scanned a QR code to ride a Hello Bike. However, when attempting to return the bike, she could not do so according to the rules despite multiple addresses provided by the Hello Bike app, all of which showed “outside the operating area.”
“Is this deliberately trying to charge me a dispatch fee? One moment it tells me the operating area is here, but when I ride over, it’s not; then it says it’s over there,” the netizen stated in her video. She mentioned that although it was only a few minutes’ walk back to the hotel, her 4-year-old daughter wanted to ride a Hello Bike equipped with a child seat, so she scanned one. After riding for a few minutes, she encountered the above problem when trying to return the bike.
At first, she thought she hadn’t parked the bike properly or neatly. After multiple adjustments, it still showed “outside the operating area.” “I rode back and forth for 50 minutes before finally returning the bike,” she said, but she was still charged a 10-yuan dispatch fee. She hopes that Hello Bike can provide users with a better experience.
On the afternoon of August 20, relevant staff from Hello Bike responded that they had urgently addressed the user’s riding experience issue. After verification, the user unlocked a parent-child bike that was part of a pilot program, and the unlocking location was already outside the pilot operating range for this bike type. According to user care policies, the system automatically waived the dispatch fee, and the user only paid the normal riding fee.
Hello Bike stated that they had sincerely apologized to the user and provided a clear explanation. They will immediately upgrade the reminder mechanism for special bike types to prevent such misunderstandings.
