RECESSION COMING IN 3 … 2 …
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ScootScoop sounds plucky, but it seems risky for their business model to depend on a scooter industry who they will could easily run out of business if they themselves are successful enough.
Parasites usually avoid killing their host organism.
Who’s the parasite though? As far as I know, most of these scooter “ride share” (rental) services are paid by both the users and the governments and once the scooters are out littering the public spaces, they have no upkeep costs.
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It doesn’t have to last forever. If it helps either get rid of escooters or force escoot companies to stop aggressively plundering the commons, then job done. It they make a bit of extra coin on the way then bonus!
16 Likes
The sooner these companies expand to or otherwise pop up in Austin, the better.
when your business model is literally taking things that don’t belong to you … shit is gonna happen
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and
The answer to both of these questions/observations is in the article.
Impounding personal property that isn’t yours is called “theft.” Always has been, always will be.
But…
If you abandon something on my property, you essentially have gifted it to me, and I may now do with it as I please. If you change your mind, and I still possess it, I might charge you to give it back.
Try it sometime. Take something that you value and drop it off in a stranger’s driveway. Then come back in a few days and ask for it back. Repeat this same trick enough times, and eventually the kindness of the stranger will fail; you’ll find you’re out of a piece of property.
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what are people supposed to do when privately owned waste shows up on your doorstep, or on your lawn?
there’s a house near my apartment that frequently has one or more scooters dumped on their lawn. it’s on a corner, and it’s across from a bus stop. that would drive me nuts.
it’s like that person who built a fence around the car “share” parked in his driveway.
what exactly are you supposed to do?
15 Likes
Put it somewhere else, totally.
But if you’re holding it hostage for money, don’t be surprised if things don’t go exactly the way you want.
Half the appeal to the customer is littering it anywhere when they’re done and ignoring the consequences for other people. A minority of customers make the minimal effort to leave it out of rights of way and private property, but doing the organizing Lime and Bird refuse to defeats half the purpose.
And yet with a personal vehicle, the owner has a vested interest in not getting towed or ticketed. Laws and ordinances exist to prevent them from externalizing their costs to the commons.
13 Likes
I think the whole idea was that there wouldn’t be docking stations that people had to get to and scooters would just naturally end up where most people need them. But I really think cities should mandate this, and not allow companies to operate unless they have docking stations or mandatory parking zones.
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The teller at my credit union told me it’s just credit card roulette. Half the number is the institution, so the crook simply cycles through the final digits trying until they get a bingo. Pizza delivery or scooter rentals are both small-ticket, yet useful means to an end.
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“Oh cool, a scooter blocking the foot path! That’s exactly where I needed it!”
“I wanna cross the crosswalk, but I’m tired! Oh look, a discharged electric bike propped up against the stoplight post!”
But then you of course see this
congregated in the places where they’re most useful. See the rack right there? Users thought they’d be courteous putting their limebikes out of the way into the racks. Blocking out the public resources used by people who actually own and care for their bikes.
Big fucking wad of un-paid for externalities on the public space.
15 Likes
Yeah, this is just weird.
This is like someone parking a zipcar in a private driveway and somehow not getting blamed for it.
Why aren’t the scooter companies penalizing users for leaving scooters on private property?
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But what if I take something that someone else values and drop it in a stranger’s driveway?
You can’t pick up a zipcar, as a non-driver, and put it in someone’s driveway, though. There’s nothing stopping anyone from picking up a scooter (it’s only 20-something pounds) and doing whatever they want with it, without “unlocking” it, so if a scooter shows up in a “forbidden” location, and it’s not being sufficiently tracked (i.e. you can’t tell if was driven to that location or carried), anyone could have put it there. It seems like a great revenue-generation technique if one runs an impound company…
Of course, this is exactly the risk the scooter companies run by having a business model that involves leaving their scooters, unattended, in public spaces. So ultimately it’s on them.
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I’m Wellington, NZ, Flamingo (by Uber), have no-parking zones marked out and you get fined I believe $30 if you leave it in one. The issues of slightly iffy gps means people get fined when they are close to but not in a no-parking zone, but if it worked as advertised, and the NBC imo any out in the effort, you could definitely cut back on the issues.
1 Like
Juicers? E-scooters? Ransome? Scootscoop?
This is starting to sound like a Snowcrash sequel.
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Of course, unlike with public transport, Lime doesn’t have “ghost scooters” 
I don’t think ScootScoop is a business that wants to stick around. It’s a response to a problem the founders are having and it’s not making them any money, just legal fees. Breaking the “dump shitty scooters all over the city” business model and going back to what they were doing before would be a complete victory for their business plan.
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