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New Scooter Removal Service Appears
- dwighttk 8y agohaven't even changed the links on their social media buttons from strikingly
- soared 8y agoHow is it legal for them to take scooters then charge scooter owners for them?
- Waterluvian 8y agoThird parties are used to collect and return shopping carts. I wonder how their model works.
- CaliforniaKarl 8y agoThe third party picks up the shopping carts, and the store pays for their return. It's cheaper for the store to do that, vs. the cost of purchasing new carts. Stores have several alternatives to this: • They can send employees off-property to pick up carts they find. I used to see this in the past; not really as much anymore. • They can install an "invisible fence"-type system, which causes one of a cart's wheels to lock up when taken outside of the permitted area. If you walk to/from the store, you'll have seen signs warning about this; otherwise you can check the carts to see if one wheel looks different from the others. The Safeway near where I live does this. • They can require that customers pay a refundable deposit to use the cart. See the "Why do I need a quarter?" question at https://www.aldi.us/en/about-aldi/faqs/about-aldi/ https://www.aldi.us/en/about-aldi/faqs/about-aldi/ for an example of this. This doesn't happen in the US much.
- VoiceOfWisdom 8y ago"24/7 Free Removal of Unwanted Scooters or Bikes on your Property" Looks like they only remove scooters that are being left on private property. I would think its completely legal for the land owner to remove the scooter, therefore having another service remove them for you and charge for storage would be fine as long as the rate is not extortionate.
- swagasaurus-rex 8y agoInteresting. Because anybody can use and park the scooters, I would think it's in somebody's incentive to move scooters from pubic sidewalk onto patrolled private property to get scooped up.
- CaliforniaKarl 8y agoI don't know how often scooters ping back to HQ, but it may be often enough for them to log the move from public property to private property. TBH, I'd also trust an established towing business to handle scooter pickup, because scooter pickup would not be their only line of business, and they presumably wouldn't want scooter shenanigans to affect their towing business.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Fzzr 8y agoTow trucks work that way too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Lazare 8y agoSame way it's legal to do it to cars, obviously. There's nothing new here.
- ShakataGaNai 8y agoThis is amusing and not at all surprising. If they only remove from private property & not public right-of-ways, everything will be fine - but you know it won't. Most importantly "Scoot Scoop" for a name? I imagine they will be get getting a C&D for the use of the "Scoot" name in very, very, very short order.
- scooot 8y agoWhy, what’s wrong with scoot? It introduces brand confusion somehow? Someone has it exclusively trademarked? I doubt it.
- mikeryan 8y agoYes Scoot is trademarked.
- scoooot 8y agoIf it is, I don’t see any i fringement. Who are they infringing upon?
- mikeryan 8y agohttps://scoot.co/san-francisco/ https://scoot.co/san-francisco/
- jessaustin 8y agoThere is no trademark claim at that link. If they ever had a trademark, they haven't taken very good care of it.
- mikeryan 8y agohttp://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88018747&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88018747&caseType=SERIAL_N...
- Animats 8y agoThere's a similar service for homeless removal.[1] [1] https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/ https://biosocal.com/services/homeless-encampment-clean-out/
- seibelj 8y agoThis is not "homeless removal". This is biohazard decontamination for homeless encampments once the authorities have removed them. The property owner doesn't want to be sued for people getting pricked with needles and catching HIV or hepatitis.
- danielvf 8y agoThis has been a thing with cars in the US for a long time. If you leave your car for days in some business's parking lot, then they will call a tow service who will pick up the car at no charge to the business owner, then charge the car's actual owner an exorbitant set of fees for towing and storage. You can read the California laws on "Removal of Parked and Abandoned Vehicles" here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH§ionNum=22658 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
- ghaff 8y agoAssuming the property is appropriately posted. And assuming these are, in fact, considered "vehicles" which the law may or may not intend. Not really opposed to these being impounded but I'd be willing to guess that doing so is legally uncertain.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tylersmith 8y agoThis company is evolution of that. They're an auto towing company that's moving into this space.
- tomc1985 8y agoReading their website I am surprised an enterprising scooter picker-upper that the companies hire didn't start something like this himself. Charge a small fee to the business for removal and collect the finders commission from the scooter company...
- mmanfrin 8y agoThe difference being that these scooters are typically if not always left on sidewalks which are public property, not land the business has paved over for a parking lot.
- usaphp 8y ago
- Fzzr 8y agoThis is like the circle of life for startups, I swear. Next up will be "legal services for someone interfering with your disruptive business model as a service".
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoThe world is an ecosystem of stuff eating other stuff, so it's not surprising human enterprise is no different
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoNormally this service is provided by some dude with a compact pickup overloaded with old washing machines and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I guess this service is targeting people with scrap removal needs but are too high class to call a "traditional" scrapper.
- ckemere 8y agoHow often is the sidewalk publicly-owned versus privately owned with a right-of-way?
- ytjohn 8y agoDepends on the city I guess, but I'm pretty sure privately owned is the norm. Someone owns the building and land including the sidewalk. Most cities and towns have rules regarding the sidewalk that applies to the property owner. These would be rules for things like snow and ice removal, proper maintenance, and even keeping it clean. Now.. one company may own the building + sidewalk and the businesses inside the building are just leasing space. In that case, they would probably need the building owner to call the towing company, or have some sort of agreement to do so. For instance, the owner may delegate some sidewalk responsibilities to the round-level tenant in the lease. I have a rental property and I delegate snow removal and lawn maintenance to the tenants. (Though legally, if the tenants don't keep up with it, it would ultimately come back on me).
- anonytrary 8y agoWe were talking about this exact problem in a HN thread about Bird scooters several weeks ago. Some people legitimately thought these scooters could never be a problem for businesses, and that businesses should be "happy to have scooters left on their property" without their consent. How this ridiculous sentiment emerged, I have no idea, but finally there's a service out that realizes the issue. If anything, I hope Bird learns from this service and starts implementing hubs/waypoints in their business model. In addition to chargers and riders, there should be hub owners, who get a payment for signing their property up as a hub for scooters to be safely parked at. Hubs are a piece of the puzzle I think Bird desperately needs if they want to avoid this gray area stuff.
- microdrum 8y agoBird learns from this issue? They’re just going to go out of business. They have no tech and a bunch of depreciating Chinese scooters. No one needs to buy that company.
- mmanfrin 8y agoCompanies notified and Invoiced to pick up at our facility So, picking up scooters sitting on public sidewalks and then sending Bird/Lyme bills to pick them up. Seems a little bit like stealing. Not unexpected from a tow company.
- etxm 8y agoLeaving their trash on street corners and door steps seems like littering.
- noidea_ 8y agoSure, if you lack the nuance gene, it would seem like that.
- mmanfrin 8y agoCalling scooters "trash" and then using that extreme hyperbole to stretch meaning to "littering" contributes nothing to a discussion. This is not reddit.
- afandian 8y agoI'm in Oxford, UK (not GP poster). We have half a dozen smartphone-operated bike schemes on the go. The bikes do literally litter the pavement sometimes. On occasion you have to climb over them (or carry them out of the way). They end up in the river and chucked into hedges. They end up mangled by the side of the road after people try to remove the locks. Some of them do objectively end up as 'trash'. Yes, the blame lies squarely at the door of inconsiderate cyclists. But I can't help but think that the vendors (and licensing authorities) should have seen this coming. Is it stealing to personally take that rusy Ofo bike from the side of the road and re-use the materials? I think the answer is yes. What would the local authority do if I took it to the recycling station. They probably wouldn't want to touch it. So it's up to to the vendor to clean up their refuse. I haven't seen scooters first hand, but if they're like the bikes, then I don't think that's a hyperbolic stretch to use the word 'littering'.
- etxm 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- myth_buster 8y agoIn a gold rush, sell shovels... or... a service to move earth.
- agrippanux 8y agoFor those not living in San Diego, scooter pollution is real. I have seen several times 20-60 scooters in piles littering parking lots / outside businesses / blocking sidewalks at intersections. It seems to happen frequently in the area surrounding UCSD, in Pacific Beach, and in Old Town.
- mgalgs 8y agoYeah it's pretty bad... But I also LOVE using the scooters. Hopefully a solution is found so that we can keep the scooters.
- ggcdn 8y agoDoesnt surprise me, I was in San Diego last week and it was funny seeing all these scooters littered around every street corner. In some instances they clogged up sidewalks. I could see how it might spark the ire of some business owners. Scooter companies could offer incentives to normalize the distribution of scooters around the city (for example, a discount or credit for taking a scooter from a densely covered area to a sparse one).
- MattPearce 8y agoThe idea of them is they pay regular people to pick them up at night, charge them, and drop them off in the morning - and they can use this process to direct the scooters each day to the most appropriate location.
- ykevinator 8y agoScooter bubble bubble?