The complaints procedure entails reporting each and every misplaced bicycle/moped to the rental company. Complaining works in that they do act on it (the thing

The complaints procedure entails reporting each and every misplaced bicycle/moped to the rental company. Complaining works in that they do act on it (the thing is moved out of the way), and that they can then prove to the municipality that their complaints procedure works. But it is also (perhaps counter intuitively) completely pointless. These things are moved about all the time, being rented and used or just redistributed. I.e., if you do nothing, a misplaced moped will be moved as well — and another one parked right in the middle of the sidewalk a little later. The problem is not that any specific moped is blocking the sidewalk for days on end, it is that there always some or several mopeds doing so — the mopeds involved vary, the problem doesn't. Actually penalizing riders who misplace them might work, but there is no indication that the complaints procedures actually leads to these companies doing that (it is not a transparent process). They will pick out the worst offenders of course, but the people who rent these things are their paying customers; the rental companies have no economic incentive to actually punish the rider who put it there, quite the opposite!