Spin — Electric Scooters

My first experience and I found it too be too fast for me, but my son has no problems with it. I rode about 4 min minutes and decided to end my ride and the darn thing would not stop! The app that went into a perpetual downloading mode and the time continued on! It’s Saturday and I called the number on the scooter itself, in addition to two other customer service numbers from the internet and no one picked up bc business hours are Monday through Friday. When it was all over it had been 35 minutes and now I had to find a valid parking spot. I checked the requirements as listed on the app and still it took a total of 4 minutes to get it in the exact spot! Omg! I was charged for 39 minutes for a 4 minute spin!! I am so disappointed! Well, looks like I owe Spin scooter an apology...I WAS WRONG!!! Apparently, these guys do work the weekends. One of the calls I made allowed me to leave a message. I explained my issue and left my email address and phone number. After being home a little over an hour , I again checked the app , and to my surprise, noticed my account had been refunded! I had a missed voicemail from Phill with Spin support advising me that he had located the scooter and my activity and refunded me. It WAS THAT EASY!!!! They jumped right on it and resolved the problem. I AM SO IMPRESSED! THIS IS EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE. Thank you and I’m amazed at your professionalism and quick reponse.

#1 A cell phone holder would be great so that we can use google maps for route guidance while riding and not have to stop so much and pull out our phones, reopen the map app, wait for it to orient to our new location, etc. #2 Design Flaw: I was riding along the sidewalk when I realized I was about to ride off the curb. I quickly jumped my feet off the board to bring myself to a stop, but my hands were still gripping the handle bars and therefore the throttle. You would probably think it’s easy to let go of the throttle, but when you are riding as fast as the scooter will go and then take your feet off in order to stop the thing, your grip becomes tighter because it is the only thing keeping the scooter to you. You are wanting to come to a quick and complete stop, not launch the scooter down the street or off the curb. Anyhow, this is how you see people stumble-running with a scooter. It’s because your body doesn’t let you release your grip (and throttle) and so the wheels keep spinning, so the scooter keeps going. The Solution: there should be a weight sensor in the foot board so that as soon as there’s no more weight on the board the [motor] acceleration stops. Again, as soon as a person steps off of the foot board the motor cuts off. You don’t have to apply the brakes—stopping the motor’s acceleration should be enough help to prevent someone from crashing or stumbling when trying to quickly stop.

On my college campus these bikes are super convenient and fast, but only when everything goes right. It can be very difficult to locate a bike- more times than I can count, the bike doesn’t exist where the map says it is, which is a huge pain when I’m trying to find one to get to class on time. When I do actually find a bike, sometimes the bike doesn’t unlock but the timer begins- making it impossible to find another bike if you’re short on time. Using Bluetooth to lock or unlock a bike is also quite fickle when this happens. Sometimes the app asks me for my payment information again, even though I already have money loaded on my account. I would say that about 75% of my rides have gone perfectly fine. They are not dependable at if you are in a rush to get somewhere, and oftentimes when something goes wrong, it can take longer to fix/look for another bike than if you had just walked to your destination in the first place. I do have to commend the support team, who usually fix any problem quickly. One time I accidentally forgot to lock a bike after a perfectly fine ride, and they refunded the whole ride to me. The bikes have adjustable seats and the step-through style are really nice.

response required

I really do enjoy the spin scooters, I do, however today I ran into an issue with the scooters which took me 40 minutes to solve. I was riding the scooter back from my university gym when I had to stop by a local grocery store to pick up something’s so I locked the scooter. Little did I know this was out of campus, which means I cannot park there. When I got back and tried to unlock the scooter, it did not allow me. I got a message telling me to move the scooter back to campus but every time I tried to move it, it made a ridiculous sound. I tried calling customer service but all the representatives were busy and I needed somebody to tell me what to do so the scooter would stop charging my bank account. There was nothing I could to unlock the scooter, which is a major flaw considering the app keeps telling you to move the scooter into campus to unlock it. In the end I had to carry the scooter back into the campus grounds despite the awful sounds it made. This was probably the most annoying experience I’ve had with Spin and I hope this is fixed. I understand that the mistake was mine however the app charged me 5 dollars and didn’t even let me unlock my scooter. This is absolutely ridiculous. That’s 5 dollars down the drain for nothing! I was just standing there trying to figure out how to unlock the scooter and i got charged for it! I always loved the Spin scooters but this left me quite disappointed.

response required

Attempt #1) Pre-Original scooter ban circa mid-2018. I signed up, deposited $5 into my account, because unlike the other services in SF at the time, Spin required a deposit. When I got to the point on the map where the Spin a scooter was supposed to be, it was nowhere to be found. Fooled me once, shame on you. Attempts 2 & 3) Twice in the past month, I have arrived at a Spin scooter ready to hop on, only to discover that due to my owning an iPhone SE, the Spin app literally would not allow me past the page where I have to check the boxes where users must attest to not riding on sidewalks and wearing helmets... the issue is that that page has one more checkbox attestations that must be completed than can fit in the screen of an iPhone SE (with its smaller screen) and yet, inexplicably, will not scroll to allow me to select the final necessary checkbox so I can submit and move on. Fooled me two and three times... shame on me. Attempt #4) Upon hitting the “ride” button, the scooter never unlocked. Then when I went to end the ride, first the app said it couldn’t lock the scooter (which never was unlocked to begin with) and there was a server error that prevented me from ending the ride, so I was incurring Billings long after I rented a Jump scooter instead so I could get to my train on time. Fooled me four times... we won’t get fooled again.