中國消費者投訴收不回共享單車押金

The streets of Chinese cities have been taken over by fleets of colourful shared bikes that users can hire for less than a dollar a month after paying a deposit. However, some cash-strapped bike start-ups have used this cash to fund operations — against Beijing’s wishes — and hundreds of thousands of consumers have complained after bankrupt groups failed to return the cash.

中國城市的街道如今遍布色彩鮮艷的共享單車車隊，用戶在支付押金后，每月僅需不到1美元就可租用這些自行車。然而，一些資金匱乏的共享單車初創(chuàng)企業(yè)把這筆資金用作營運資本，這與監(jiān)管部門的愿望相悖，在破產(chǎn)的共享單車企業(yè)未能歸還押金后，眾多消費者提出投訴。

The mass complaints have exposed an easily exploited loophole in China’s growing bike-rental market, one that is being tested in a civil suit filed this week against Mingbike, a Guangzhou-based bike sharer, the first court case of its kind.

這波大規(guī)模投訴暴露出中國不斷增長的自行車租賃市場中一個容易被利用的漏洞。本周對廣州共享單車企業(yè)小鳴單車(Mingbike)提起的民事訴訟——這是第一起此類訴訟——將挑戰(zhàn)這一漏洞。

“Most companies refrain from using deposits to pay for expansion, but we see it in the shared bike space because there is a liquidity and fundraising issue,” said Xue Yu, analyst at IDC, a market research firm.

“大部分企業(yè)不會利用押金來為擴(kuò)張買單，但是我們在共享單車行業(yè)看到了這個現(xiàn)象，原因是存在流動性和籌資問題，”市場研究公司IDC分析師薛宇表示。

In May, top policymakers, including those from China’s transport ministry and central bank, jointly issued draft regulations that asked companies to distinguish cash flows from deposits and store them in a designated bank account. The express purpose was to ensure users could reclaim the cash if the company failed.

今年5月，包括中國交通部和中國央行在內(nèi)的高層政策制定者共同發(fā)布法規(guī)草案，要求企業(yè)將現(xiàn)金流與押金分開，將它們存入指定的銀行賬戶。規(guī)定的明確目的是確保用戶在企業(yè)倒閉的情況下可以收回押金。

The Guangdong Consumer Council, a provincial consumer watchdog, filed the Mingbike suit after it received 30,000 complaints from users unable to reclaim a $30 deposit after the group shut down last month.

廣東省消費者委員會是小鳴單車案的原告，此前這家省級消費者監(jiān)督機(jī)構(gòu)接到了3萬份用戶投訴，這些用戶在小鳴單車上月停業(yè)后無法收回199元人民幣的押金。

Ofo, the big bike sharing group, said it does not use consumer deposits to fund daily operations. Ofo and Mobike, the two largest shared bike companies by market share, have together attracted about $2bn in funding this year alone. Mobike was not immediately able to comment for this article.

大型共享單車集團(tuán)ofo表示，其不使用消費者的押金為日常運營提供資金。按市場份額計算為業(yè)內(nèi)最大兩家公司的ofo和摩拜單車(Mobike)，今年總計吸引了約20億美元資金。摩拜單車暫時無法為本文置評。

Smaller start-ups, such as Mingbike and Kuqi, have struggled to raise the capital to buy and maintain bikes, especially as competition heats up in the over-saturated bike sharing space in China.

較小的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)，如小鳴單車和酷騎單車，在籌集資本購買和維護(hù)自行車方面遇到困難，尤其是在中國過于飽和的共享單車行業(yè)競爭加劇的背景下。

Consumers have forked out almost Rmb1bn ($150m) in deposits for shared bikes to groups that have since gone bust, according to a report from Ant Financial, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba, the tech company.

科技公司阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的金融科技關(guān)聯(lián)公司螞蟻金服(Ant Financial)的一份報告顯示，消費者向現(xiàn)已倒閉的共享單車企業(yè)支付了近10億元人民幣(合1.5億美元)押金。

The figure may underestimate consumers’ exposure. The China Consumers Association, a state-run advocacy, issued a public letter in December demanding Kuqi return deposits of about $45 to each of its 16m registered users — if all users were unpaid that would add up to $720m.

這個數(shù)字可能還低估了消費者可能蒙受的損失。政府運營的維權(quán)機(jī)構(gòu)——中國消費者協(xié)會本月發(fā)表一封公開信，要求酷騎單車向全部1600萬注冊用戶歸還每人298元人民幣(約45美元)的押金。如果這些用戶誰都拿不回押金，那么打水漂的押金總額將達(dá)到7.2億美元。

The association said it had also received 210,000 complaints from users of the failed Kuqi, after the company listed a nonexistent address for users looking to reclaim their deposits.

中國消費者協(xié)會表示，它還從已經(jīng)倒閉的酷騎單車的用戶那里接到21萬份投訴，原因是該公司竟然列出一個不存在的地址來打發(fā)要求退還押金的用戶。

Kuqi was not immediately contactable for comment.

記者暫時聯(lián)系不上酷騎單車請其置評。

November brought a flurry of bankruptcies in the bike sharing sector, led by Bluegogo, start-up that shuttered its operations five months after its launch this January after accumulating losses of nearly $150,000, delaying deposit returns to thousands of irate users.

11月，中國的共享單車行業(yè)發(fā)生一連串破產(chǎn)事件，首當(dāng)其沖的是小藍(lán)單車(Bluegogo)，該公司在累積近15萬美元虧損后停業(yè)，還拖延向眾多憤怒的用戶退還押金。

Alibaba and Tencent have started experimenting with social credit scores, developed from a user’s history of online purchases, to rent bikes deposit-free.

阿里巴巴和騰訊(Tencent)已開始嘗試基于用戶的網(wǎng)上購物歷史計算社會信用評分，讓他們免押金租用自行車。

“China’s shared bike companies should not require deposits, and I hope that this will be realised in the future, said Zhang Yi, chief executive of iMedia Research Institute, a mobile internet consulting agency.

“中國的共享單車公司不應(yīng)該要求押金，我希望將來能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)這一點，”移動互聯(lián)網(wǎng)咨詢公司艾媒咨詢(iMedia Research)首席執(zhí)行官張毅表示。

Additional reporting by Yingzhi Yang. Yingzhi Yang補(bǔ)充報道