London Banter - Guerilla advertising hits the 'Barclays' hire bikes already...

On Aug 7, 7:10*pm, "
wrote:
[snip]
I have to say that I don't understand how the payment scheme works for
the bicycles if you are a member and have a key to use rather than if
one is a casual user. [...]

No. A member is basically someone who has an account set up with the
scheme along with an associated key (or keys) - the cost of the key is
£3. At present, only members - those with keys - can use the scheme.
In a few weeks, it'll become open to 'casual users'.

To use the scheme you need to pay an access charge - 24 hours access
is £1, 7 days access is £5, a year's access is £45 (the latter will
only be available to those with a membership and key, and not to
casual users).

On top of this you are then charged a usage fee which corresponds with
how long you hired a bike out for - up to half an hour is free, up to
an hour is £1, an hour and a half is £4, up to 2 hours is £6, and then
it really starts to jump up from there - the basic idea is that you
don't use it for all that long, ideally less than an hour.

The costs are all outlined on this TfL webpage he
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14811.aspx

[...] You are charged only for the time which you have
used, right? So, if you use the bicycle for, say, three hours, you would
be charged for the day at £1, correct?

No - first you'd need to pay for access, so either 24 hours, 7 days or
a year. Let's say you paid for 24 hour access - that's £1.

Then the usage charge for between 2 hours 30 mins and 4 hours hours is
£15 - in other words you simply *don't* hire a bike for that long. The
whole idea is that you hire it for a short period and then return it
to a docking station when you get to where you're going to.

But what if you use it for less than 30 minutes as a full member. Are
you still charged that £1?

You *have* to pay for an access period in order to use the scheme
(whether key-holding member or casual user) - either 24 hour, 7 day or
a year (members only) - once you've done so then the *same* usage
charges apply.

There's no such thing as a "full member" - though perhaps you're
thinking of someone with "annual access", i.e. they've paid £45 for a
year's access.

Perhaps the "annual" terminology is potentially confusing and 'year
long access' or some such should have been used instead - however I
suspect that they wanted to describe it as annual so people could
consider it in the context of say an annual rail season ticket or
annual Travelcard.

I think the use of the "membership" terminology is likely to be the
cause of more of the confusion though.

What if you don't use the bicycle at all -- do you not then incur any
charges?

As explained above, it's all about what access period you pay for.

How about for weekly and annual memberships? What are the allowances and
limitations?

Erm, I hope my attempt to explain it above clarifies matters with
regards to the 24-hour, 7 day and annual access fees.

A quick example - if you've paid for 24-hour access, within that 24
hour period you can hire a bike out for up to half-an-hour as many
times as you want without incurring extra usage charges.

(Note that the T&Cs do state that there needs to be a clear 5 minutes
between docking a bike and taking another one out, otherwise it'll
just be regarded as a continuation of the initial hire - this to stop
people just daisy-chaining their way across London all day long
without paying anything at all - it's easy to overcome though, one
just needs to wait out the five minutes before hiring another bike!)

I think the charging structure actually makes quite a lot of sense - I
fear that the introduction of the words "membership" and "members" has
rather muddied the waters though. FWIW, a similar charging structure
seems to apply elsewhere where there are similar schemes, e.g. Paris
and the Velib scheme.