I stumbled across one of these rental lockers in England. The system is very slow to respond to button presses, and I didn't rent one, but it looks like you can rent a Brompton for £5/day. Then you can apply those fees against the purchase of a bike if you wish. Pretty cool.
by AveryCloseCall
13 Comments
Used this a few times before owning a brompton of my own. Really neat service.
Yeah used to use them a lot but pretty random outside London – like none in Sheffield or Leeds but in weird random places like Kenilworth or Newark. Both train stations in Bristol used to have them but they are gone now. Plus the 3 speed gearing was high for hilly places !
how are these not stolen constantly?
God the buttons/screen/response time really was awful, I’d forgotten that 😂
I think we hired one that needed a specific code like 2 entered, but needed it entered as 0002 without any obvious guidance on this (locker did not show this number). Had to phone them up and spend ages trying to enter different combinations.
I downloaded the app and it never worked. Then I heard you could just use the touch screen to acees them but I read the Google reviews of the lockers, there was always lots of reviews saying they had to call the operator or the locker wouldnt register that they returned the bike so there was this added stress that you were going to get a big bill for a brompton on your credit card. I decided it wasn’t worth even trying it after that.
I used these to commute in London over the course of a few months before deciding to buy my own. It’s pot luck I terms of the quality. Some bikes are newish and fine. Some are Frankenstein bikes, made up of different coloured parts, which can be pretty old and battered.
For £5 a day you can’t really complain too much.
My biggest criticism is that the seat bolt is glued over so you can’t control the fore/aft saddle position, and it’s pretty uncomfortable when it’s slid as far forward as possible.
The one me and the missus took a couple out, she had a puncture and with both of us clueless about bikes we had push it to the nearest locker, took us a few hours to back track…
Needs to be in every city in Europe and US
I saw them in Oban, Scotland. Pretty cool. Too bad they are not bonafide Bromptons but I understand
They work great, when you can get the app to work. Signing up for me was a nightmare, I had to call them and get them to set up my account manually as the app had some weird problem, I can’t remember what it was, though.
The service itself is fantastic. I was working in London for a few days and didn’t have my own Brompton with me. I just rented one from one of these. Worked perfectly. Needed a bit more air in the tyres, so I took it round the corner to the factory (I rented from the Greenford locker) and they happily obliged – I got to peek inside the factory, too! From there it’s a lovely 45 minute ride along a canal into central London.
I rented one in May 2023. They use a proprietary Allen key with a center pin to adjust the seat. I had to ride to BJ Covent Hardens to get it adjusted. I had a 3 speed and was fine for a day rental.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/05eaAzW1vhofN_O2lDEwK18dw
Does these exist outside of UK , preferably EU?
What’s stopping bad people from renting it for £5/day and taking/swapping bike parts which are worth £100s?