OBike Refund in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia

It appears [0] that the deposit is "up to" $49 Singaporean Dollars or about $35 US Dollars

[0]: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/obike-working...

"Only in August 2017 had oBike pulled off one of the largest series B rounds on record in Southeast Asia to raise US$45 million from a venture capital firm linked to a co-founder of Russia’s Mail.Ru Group a mysterious “leading global transportation platform” and several unnamed family offices in Southeast Asia. "

1. I bet they got payed off, or they got their money laundered in some other way?

2. So many Chinese companies seem to go out of their way to be fraudulent; I don't have much sympathy for investors anymore.

3. There used to be Investment Guys out there trying to expose shady Chinese companies, companies like NQ mobile, but I just don't hear much from them. I guess they figure if you invest with shady entities, don't expect your money back?

4. I love the back stories on these boy geniuses. Just lie until you thrive?

Bike sharing company in Singapore. Initially collected a S$49 to use its service. With the deposit paid you were entitled to rent their bikes at S$0.5/15min.

Bike were almost everywhere. Initially they had lots of free ride promotions.

A few days ago, they claimed that they ceased operations due to newly imposed government restrictions. (To prevent bikes from lying/standing around just about everywhere and have them be rented/returned at designated parking areas)

A while ago I think they dropped the deposit requirement, as other competitors did not have the deposit requirement. You could ask for your deposit to be returned. This would take up to 30days, but apparently took much longer, according to some comments on Facebook.

They also offered a VIP subscription for 3years or so for S$49, which would entitle you to a certain amount of free rides per month, I think.

All in all, I don’t know how I feel about my deposit. I’m pretty sure it’s gone. On the other hand I’ve used the bikes a few times with all the “free”/promotional rides, without giving them any additional money. After all I got some value for the S$49. Did I ride for 25hs in total? I doubt it.

I guess the ICO stuff is just trying to draw a parallel defrauding scheme?

It looks like there is only a couple million $$ of paid up share capital in the paper trail. How did they finance purchase of so many oBikes?

From what I saw while trying to ride these bikes, I would bet that each bike costs less than 80$ to manufacture. They are very low quality, with no gears. It might be even lower than that. My guess is that the electronic is the most expensive part.