中国消费者投诉收不回共享单车押金
中国城市的街道如今遍布色彩鲜艳的共享单车车队，用户在支付押金后，每月仅需不到1美元就可租用这些自行车。然而，一些资金匮乏的共享单车初创企业把这笔资金用作营运资本，这与监管部门的愿望相悖，在破产的共享单车企业未能归还押金后，众多消费者提出投诉。
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.
这波大规模投诉暴露出中国不断增长的自行车租赁市场中一个容易被利用的漏洞。本周对广州共享单车企业小鸣单车(Mingbike)提起的民事诉讼——这是第一起此类诉讼——将挑战这一漏洞。
“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.
“大部分企业不会利用押金来为扩张买单，但是我们在共享单车行业看到了这个现象，原因是存在流动性和筹资问题，”市场研究公司IDC分析师薛宇表示。
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，包括中国交通部和中国央行在内的高层政策制定者共同发布法规草案，要求企业将现金流与押金分开，将它们存入指定的银行账户。规定的明确目的是确保用户在企业倒闭的情况下可以收回押金。
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.
广东省消费者委员会是小鸣单车案的原告，此前这家省级消费者监督机构接到了3万份用户投诉，这些用户在小鸣单车上月停业后无法收回199元人民币的押金。
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.
大型共享单车集团ofo表示，其不使用消费者的押金为日常运营提供资金。按市场份额计算为业内最大两家公司的ofo和摩拜单车(Mobike)，今年总计吸引了约20亿美元资金。摩拜单车暂时无法为本文置评。
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.
较小的初创企业，如小鸣单车和酷骑单车，在筹集资本购买和维护自行车方面遇到困难，尤其是在中国过于饱和的共享单车行业竞争加剧的背景下。
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)的金融科技关联公司蚂蚁金服(Ant Financial)的一份报告显示，消费者向现已倒闭的共享单车企业支付了近10亿元人民币(合1.5亿美元)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.
这个数字可能还低估了消费者可能蒙受的损失。政府运营的维权机构——中国消费者协会本月发表一封公开信，要求酷骑单车向全部1600万注册用户归还每人298元人民币(约45美元)的押金。如果这些用户谁都拿不回押金，那么打水漂的押金总额将达到7.2亿美元。
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.
中国消费者协会表示，它还从已经倒闭的酷骑单车的用户那里接到21万份投诉，原因是该公司竟然列出一个不存在的地址来打发要求退还押金的用户。
Kuqi was not immediately contactable for comment.
记者暂时联系不上酷骑单车请其置评。
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，中国的共享单车行业发生一连串破产事件，首当其冲的是小蓝单车(Bluegogo)，该公司在累积近15万美元亏损后停业，还拖延向众多愤怒的用户退还押金。
Alibaba and Tencent have started experimenting with social credit scores, developed from a user’s history of online purchases, to rent bikes deposit-free.
阿里巴巴和腾讯(Tencent)已开始尝试基于用户的网上购物历史计算社会信用评分，让他们免押金租用自行车。
“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.
“中国的共享单车公司不应该要求押金，我希望将来能够实现这一点，”移动互联网咨询公司艾媒咨询(iMedia Research)首席执行官张毅表示。
Additional reporting by Yingzhi Yang. Yingzhi Yang补充报道
