PubliBike

PubliBike AG

About this app

With the PubliBike app you can rent a bike 24/7
The app shows you immediately which stations are nearby and how many bikes or e-bikes are available. In your customer account you will find your previous trips and the travel expenses.

The app also provides the following features:

- Searching for bicycles
- Rent bicycles
- Registration
- Select subscription
- Show available bicycles
- Show map with locations
- Manage your account
- All trips at a glance
- Displays the current position on the map (if GPS is available)
- Walking distance in minutes to the next station

Ratings and reviews

Cost me 230 CHF :-( The app doesn’t remind you if your annual subscription has expired or show the cost per ride on the main screen - these are hidden in the menu system. Not realising my subscription had expired I got a surprise bill of 230 CHF for 1 month. Publibike refused to refund this amount. So be warned - you can get hit by a large bill unexpectedly. I wish I’d put this money towards a new bike instead of using Publibike. Publibike will do everything they can to refuse a refund - apparently my complaint was outside the 1 month time limit in their terms and conditions (I suspect no court would recognise such a time limit). It's true they send a subscription reminder by email, but if you get a lot of email every day this is easy to miss. I had one other bad experience with Publibike when a returned bike did not register correctly and kept charging me all day. In this case, they implied it was my fault, however I did get a refund after some discussion but it left a bad feeling. Clearly the customer does not come first with Publibike. I criticised this app for the same reason on iOS and I felt their response was very defensive - also disappointing. Apart, from these complaints, it is a great app and if they fixed the above I would give it 5 stars.

The service is great at the moment, but that's when you actually find a bike. And since the city is quite hilly, it also need to have sufficient battery left. It's also pretty expensive if you need to pay full price. The region of Lausanne-Morges suffers from a terrible lack of stations and a low amount of bikes, though the cause is more likely to be the local governments (the region is heavily car oriented, with few or neglected alternatives) rather than Publibike itself.

I would rate it as 2 stars because I used the bike for 11mins and I was charged 4.90fr. I had the option to use the bus in 2.90fr. I think such green options should be cheap as compare to bus. Ofcourse I will not use it again if I can use the bus as a cheaper option.

What's new

• Internal updates
• Hotline number updated