#头条创作挑战赛 #
Source: Figureworm Creative
ofo Little Yellow Car's APP cannot be logged in, and the deposit of 99 yuan/199 yuan seems to be refundable. But is that all there is to it?
Now search for "ofo" and you can also find its official website prominently on the search page.
Open the official website, the home page is a video, in which people of all colors ride small yellow cars to their favorite places, with conspicuous text floating above - "Let the world have no strange corners".
These ten words used to be ofo's vision, which meant to let the little yellow car take people all the last kilometers and cover all the streets and alleys. Now, it's all a joke. Recently, many netizens found that ofo's APP and mini program could not log in.
Is ofo ready to pay the bills completely?
ofo's official website, which can still be opened, is the same as in the past.
The APP cannot log in, and the customer service phone number "does not provide service temporarily"
On the 22nd, #ofo Xiaohuangche has been completely unable to log in #on Weibo hot search, as of press time, the total number of views of the topic has reached 220 million, and the total number of discussions has exceeded 7,500.
A significant part of these participants in the discussion requested a refund of the deposit. According to a recent survey by the Central Broadcasting Network, only 7% of respondents said they had successfully received their deposit refund.
I tried to call the contact number at the bottom of ofo's official website, only to hear "the phone you are calling is temporarily unavailable", and then called its 400 customer service hotline, but it was interrupted without connecting, and I couldn't even hear "This number is temporarily unavailable".
The APP cannot log in, the phone cannot be reached, the office people go to the empty building... This series of signs seems to show that unless ofo founder Dai Wei can show Luo Yonghao's determination to "return the truth", users will basically have no fun if they want to get a refund.
A deposit of 99 yuan or 199 yuan is not a lot of money. If it weren't for this hot search, many users would have forgotten that ofo still owes themselves such a sum of money.
Forgotten little yellow car, and deposit.
But tens of millions of 99 yuan or 199 yuan added up, it is not a number that can be counted by a wrench. According to the Tianyancha App, Dongxia Datong (Beijing) Management Consulting Co., Ltd., the operator of ofo alone, has more than 40 pieces of information on untrustworthy enforceees, with an unfulfilled amount of more than 650 million yuan, and has been restricted from high consumption hundreds of times.
Judicial information shows that in December last year, due to the default of more than 500 million yuan in loans owed to Tmall, ofo affiliates Shanghai Ofer Hesheng Network Technology Co., Ltd. and Lifang Lingdong (Beijing) Data Service Co., Ltd. were sued by Tmall to the court.
However, because there is no property to enforce, the money has not been repaid to date.
Whether it is a corporate system or a personal bankruptcy system, these are all designed to protect the founders of the company, prevent them from being cornered when they encounter financial difficulties, and give them a chance to make a comeback. However, from the performance of ofo founder Dai Weiruo, we don't seem to see any signs of this opportunity.
You know, before the Ofo incident in the East Window, Dai Wei was so majestic that he didn't even care about Didi's acquisition. ofo pioneered the business model of sharing bicycles, and it was indeed hot in the years when financing could be obtained by relying on PPT alone. But after all, business must return to the essence, to make profits, to satisfy users, and not to live by financing transfusions.
Ofo used to be hot.
We all know the story later, ofo blindly burned money until the capital chain broke and the building collapsed. Nowadays, in the news and social networks, it is difficult to find traces of Dai Wei, only that he has been restricted from high consumption and has become a laissez-faire.
"You are currently in 10112076 place and can use the car normally during the queue for refund"
Ofo used to be arrogant, and the founding team wanted to surpass Google at one point. So far, it has only briefly surpassed Google in the richness of cafeteria recipes, and the rest is fooling.
Shared bicycles are not commercial projects with heavy research and development, and its core technology is "Internet of Things + cloud computing", and the technical threshold is not high. The industry has fought several rounds of patent lawsuits, competing with each other for patent ownership, and the final result is that in August 2022, the State Intellectual Property Office issued a document that the core technology of shared bicycles, "bicycle rental operation system and method without fixed withdrawal and return points", was declared invalid.
The technical threshold is not high, how to make money? A 5-second ad is a "good" idea.
So, basically, as long as they are willing to invest money, everyone can make shared bicycles. Now there are more and more small shared motorcycle companies, starting to deploy around some urban suburbs and urban villages.
Today's shared bicycle rivers and lakes have become Meituan, Haro and Didi. The "little yellow car" that is still running on the streets and alleys is no longer ofo, but Meituan. A large part of the car used by Meituan comes from Ofo's former nemesis, Mobike.
Mobike was acquired by Meituan in 2018, and founder Hu Weiwei cashed out 1.5 billion and retreated. Meituan, which took over, also solved the risks caused by the asset-heavy model of shared bicycles, and in August last year, Meituan also promised that Mobike's deposit could be refunded, but ofo missed this opportunity.
ofo has also made efforts to return the deposit, but it is still an old problem - the lack of user psychological insight has led to constant commotion, making users speechless and angry. The most recent time was in 2021, ofo launched the "Pull Friends, Help You Surrender" campaign, "The more friends, the faster you withdraw".
"Pull friends to return deposits", this can be imagined.
At first glance, it seems that it is really a gift! After all, according to the progress of ofo's previous deposit refund, it will take 998 years to complete the refund, and a few friends will probably be able to return the deposit in less than 500 years, and the return is earned.
But think about it carefully, this is not right, ofo pits the user's deposit is not counted, but also to pull the user's friends into the water, isn't this bullying honest people?
Taking a step back, you can enjoy the service after recharging, but where can you find ofo's little yellow car on the street? Therefore, ofo made two mistakes in this operation: one is that the deposit refund is originally the user's natural right, and it cannot be conditional on adding anyone; The other is that inviting to recharge, but unable to fulfill the corresponding service, suspected of fraud.
The ofo little yellow cars that used to fill the streets are now not found.
Zhu Changjiang, a senior partner and lawyer at Shaanxi Fengrui Law Firm, once said that ofo's business entity had not found enforceable property through the court's property investigation system (no car, no money, author's note), and it was doubtful whether it could return the consumer deposit that completed the above tasks, so the task launched by ofo was suspected of fraud.
No matter how tumultuous this operation is, two years ago, ofo was at least trying to find a way to return the deposit, at least to make a show, and now ofo can't even log in to the APP. Countless people's deposits of 99 yuan and 199 yuan were just like that?
The update of ofo's official Weibo is stuck in August 2019, this Weibo is in response to its "5 yuan / car recycling" rumors, but the comments below are almost all asking for deposit refunds, almost every day.
If you do not pay back the money for a day, the masses of the people will not let Ofo go.
Users who shout money back every day let the ofo team's reputation for not paying back money continue to be passed on.