Bird Scooters Shakes Down Past Users Over Outstanding Balances as Small as $0.55

Scooter rental firm, Bird, has formally boarded the battle bus. The micro mobility supplier despatched out emails to present and previous clients requesting that they settle their lingering money owed earlier this month. And the corporate left no stone unturned in its quest to recoup income.

In some instances, Bird customers have been requested to pay again quantities of underneath a greenback, in line with a number of tweets and screenshots initially compiled in journalist Ali Griswold’s Substack publication, Oversharing. Negative account balances as small as $0.55 and $0.62 have been included within the round-up.

“This email is to inform you that we’ve run into an issue trying to charge your payment method,” begins the corporate’s formal e mail. The message then goes on to politely ask that the recipient replace their cost data and warns that, in the event that they don’t comply, they “won’t be able to start any new rides.”

On prime of the notably measly pay requests, Bird additionally gave the impression to be reaching out to clients who hadn’t used its service in years. Based on tweets tagging the corporate’s @BirdTrip account, a lot of the assortment emails appear to have been despatched on December 6 and seven.

“Y’all must be strapped for cash rn,” one Twitter user posted, after receiving a $0.62 cost request. And they’re proper. Though Bird didn’t instantly reply to Gizmodo’s questions or request for remark, it’s secure to imagine the corporate might be considerably determined for funds.

Once a massively hyped startup, in 2018 Bird grew to become the fasted firm in historical past to succeed in “unicorn” standing (i.e. a valuation over $1 billion). Following that success, the corporate went public on the finish of 2021. And it’s been a bumpy highway for the scooter model since. In October, Bird announced it was ending operations in Germany, Sweden, and Norway. It additionally stated it will cut back in a number of small to medium U.S. cities.

Last month, Bird reported that it had overestimated its personal income between 2020 and November 2022 in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm stated it mistakenly added up unpaid fares from accounts quick on money into its earnings totals. Though the entire overestimate ensuing from that error is unclear, the size of the corporate’s issues isn’t. In Bird’s third-quarter earnings, it reported web losses of $9.8 million and a free money circulate of damaging $1.2 million.

“As of September 30, 2022, the Company had $38.5 million in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents which, without additional funding, will not be sufficient to meet the Company’s obligations within the next twelve months,” Bird wrote in its November earnings abstract. “If the Company is unable to raise additional capital…it may not be able to compete successfully and may need to scale back or discontinue certain or all of its operations in order to reduce costs or seek bankruptcy protection,” the report continues.

And even earlier than that bleak assertion to traders, the corporate was going through onerous occasions. Bird axed almost 1 / 4 of its employees in June. Those layoffs have been simply the newest in a collection of cuts from the previous few years. In April 2020, the corporate slashed nearly a third of its whole workforce. 

But it’s onerous to see how digging via clients’ proverbial sofa cushions for free change goes to assist a lot. Collecting excellent funds of $0.55 hardly looks as if sufficient to cowl tens of millions in losses, and may simply piss off clients sufficient so as to add weight to this Bird’s leaded wings.