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Who is still using the orange scooter-sharing company regularly? A lil rant for y'all
I also wonder who uses their "turbo" abo which costs 199€ (!) each month (!) but then only gets you 50 minutes per day, after which you'll need to pay a hefty minute-based price again (!).
As a comparison: You can currently get a leasing abo of a nice Schwalbe E-Roller (which orange scooter sharing startet out with, and which by the way is a MUCH superior product than their current tiny little plastic scooters) for only 33€ per month!
Of course there's the convenience of availability wherevery you are with orange people, but, let's be honest, that fluctuates a lot depending on your location.
NOW Please orange scooter people listen up: I like your scooters, I love riding them, I've previously done a fair share of kilometers on them and I'd be more than happy to pay a lil extra for a minute-package IF valid for a whole year but your scooters simply are an OPTIONAL means of transport (and in my experience simply not a reliable source of getting around quickly) to justify one of your ridiculously priced Abos.
Thank you everyone for listening - does anyone else feel that way? :(
yeah the turbo abo is a total scam, who actually signs up for that? 200€ a month for 50 mins a day is wild when you can get a whole ass scooter lease for 33€
honestly what got me was the quality drop. remember when they had those big sturdy Schwalbes? now it's those tiny plastic ones that feel like they'll snap if you hit a cobblestone on Oranienburger. and the battery life is a joke, half the time i unlock one it's at 20% and i gotta hunt for another
the minute-package thing really was the killer tho. 65€ for 500 mins felt fair because you could stretch it over months. now they want you to commit monthly like it's a gym membership. i just use them for the occasional one-way trip from Mauerpark to my place and pay as i go, no way im locking into a sub
I stopped using them when they ditched the minute-packages too. That 500 for 65 deal was actually solid if you used them a few times a week, especially in summer. Now you're paying more for less and the clock keeps running even when you're stuck at a red light on Torstraße.
The leasing option you mentioned is worth a second look. I know someone who got a Schwalbe through Dance for 39 a month and they barely touch shared scooters anymore. The orange ones also seem to cluster around Warschauer and then vanish if you're further out in Neukölln.
If you really want the flexibility without the monthly pressure, maybe just buy a used e-scooter outright. You can find decent ones on Kleinanzeigen for around 300 and then you're done paying.
the real issue is the hidden cost of time. even with the old minute packages, you were paying for every second the scooter was unlocked, including when you locked it to run into a späti. but at least then you could buy a bulk pack and use it over months. now the abos punish you for not using it daily, which makes no sense for an optional mode of transport.
i've actually started just walking more in the ring. between the scooters being scattered and the battery anxiety, it's often faster to just hoof it from alexanderplatz to hackescher markt than to hunt down a charged scooter and pray it doesn't die on the way. the orange ones are great for that one specific trip where everything aligns, but they're not worth a subscription.
if you really want electric mobility without the headache, check out swapfiets' e-bike abo. it's 49 a month and includes maintenance, which is a lot more predictable than the scooter roulette
What is the correct spelling for a street name that appears differently on multiple signs in Charlottenburg?
Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.
if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point
honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.
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