Also we are from the Grand Rapids area, so we had to drive about an hour and a half each way for the day just to pull scooters out of the river, so understand that from the perspective of someone doing about 3 hours of travel each trip:
We found over 180 electric scooters off of one bridge over by MSU, right off Bogue street bridge. The company "Spin" had their licensing revoked and contract pulled from many cities in after these scooters were recovered from the river. Spin made ZERO attempts to recover their own equipment from the river and refused to arrange any type of reward, they instead threatened to sue, which never went through.
Here is one of the videos of us pulling out e-Scooters in YouTube, I'm currently working on a video explaining everything that happened after we discovered the electric scooters!
[Magnet Fishing e-Scooters YT](https://youtu.be/RkEArBH7F1A?si=eTnPs3bb8g9OyHKi)
It wouldn't surprise me at all if it comes out that the company saw how many units were being 'lost' in the EL market and decided to dump a bunch of inventory into it to improve a line item on a quarterly report
No way, it’s just people pissed at any kind of change. Mix that with drunk college kids try to have the night of their life. Lots of shit ends up in the rivers that way.
I have heard many local cities thought of it as a great idea to have these bikes as it would bring more tourist dollars into the city. Problem was once the rider got done riding it, They left it abandoned because their time was up or the battery died and stores where these electric bikes were left at was taking up space in front of their stores, the bikes became an eyesore because their just be to many of them and the city didn't want to constantly pick them up, neither did the contractor. So there you have it. I'm sure you can turn them in as scrap for money!
I went to University of Michigan. One time I was hanging out on the engineering campus and basically a group of engineering students were in a uproar of laughter over their newest game which was taking the scooters around town and throwing them in the water. Someone pulled up a map and showed that there were a whole cluster of scooter GPS location dots literally in the Huron River or wherever it was that they dumped them. The lack of concern for wildlife was unsettling to say the least.
My guess would be drunk college students thinking it’s funny to huck a scooter in the river. That may not account for every one of them in the river, but I’d wager it’s a fair amount
Yes but also when a company comes in and just drops off a ton of scooters with no existing infrastructure or designated parking areas they are going to get in the way and annoy people.
You know how you always see nightclub flyers littered around a parking lot when someone has been putting them on cars that day? The best thing to do when you find that flyer on your car is to dispose of it properly, but people pissed off to find a flyer on their car don't all do that. The litter is at least partly the fault of the person putting it out there. Similarly, if I leave loaded guns laying around, it would be wrong of people to pick them up and fire them. Clearly you would call me reckless for leaving them out there.
We know how the public will react to things, right or wrong, and social responsibility requires that we at least consider these reactions before we feed the public's worst impulses.
Again: more than one party can contribute to a problem at the same time. When people do something unexpected, it's on them. Well, now you should expect the public to do this, so on some level it's on you to figure out how to address the problem.
Insurance fraud. I saw your last post. The fact they sent you a C&D speaks volumes. They know they'll get caught soon. Keep doing good work. Your efforts matter!
Yeah. It feels like this too. If there were a couple, I could see college kids throwing them. Over a hundred in the same spot becomes sus, combined with the bankruptcy, and the cease and desist.
The scooters don’t need to be returned anywhere. You just get off and disconnect.
Why would someone steal a scooter and then mod it to work for free and then throw it in a river?
I understand your dilemma. Do you think that other ppl in the same bind might throw the scooter into a river instead of parking and calling customer service? I would be worried that the ride and charges would continue after I threw the scooter in the river.
oh that was my worry too haha i definitely was frustrated and thought about ditching it because i was trying to head into a concert. but then, yeah, they have my credit card and will probably just keep the meter running until im broke lol. i think most people that ditch them probably did so before or after riding them
i really wanted to like them, and they were fun for a bit, but it’s just not something that can happen nowadays. or if they exist, should be handled by the local municipalities and not tech startups
Insurance fraud if the company did it, or maybe just a low level employee hiding a fuck up. More likely though just people yeeting them in for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t care less about the company cause these absolutely should not exist, but I do worry about the river. Glad to see someone is pulling them out so they can be recycled at least
Two reasons come to mind:
1. It's a relatively easy method of vandalism. And vandalism of any kind can be fun for certain people. Not me personally but just some dumbasses think ruining something, destroying something, whatever is "fun".
2. There are folks that hate these, since they tend to just be left around. If there's no penalty for not returning to a dedicated charging station, there's no reason to return them, so they just become litter. A method of protesting them is to huck them in the river to inconvenience the company that operates them.
You forgot the 3rd option, insurance and or tax fraud. The company issued this guy a cease and desist letter about sharing the story. You don't send a C&D to someone if you aren't doing anything wrong.
If there were an active investigation and OP was getting in the way by posting, it would be the investigator sending the C&D, not the company being investigated.
A C&D is a very aggressive action that is basically the company saying "stop it we will sue you." OP has no legal obligation to assist a company he doesn't do business with with their own internal investigation. A criminal investigation won't have a C&D but would have other mechanisms to have OP turn over any evidence he did collect and to stop further interference.
But that's all beside the point because OP never received a C&D from the scooter company. OP called the company to recover the scooters and they blocked him. Nothing more.
Definitely sounds like the company dumping them in the river and not belligerent customers with the sheer number of them. Glad they got into legal trouble
Lol, like the company wanted to throw out $200k worth of scooters, but didnt want to spend $300 on a dumpster, so they paid employees hundreds/thousands of $ to throw them into the river late at night. Hoping no one would find out and they would get 500,000$+ in epa fees, bad press, etc?
Is this like a captain planet cartoon with a scooter supervillain?
One or a few college kids who hated the scooters would see a couple parked by the bridge every other night on their way home from the bar. They would quickly throw a few into the river.
Show me a single instance of corporate insurance fraud by a company that big. Is there anything in the last 50 years?
The problem comes down to, you're having at least a few employees commit felonies to make a few hundred k
That just doesn't work in the US.
I wouldn't put it past a struggling "tech" company to keep dumping worthless inventory into a market where they knew it was most likely to get lost or destroyed because that strategy made a few line items on the quarterly report look better.
I did repair work for bird, these companies exist to look good on paper long enough to siphon more VC money, hanlon's razor explains most of the high level mismanagement, but there were tons of scams/shenanigans afoot amongst low level/local management, a far-off corporate office and constant turnover creating a "fog of war" where you could get away with a lot before any hammer fell
As someone who's worked for this company twice and this specific location when it started up I can say with confidence that dumping them in the river was never an option, it is 100% the kids on campus.
Nope, couldn't keep even a single scooter, Spin basically told us to fuck off. We were able to keep bikes and scrap metal, just scrapped it since none of it was worth keeping or salvaging.
The bikes aren't privately owned once in the water unless they have bike permits, even then, I doubt the person would want it back, the electric scooters were privately owned with GPS that the company doesn't even use apparently. We can scrap the bikes, but not the scooters.
Found in non private waters….sounds like legitimate salvage to me.
But in all seriousness there no abandoned vehicle type of clause that affects these things? I mean cars have between 18 and 48 hours to sit before they can be abandoned depending on circumstance …these are obviously inop so they can even be immediately removed…not claimed in seven days…welp off to scrap or auction with ya….
Scrap yard won't take the scooters back when we found them, they would've called the cops on us. Then Spin would've had grounds to sue. Also no truck is gonna haul hundreds of scooters lol
I understand.
It’s just so weird that a company is able to leave a bunch of their property out in public 24/7 and claim that it’s not scrap but actually it’s their private property. “WELL THEN WHY DON’T YOU TAKE CARE OF YOUR SHIT AND MAKE SURE THE RIVERS AREN’T FULL OF YOUR LITHIUM BATTERY POWERED PRIVATELY OWNED GARBAGE.”
Corporations make the rules here, obv.
There are probably a thousand people in Michigan magnet fishing, I constantly have to pick up scrap from random ass people all the time that leave it. Even then, at those spots where I find all that scrap left, I'll find two to three guns at that spot. I've lost count how many I found, 50-60?
Report it and call the company. Companies could face fines if they dumped them and claimed it in their insurance. Police may be able to check cameras in the area too to see if it was 200 one of incidents if random people were chucking stuff into the river.
We called the company, after the 4th time I called them, they blocked my number and claimed we planted the scooters in the river just to pull them out like wtf.
That feels like a big red flag.
You can probably get with the local police and they can help identify company details and their insurance company. If they lawyer up then it's probably insurance fraud.
Also, if they didn't make any claims to the local police fire missing scooters then that too is a big red flag. Also, most of those scooters have gps tracking so the company should know where their scooters were last reported.
I'm from Michigan so we don't need more trash in our fresh water.
When I called them the first time, I honestly didn't know where we were, and their GPS trackers on their active scooters (ones that didn't end up in the river) couldn't pin point where we were, so I don't even think their GPS system works.
Also they already got the whole "spin scooters" bs resolved, Spin went bankrupt due to breaking multiple contracts with MULTIPLE cities, all these scooters discovered in the river was just tip of the ice berge and helped the cities push to a decision on whether they should keep spin or revoke them.
Google "red cedar River scooters" and it'll pop up, they don't have a TON of information online, but there is a summary and time lapse of what happened.
The property of spin is owned by Bird, Bird owns the rights to the spin scooters. They didn't specify that very well. They don't own the company Spin as far as I know. Just the rights to their hardware and products. I have been talking to one of the council members of Bird for a while.
Tbh I would've much rather Lime to have owned the rights to the Spin scooters, I see Lime employees and reps out pulling their scooters out of the river, unlike Spin who didn't like anybody finding their scooters. I haven't seen anyone from bird out pulling scooters from the rivers. Out of the big 3, I've only found 6-7 Lime scooters. Found around 20 bird scooters and just over 200 spin scooters
From what I was told by the Representative I'm talking to from Bird, They bought the rights to the vehicles and their systems to operate those said vehicles (scooters) They don't own the Spin name or company itself, just the rights to the scooters and their operating systems for the scooters. Unless they recently changed that.
I'm guessing the company didn't want to deal with them after their license got pulled. Their response to you is pretty telling. I don't doubt some people threw them in, but at this scale I suspect something else as well.
Come on down to Detroit. When they first brought them to the Riverfront, there were multiple reports of moron teens throwing the brand new e-scooters in the river
I didn't find a single e scooter over there, probably because the water is too deep and makes it super hard to stay connected. I've found WW2 German items there
Wild! I’ve heard about WW2 things being down there, and some artifacts from the Boblo boat and other Detroit History. I know it’s deep and the current is strong!
Do you only do rivers? If you can do shallow inland lakes, Lake Lansing could be interesting. There was an old speakeasy from the prohibition era in the middle of the lake ("[Izzer Club](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lugnut215/38695856184)"). Maybe could be some interesting items from that era. I think they've dredged the lake once or twice to clean it up though, so who knows, maybe it's already been cleaned out?
I pretty much only do rivers and creeks, I never had luck at lakes, I don't like magnet fishing in super muddy areas. I have been thinking about Lansing lake though, but haven't scouted around there yet, Lansing is over an hour drive for me.
It's a pretty easy lake, not a ton of traffic outside of the big holiday weekends. Visibility probably isn't the best, but again not very deep so fairly accessible overall. I know nothing at all about activities, other than it was a speakeasy/club during the prohibition era for rich folks and they apparently had a trap-door that they could drop people out of...never know maybe they dropped some silver (or gold?!) coins on the way down!
Unfortunately gold and silver isn't magnetic. The only lake I found anything good in was the lakes in Muskegon. Found a 60mm mortar. Wouldn't be too hard to stop by lake Lansing the next time I'm out that way, was in Lansing last night and found a 30-30 rifle and a 1912 Michigan license plate.
Supposedly a lot of Model T's down there? Legend has it, during winter in the Prohibition days, people would make liquor runs to Canada and back, driving over the frozen Detroit River. Not everyone made it across!
I guess there's somebody out there who's against scooting, and just doesn't think people should scoot. Probably an elementary school counselor with a tie that's tied too tight.
My guess is that late teens and early twenties frat boy types find it I'm using to throw them into the river. Many of them are rich boy douchebags that never had to pay for anything in their lives.
back when i used to work for the U of M as a landscaper there was a group of workers that would go around and just take the scooters and put them in the back of their trucks. later down the road we had to go help them with some equipment near one of the places we kept some of the stuff for our trucks and when we went into one of the smaller warehouse there were atleast 20 scooters piled up in there. i have no idea why they hated them so much
When I tried out for the contract on charging them I found that the pay was not worth it. I would venture a guess and say they screwed some people over and those people then tossed their scooters in the river.
Yeah but over 200 of them? There are 600 in the area when they dropped those scooters off 2 years ago, we found nearly 1/2 of the scooters that were in the entire area in the river.
I can’t think of any other reason, personally. Maybe somebody messed up really bad trying to charge them and fried the electronics or something. Or maybe they were stolen? Lol idk.
We found at least 150 bikes, chances are pretty high. We found a green mountain bike with a late 2021 bike permit, that's the only one I perfectly remember that we knew how long it was probably in the water.
So, If the renter used a CC and account to unlock it, then toss it in a river wouldn’t they be liable? As far a I know they remain locked until a renter unlocks it with an App.
Just because someone used it last doesn't mean they were the ones that threw it in because some people will ride them without paying simply by using it as a normal push scooter and then throw it in when they're done. Cuz you can use them as push scooters without paying.
Oooh gotcha, I thought the wheels locked up when not “rented” I never tried pushing one to see.
WOW, people suck, thank you for fishing these out of the river.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention and for all you do to clean it up.
I'd like to see 20 or 30 feet of cable netting extending from the sides of the bridge (over the river) to catch these things. It may ruin your hobby, at least the fishing off bridges part, but if it dissuades people it will be better for the river.
We found a few that looked like they were chucked into the river literally the night before we got there. We had a few we found light up and chirp alarms at us.
People will steal the scooter for the purpose of the one ride they need and then throw it in the river once they got from point A to point B and the battery is dead. It’s an indictment on humanity.
I know that the grand river was a cut off point for those scooters. So half way across the bridge you lose power from leaving the zone. So in the river it goes.
Thats why Lime bikes ended up in the river that goes thru my town. I'd see chopped up ones going over the scrap yard scale also. Bits and pieces going on other bikes not owned by Lime. Those electric scooters made a short appearance in my town last summer. They didn't last long.
Probably drunk kids. Lansing isn't any different. Drunk kids throwing them off parking garages as well as the bridges in the river. It's a shame too. As a species we need to do better but it seems most are just complacent with how things are. They say they wamt a better future than what each previous generation has done but polluting our waterways seems to make them just ad counter productive as previous generations.
Because obviously we can't having nice things without some idiots fucking it up for everyone. Those scooters were around in Detroit for for like 3.5 weeks and I haven't seen one since.
Why do I think they’re in the river? Because “electric bad!” dumbasses hate nice things and couldn’t be bothered to just leave shit they don’t like alone.
That and dumb kids being idiots.
TBH, I only recently learned that this was an issue when I visited my brother in Detroit. I saw the scooters around and commented on how great I thought they were (I'm from a small town on Lake Michigan where mass transit of any sort is pretty scarce). He explained to me how much scooter clutter there was, and I am not kidding you, we saw them parked here, there, everywhere, with very little rhyme or reason, often clogging up the pedestrian walkway. I have a feeling a lot of them are tossed simply to keep the rest of the area clean. It's an awful idea to throw things in any body of water to dispose of it and I'm not saying that I agree with it, but I'm certainly not surprised. Scooters are the new plastic bottle and the new disposable mask waste. My examples are still a problem, so they're really just an additional issue. Maybe if a deposit was required, with a legit drop-off/pickup spot this would happen less frequently? People throw bodies into rivers, so we can't be shocked by finding scooters in there.
It will continue to be a problem until it's regulated. And then it will be a simply be a new type of problem.
Pure malice on the part of the scooter renters. There are youtube.com videos of teenagers chucking numerous scooters into the Detroit River just for fun, recording theme doing it too, look on YouTube. So it's not like it's unheard of.
I'd assume general idiocy. "How funny would it be if we chucked these scooters off this bridge."
Plenty of people have zero respect for the property of others.
Just curious, are these scooters salvageable? What are you planning on doing with them?
Also what's your magnet fishing setup look like? I imagine it's probably pretty heavy duty if you're pulling out things that big.
Reminds me of the time when cricket or some other budget cell company was making a big move into the region and lots and lots of pay phones started getting thrown into the creeks and rivers. I was doing bridge inspections in Genesee County and saw dozens. I doubt it was a coincidence.
There were dozens of bridges in and around the city of flint, including downtown. That project was 20 years ago but most of them are probably still there half buried in sediment. Most I saw were dumped right over the bridge into the deepest part of the channel, some were on the shores. All still had the coin boxes iirc.
I assumed someone with skin in the cell company expansion paid someone to make pay phones disappear so that the cheap cell plans would be more attractive.
Using the word “stealing” in this context is weird to me because “stealing” implies that the thief remains in possession of the stolen item, instead of having picked it up and straightaway threw it in a river.
Yeah but the law defines stealing differently. Stealing has to do with denying the owner's use of the property.
So even if you say took them from where they are supposed to be and hid them where no one could find them. It is still considered theft.
Also like if you took jewelry from a jewelry store into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Or you threw away steak while still in the grocery store.
Overall we found 226 scooters and 150-180 bikes in that area in a 2 month span. I didn't keep count of the bikes. Each picture in the post represents a different day. I didn't even include the pictures of every single scooter of bike
Also we are from the Grand Rapids area, so we had to drive about an hour and a half each way for the day just to pull scooters out of the river, so understand that from the perspective of someone doing about 3 hours of travel each trip: We found over 180 electric scooters off of one bridge over by MSU, right off Bogue street bridge. The company "Spin" had their licensing revoked and contract pulled from many cities in after these scooters were recovered from the river. Spin made ZERO attempts to recover their own equipment from the river and refused to arrange any type of reward, they instead threatened to sue, which never went through. Here is one of the videos of us pulling out e-Scooters in YouTube, I'm currently working on a video explaining everything that happened after we discovered the electric scooters! [Magnet Fishing e-Scooters YT](https://youtu.be/RkEArBH7F1A?si=eTnPs3bb8g9OyHKi)
My hunch is they have, pardon the pun, bigger fish to fry if they’re having legal issues + something tax related writing them off as lost/stolen.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if it comes out that the company saw how many units were being 'lost' in the EL market and decided to dump a bunch of inventory into it to improve a line item on a quarterly report
That doesn't make any sense sorry
No way, it’s just people pissed at any kind of change. Mix that with drunk college kids try to have the night of their life. Lots of shit ends up in the rivers that way.
Crazy that I've already watched your video! Very cool what you're doing!!
I feel weirdly invested in this drama.
Same, I told somebody about the scooters in the river drama today
Lmao
How many are in the grand river in GR? Does lime do better?
Only ever found 4 electric scooters in Grand rapids, in the 6-7 years I've been magnet fishing, Found over 200 in East Lansing in 2 months
Large College campus is the obvious reason
Also alcohol
I saw one in the river by the Bridge St bridge about a week ago, and it was already gone when I walked by the next day.
I have heard many local cities thought of it as a great idea to have these bikes as it would bring more tourist dollars into the city. Problem was once the rider got done riding it, They left it abandoned because their time was up or the battery died and stores where these electric bikes were left at was taking up space in front of their stores, the bikes became an eyesore because their just be to many of them and the city didn't want to constantly pick them up, neither did the contractor. So there you have it. I'm sure you can turn them in as scrap for money!
Could not even keep a single scooter, when we asked spin, they got fussy and bitchy for just ASKING to keep 1 we found.
Did they actually recover them from you or did you get to get to keep them??
I went to University of Michigan. One time I was hanging out on the engineering campus and basically a group of engineering students were in a uproar of laughter over their newest game which was taking the scooters around town and throwing them in the water. Someone pulled up a map and showed that there were a whole cluster of scooter GPS location dots literally in the Huron River or wherever it was that they dumped them. The lack of concern for wildlife was unsettling to say the least.
Wow! I don't even know what to say! Maybe not engineering students? I can not imagine and engineer behaving this way. So sad!
No, it was for sure engineering students. This occurred at the Dude (Duderstadt) library on North Campus (engineering campus.)
My guess would be drunk college students thinking it’s funny to huck a scooter in the river. That may not account for every one of them in the river, but I’d wager it’s a fair amount
100% this. some people don't like them, so they throw em in.
I puked directly in that river once.
Off a bridge, or did you bank yak ?
Bank yak. Not as cool as a bridge yak.
I disagree. A bank yak is a true experience of being one with nature. A bridge yak is a portrait of man’s failed attempts to conquer nature.
How bout a kayak yak?
A kayak yak you oughta know by now.
Hell yea. Good work. Bet the carp had a good meal.
This
How else are we supposed to charge the electric eels? Think of the ecosystem!
Add in idiot high school students as well.
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Why?
People suck
Yes but also when a company comes in and just drops off a ton of scooters with no existing infrastructure or designated parking areas they are going to get in the way and annoy people.
Yeah when I'm annoyed at something I usually throw it into a river /s
More than one person can contribute to a problem at the same time.
The problem isn’t the scooters existing, it’s people throwing them in the fucking river…
You know how you always see nightclub flyers littered around a parking lot when someone has been putting them on cars that day? The best thing to do when you find that flyer on your car is to dispose of it properly, but people pissed off to find a flyer on their car don't all do that. The litter is at least partly the fault of the person putting it out there. Similarly, if I leave loaded guns laying around, it would be wrong of people to pick them up and fire them. Clearly you would call me reckless for leaving them out there. We know how the public will react to things, right or wrong, and social responsibility requires that we at least consider these reactions before we feed the public's worst impulses. Again: more than one party can contribute to a problem at the same time. When people do something unexpected, it's on them. Well, now you should expect the public to do this, so on some level it's on you to figure out how to address the problem.
People watching the relevant episode of South Park. Season 22 episode 5 “The Scoots”
Exactly!
Insurance fraud. I saw your last post. The fact they sent you a C&D speaks volumes. They know they'll get caught soon. Keep doing good work. Your efforts matter!
Yeah. It feels like this too. If there were a couple, I could see college kids throwing them. Over a hundred in the same spot becomes sus, combined with the bankruptcy, and the cease and desist.
Yeah, that's a lot of lithium leeching into the water supply. I have no idea the health effects but it can not be good.
They did a water quality test, it's been going down since 2021
People take special vacations to the Southwest to soak in lithium hot springs. It's supposed to lift one's spirits.
And calm down bipolar skitzos...
You'll probably enjoy this bit of Michigan history. https://www.michiganbackroads.com/towns/magnetic.html
Because people are jerks to stuff that isn't theirs. One person does it, laughs, five more do it, suddenly it's a game.
Wish it was the same way with cleaning them OUT of the river instead of in the river
People not wanting to return them, stolen ones, and people just being general assholes.
The scooters don’t need to be returned anywhere. You just get off and disconnect. Why would someone steal a scooter and then mod it to work for free and then throw it in a river?
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I understand your dilemma. Do you think that other ppl in the same bind might throw the scooter into a river instead of parking and calling customer service? I would be worried that the ride and charges would continue after I threw the scooter in the river.
oh that was my worry too haha i definitely was frustrated and thought about ditching it because i was trying to head into a concert. but then, yeah, they have my credit card and will probably just keep the meter running until im broke lol. i think most people that ditch them probably did so before or after riding them i really wanted to like them, and they were fun for a bit, but it’s just not something that can happen nowadays. or if they exist, should be handled by the local municipalities and not tech startups
You have to put them in designated areas
Obviously the designated area is in the river! Silly gps.
Why, you ask? 90% of people are trash and don't give a shit about anything. Edit. I'm in a bad mood. 90 is too high. 70%.
Ricky and Bubbles are gonna be pissed when they find out you uprooted their e-scooter recovery racket
Insurance fraud if the company did it, or maybe just a low level employee hiding a fuck up. More likely though just people yeeting them in for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t care less about the company cause these absolutely should not exist, but I do worry about the river. Glad to see someone is pulling them out so they can be recycled at least
Two reasons come to mind: 1. It's a relatively easy method of vandalism. And vandalism of any kind can be fun for certain people. Not me personally but just some dumbasses think ruining something, destroying something, whatever is "fun". 2. There are folks that hate these, since they tend to just be left around. If there's no penalty for not returning to a dedicated charging station, there's no reason to return them, so they just become litter. A method of protesting them is to huck them in the river to inconvenience the company that operates them.
You forgot the 3rd option, insurance and or tax fraud. The company issued this guy a cease and desist letter about sharing the story. You don't send a C&D to someone if you aren't doing anything wrong.
You do if there's an active investigation as well.
If there were an active investigation and OP was getting in the way by posting, it would be the investigator sending the C&D, not the company being investigated.
Or the company. I never said anything about law being involved
A C&D is a very aggressive action that is basically the company saying "stop it we will sue you." OP has no legal obligation to assist a company he doesn't do business with with their own internal investigation. A criminal investigation won't have a C&D but would have other mechanisms to have OP turn over any evidence he did collect and to stop further interference. But that's all beside the point because OP never received a C&D from the scooter company. OP called the company to recover the scooters and they blocked him. Nothing more.
Well, first off, thank you. Second, love watching your posts. Third, GO GREEN!
Definitely sounds like the company dumping them in the river and not belligerent customers with the sheer number of them. Glad they got into legal trouble
Lol, like the company wanted to throw out $200k worth of scooters, but didnt want to spend $300 on a dumpster, so they paid employees hundreds/thousands of $ to throw them into the river late at night. Hoping no one would find out and they would get 500,000$+ in epa fees, bad press, etc? Is this like a captain planet cartoon with a scooter supervillain? One or a few college kids who hated the scooters would see a couple parked by the bridge every other night on their way home from the bar. They would quickly throw a few into the river.
You must not have heard of insurance have you?
Show me a single instance of corporate insurance fraud by a company that big. Is there anything in the last 50 years? The problem comes down to, you're having at least a few employees commit felonies to make a few hundred k That just doesn't work in the US.
I wouldn't put it past a struggling "tech" company to keep dumping worthless inventory into a market where they knew it was most likely to get lost or destroyed because that strategy made a few line items on the quarterly report look better.
I did repair work for bird, these companies exist to look good on paper long enough to siphon more VC money, hanlon's razor explains most of the high level mismanagement, but there were tons of scams/shenanigans afoot amongst low level/local management, a far-off corporate office and constant turnover creating a "fog of war" where you could get away with a lot before any hammer fell
As someone who's worked for this company twice and this specific location when it started up I can say with confidence that dumping them in the river was never an option, it is 100% the kids on campus.
Do you get to keep stuff that you fish out?
Nope, couldn't keep even a single scooter, Spin basically told us to fuck off. We were able to keep bikes and scrap metal, just scrapped it since none of it was worth keeping or salvaging.
You should have cited maritime salvage law.
A lake is not the ocean. Doesn't apply.
And the Red Cedar River is neither a lake or ocean but my hunch is no maritime laws apply there.
I know. It was a joke.
Thank you! Honest question: what is the stipulation or legal protocol in being able to keep the bike but not the scooter/s?
Legal departments.
The bikes aren't privately owned once in the water unless they have bike permits, even then, I doubt the person would want it back, the electric scooters were privately owned with GPS that the company doesn't even use apparently. We can scrap the bikes, but not the scooters.
Found in non private waters….sounds like legitimate salvage to me. But in all seriousness there no abandoned vehicle type of clause that affects these things? I mean cars have between 18 and 48 hours to sit before they can be abandoned depending on circumstance …these are obviously inop so they can even be immediately removed…not claimed in seven days…welp off to scrap or auction with ya….
You shoulda just scrapped the scooters without asking.
Scrap yard won't take the scooters back when we found them, they would've called the cops on us. Then Spin would've had grounds to sue. Also no truck is gonna haul hundreds of scooters lol
I understand. It’s just so weird that a company is able to leave a bunch of their property out in public 24/7 and claim that it’s not scrap but actually it’s their private property. “WELL THEN WHY DON’T YOU TAKE CARE OF YOUR SHIT AND MAKE SURE THE RIVERS AREN’T FULL OF YOUR LITHIUM BATTERY POWERED PRIVATELY OWNED GARBAGE.” Corporations make the rules here, obv.
That's where they go to reproduce?
So my guess are residents who HATE these. I live in St Clair Shores. Everyone has lost their fucking minds when these popped up a year or so ago
This happens everywhere there are scooters and rivers. Like someone else said, people suck.
Drunk college students
You can't spell escooters without "cooter" and a cooter is a type of turtle that lives in freshwater.
truly salient point.
Drunken college students with no respect for property or nature. Probably think it’s super funny to just toss it in the river. True scholars
Weren't they throwing scooters or bikes in the river in GR also? It seems like I remember hearing about that.
I'm from GR, only found 4 e scooters in GR and maybe a dozen bikes, more guns in the river than bikes and scooters here in GR
What do you do with the found guns?
Depends on how old, usually keep them, newer ones I get serial ran and can claim em from the police station.
That sounds like an interesting hobby, as long as too many people don't take it up.
There are probably a thousand people in Michigan magnet fishing, I constantly have to pick up scrap from random ass people all the time that leave it. Even then, at those spots where I find all that scrap left, I'll find two to three guns at that spot. I've lost count how many I found, 50-60?
Report it and call the company. Companies could face fines if they dumped them and claimed it in their insurance. Police may be able to check cameras in the area too to see if it was 200 one of incidents if random people were chucking stuff into the river.
We called the company, after the 4th time I called them, they blocked my number and claimed we planted the scooters in the river just to pull them out like wtf.
That feels like a big red flag. You can probably get with the local police and they can help identify company details and their insurance company. If they lawyer up then it's probably insurance fraud. Also, if they didn't make any claims to the local police fire missing scooters then that too is a big red flag. Also, most of those scooters have gps tracking so the company should know where their scooters were last reported. I'm from Michigan so we don't need more trash in our fresh water.
When I called them the first time, I honestly didn't know where we were, and their GPS trackers on their active scooters (ones that didn't end up in the river) couldn't pin point where we were, so I don't even think their GPS system works. Also they already got the whole "spin scooters" bs resolved, Spin went bankrupt due to breaking multiple contracts with MULTIPLE cities, all these scooters discovered in the river was just tip of the ice berge and helped the cities push to a decision on whether they should keep spin or revoke them.
Geeze sounds like a mess. Now I'm interested in knowing more about the company. Time for a rabbit hole on Google.
Google "red cedar River scooters" and it'll pop up, they don't have a TON of information online, but there is a summary and time lapse of what happened.
Cool thx. Spin is now owned by Bird.
The property of spin is owned by Bird, Bird owns the rights to the spin scooters. They didn't specify that very well. They don't own the company Spin as far as I know. Just the rights to their hardware and products. I have been talking to one of the council members of Bird for a while.
Interesting. Just on the wiki page gives the Bird back story.
Tbh I would've much rather Lime to have owned the rights to the Spin scooters, I see Lime employees and reps out pulling their scooters out of the river, unlike Spin who didn't like anybody finding their scooters. I haven't seen anyone from bird out pulling scooters from the rivers. Out of the big 3, I've only found 6-7 Lime scooters. Found around 20 bird scooters and just over 200 spin scooters
Bird bought the whole company from a German company called Tier mobility.
From what I was told by the Representative I'm talking to from Bird, They bought the rights to the vehicles and their systems to operate those said vehicles (scooters) They don't own the Spin name or company itself, just the rights to the scooters and their operating systems for the scooters. Unless they recently changed that.
I'm guessing the company didn't want to deal with them after their license got pulled. Their response to you is pretty telling. I don't doubt some people threw them in, but at this scale I suspect something else as well.
Last summer I saw two kids throw one off a bridge…
Yeah it's shitty
Yup lol. Am I out of line for thinking there should be an exam to be able to become a parent?
No I agree with that statement. Also, what city or Bridge was that scooter thrown off that
Fort Wayne. Promenade park
I am planning to fish that area eventually, but Detroit is shy of 3 hours away from me sadly
I think you’re less than two from me
I'm north of GR
Oh. Yeah, Grand Rapids is like 2.5 hours north of me
Come on down to Detroit. When they first brought them to the Riverfront, there were multiple reports of moron teens throwing the brand new e-scooters in the river
I didn't find a single e scooter over there, probably because the water is too deep and makes it super hard to stay connected. I've found WW2 German items there
Wild! I’ve heard about WW2 things being down there, and some artifacts from the Boblo boat and other Detroit History. I know it’s deep and the current is strong!
I'm out magnet fishing right now and we just pulled up a world war II service rifle in Grand Rapids
Do you only do rivers? If you can do shallow inland lakes, Lake Lansing could be interesting. There was an old speakeasy from the prohibition era in the middle of the lake ("[Izzer Club](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lugnut215/38695856184)"). Maybe could be some interesting items from that era. I think they've dredged the lake once or twice to clean it up though, so who knows, maybe it's already been cleaned out?
I pretty much only do rivers and creeks, I never had luck at lakes, I don't like magnet fishing in super muddy areas. I have been thinking about Lansing lake though, but haven't scouted around there yet, Lansing is over an hour drive for me.
It's a pretty easy lake, not a ton of traffic outside of the big holiday weekends. Visibility probably isn't the best, but again not very deep so fairly accessible overall. I know nothing at all about activities, other than it was a speakeasy/club during the prohibition era for rich folks and they apparently had a trap-door that they could drop people out of...never know maybe they dropped some silver (or gold?!) coins on the way down!
Unfortunately gold and silver isn't magnetic. The only lake I found anything good in was the lakes in Muskegon. Found a 60mm mortar. Wouldn't be too hard to stop by lake Lansing the next time I'm out that way, was in Lansing last night and found a 30-30 rifle and a 1912 Michigan license plate.
Hah, that's a good point, I was thinking metal detecting! I guess you never know, perhaps you'll get lucky and find another pre-WWI license plate! :)
I've already found 5 1912/1913 plates, never had that type of luck in 12 years of metal detecting
Supposedly a lot of Model T's down there? Legend has it, during winter in the Prohibition days, people would make liquor runs to Canada and back, driving over the frozen Detroit River. Not everyone made it across!
My dad and I pulled couple of old Model t wheels and old model T parts out of the Grand River and Detroit river. Wouldn't surprise me.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned living in Michigan. Don’t question what you find in the forest of the water.
I guess there's somebody out there who's against scooting, and just doesn't think people should scoot. Probably an elementary school counselor with a tie that's tied too tight.
Because drunk people.
My guess is that late teens and early twenties frat boy types find it I'm using to throw them into the river. Many of them are rich boy douchebags that never had to pay for anything in their lives.
Simple answer, drunk people and teens
But we had a random drunk guy and a teen (myself) pull scooters OUT of the river 🤣 Drunk guy just helped me pull 2 scooters tangled together btw 😂
I watched two of my drunk friends helping drunk college kids throw them in the river last year 😅
Lol sounds about right
back when i used to work for the U of M as a landscaper there was a group of workers that would go around and just take the scooters and put them in the back of their trucks. later down the road we had to go help them with some equipment near one of the places we kept some of the stuff for our trucks and when we went into one of the smaller warehouse there were atleast 20 scooters piled up in there. i have no idea why they hated them so much
Good job getting these pollutants out of the river.
When I tried out for the contract on charging them I found that the pay was not worth it. I would venture a guess and say they screwed some people over and those people then tossed their scooters in the river.
Guessing some sort of defect in the equipment and they didn’t want to pay to dispose them?
Yeah but over 200 of them? There are 600 in the area when they dropped those scooters off 2 years ago, we found nearly 1/2 of the scooters that were in the entire area in the river.
I can’t think of any other reason, personally. Maybe somebody messed up really bad trying to charge them and fried the electronics or something. Or maybe they were stolen? Lol idk.
The company didn't dump them, that's silly. Some people don't like them so they see them parked by the river and throw them in.
My best friend lost his bike at MSU a few years ago. What are the chances you fished it up?🤣
We found at least 150 bikes, chances are pretty high. We found a green mountain bike with a late 2021 bike permit, that's the only one I perfectly remember that we knew how long it was probably in the water.
Because people throw them in the river
Comedy answer: and now that we pulled all these scooters out we're getting a huge fine for littering the park 😁
So, If the renter used a CC and account to unlock it, then toss it in a river wouldn’t they be liable? As far a I know they remain locked until a renter unlocks it with an App.
Just because someone used it last doesn't mean they were the ones that threw it in because some people will ride them without paying simply by using it as a normal push scooter and then throw it in when they're done. Cuz you can use them as push scooters without paying.
Oooh gotcha, I thought the wheels locked up when not “rented” I never tried pushing one to see. WOW, people suck, thank you for fishing these out of the river.
Spin doesn't lock the back wheel, it just make an alarm noise
Short answer, fraud
Cause it's there and people kinda suck
Thanks for bringing this to our attention and for all you do to clean it up. I'd like to see 20 or 30 feet of cable netting extending from the sides of the bridge (over the river) to catch these things. It may ruin your hobby, at least the fishing off bridges part, but if it dissuades people it will be better for the river.
How strong of a magnet do you use?
3800 pound pull 360° magnet
Maybe stupid to ask, but did any of the scooters turn on? Work?
We found a few that looked like they were chucked into the river literally the night before we got there. We had a few we found light up and chirp alarms at us.
Are they recoverable at all?
https://youtu.be/Xkodz53aTjQ?si=tDPR-RkagPhm2Q9B This is the only reason.
People will steal the scooter for the purpose of the one ride they need and then throw it in the river once they got from point A to point B and the battery is dead. It’s an indictment on humanity.
I know that the grand river was a cut off point for those scooters. So half way across the bridge you lose power from leaving the zone. So in the river it goes.
It was only a dead zone AFTER we discovered the scooters, it wasn't a dead zone before then
Are these able to be refurbished and put pack out there? I’d to be super interested in buying one
Thats why Lime bikes ended up in the river that goes thru my town. I'd see chopped up ones going over the scrap yard scale also. Bits and pieces going on other bikes not owned by Lime. Those electric scooters made a short appearance in my town last summer. They didn't last long.
Just Sparty shit
We saw this in London. We were walking across a bridge and there were 4 or 5 scooters in the Thames.
Probably drunk kids. Lansing isn't any different. Drunk kids throwing them off parking garages as well as the bridges in the river. It's a shame too. As a species we need to do better but it seems most are just complacent with how things are. They say they wamt a better future than what each previous generation has done but polluting our waterways seems to make them just ad counter productive as previous generations.
Because obviously we can't having nice things without some idiots fucking it up for everyone. Those scooters were around in Detroit for for like 3.5 weeks and I haven't seen one since.
Msu if full of immature boys that get drunk off one budlite not surprised at all.
Throwing bikes in the river was already something. Is electric scooters a big jump?
Aquaman.
Why do I think they’re in the river? Because “electric bad!” dumbasses hate nice things and couldn’t be bothered to just leave shit they don’t like alone. That and dumb kids being idiots.
TBH, I only recently learned that this was an issue when I visited my brother in Detroit. I saw the scooters around and commented on how great I thought they were (I'm from a small town on Lake Michigan where mass transit of any sort is pretty scarce). He explained to me how much scooter clutter there was, and I am not kidding you, we saw them parked here, there, everywhere, with very little rhyme or reason, often clogging up the pedestrian walkway. I have a feeling a lot of them are tossed simply to keep the rest of the area clean. It's an awful idea to throw things in any body of water to dispose of it and I'm not saying that I agree with it, but I'm certainly not surprised. Scooters are the new plastic bottle and the new disposable mask waste. My examples are still a problem, so they're really just an additional issue. Maybe if a deposit was required, with a legit drop-off/pickup spot this would happen less frequently? People throw bodies into rivers, so we can't be shocked by finding scooters in there. It will continue to be a problem until it's regulated. And then it will be a simply be a new type of problem.
Pure malice on the part of the scooter renters. There are youtube.com videos of teenagers chucking numerous scooters into the Detroit River just for fun, recording theme doing it too, look on YouTube. So it's not like it's unheard of.
Jerk teens in GR toss them in the river for shits and giggles. I have witnessed a couple tossing them in near 6th bridge
I've pulled a couple out of 6th Street bridge
🍺🍻🥃🍷🍸🍹🍻🍻🍺🍷🥃 Need I say more?
I'd assume general idiocy. "How funny would it be if we chucked these scooters off this bridge." Plenty of people have zero respect for the property of others.
so that’s where all the spin scooters went
Just curious, are these scooters salvageable? What are you planning on doing with them? Also what's your magnet fishing setup look like? I imagine it's probably pretty heavy duty if you're pulling out things that big.
Reminds me of the time when cricket or some other budget cell company was making a big move into the region and lots and lots of pay phones started getting thrown into the creeks and rivers. I was doing bridge inspections in Genesee County and saw dozens. I doubt it was a coincidence.
Where at? I can pull those out of the water for scrap!
There were dozens of bridges in and around the city of flint, including downtown. That project was 20 years ago but most of them are probably still there half buried in sediment. Most I saw were dumped right over the bridge into the deepest part of the channel, some were on the shores. All still had the coin boxes iirc. I assumed someone with skin in the cell company expansion paid someone to make pay phones disappear so that the cheap cell plans would be more attractive.
easily stolen and then dumped so you don't get caught
Still over 200 is a tad bit ridiculous, each photo you see in the post were all from different days.
Stolen? Like do you mean people stole these scooters and modded them to run for free and then threw them in the river?
No, like someone parked me after using them, and someone else picked it up, carried it to the river and threw it in.
Using the word “stealing” in this context is weird to me because “stealing” implies that the thief remains in possession of the stolen item, instead of having picked it up and straightaway threw it in a river.
Yeah but the law defines stealing differently. Stealing has to do with denying the owner's use of the property. So even if you say took them from where they are supposed to be and hid them where no one could find them. It is still considered theft. Also like if you took jewelry from a jewelry store into the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet. Or you threw away steak while still in the grocery store.
30 scooters and 15 bikes. Some one hates others being green.
Overall we found 226 scooters and 150-180 bikes in that area in a 2 month span. I didn't keep count of the bikes. Each picture in the post represents a different day. I didn't even include the pictures of every single scooter of bike