Spinlister: rent your bike out airbnb-style

[DSKla]

https://www.spinlister.com

In trying to find a way to purchase a bike frugally, I came across spinlister. In my area, people are renting our their bikes from between $20-150 a day depending on how nice it is. Spinlister covers damage and theft up to $10k on your bike.

So if anyone is looking to purchase a bike, and you live in a city or tourist destination where bikes are popular, it might be a decent hack to buy the bike and start renting it out until you cover the costs. Or if you have two bikes, this could be a decent side income.

[MoneyCat]

That is a really neat idea for a start-up.  I bet people living in NYC could make a mint.

[innkeeper77]

We have a set of basic skis and also an extra bike- I'm going to try this! I doubt there will be much interest, but why not try? Thank you!

[cambridgecyclist]

I had bicycles listed on Spinlister for years. It's a nice idea but the reality didn't pan out. My experience was:

- Rental requests came once every 6 months or so
- One requester flagged me as non-responsive when I didn't respond to a rental request within 3 minutes, which affected my overall rating in a disproportionate and unfair manner
- Rental requests only came in with short notice on weekends when the weather was beautiful and people wanted to pick bikes up in the middle of the day, which limited my own options for my own outdoor recreation since I had to be home to meet the renters
- Some renters expected accessories like locks and lights to be provided. Great if you have extra sets of these things but it's not worth buying another lock or set of bike lights unless you're going to get a lot of rentals.
- And none of the renters ever showed up to pick up their bikes; they just ended up paying me anyway and left me stuck waiting for them.

In the end, I made about $100 total, never needed to actually rent any of my bikes, had to deal with flaky customers who had unrealistic expectations and also missed out on a couple of nice summer afternoons. The bike sharing system that arrived in my area finally broke the business model and I pulled all my listings.

[DSKla]

Good to know. Maybe it wouldn't work as a way to pay for a bike after all.

[jmusic]

Spinlister covers damage and theft up to $10k on your bike.

Might be an interesting way for someone to "sell" a bike they don't want any more, not that I advocate fraud.  Cambridge's comments noted, another issue is that many people personalize their bikes, especially the nicer ones, and then there's the SIZE issue.  My 64cm road bike might be slow to rent, and it's nice enough that I wouldn't really want to anyway.