Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Share portable battery price chaos "fly", who is in the end when the "shit stick"?

Recently, in addition to the "hot network" ice cream assassin, "portable battery Assassin" is also on the cusp of the storm. Recently, I often see people on the Internet complaining about some of their experiences in using shared portable battery. The first is the skyrocketing price, and the second is the trough point of the use experience.

To tell you the truth, I am not heavily dependent on mobile phones, and I don't have that much demand for sharing portable battery and personal portable battery. So the experience of this mess is not so deep, but recently, people often talk to me about all kinds of "interesting things" about portable battery.

Some time ago, a colleague of my company complained to me that recently sharing products like portable battery should be touched as little as possible, otherwise we would know what a real "robbery" is when deducting money. Portable battery, who has been borrowed for two hours, can only guarantee no power loss due to the slow charging speed, the battery of the mobile phone has not increased at all, but the money has been spent 7 or 8 yuan. This is not over. It is easy to borrow portable battery from one place, while portable battery needs to run 108000 li.

When sharing portable battery just came out, Wang Sicong asserted in moments that sharing portable battery could not be achieved, and put down some "cruel words". Although the words were a little rough, we can see his denial of this kind of project.

Photo Source: from Weibo

At that time, I thought it was better to wait and see. It didn't make sense to make an assertion so soon. After all, if this thing really happened, it would also be a good thing for the people. However, after portable battery's price rise in previous years, I feel that this project is becoming more and more unreliable. Of course, what I think is unreliable is these enterprises, not this project.

After my colleagues told me about this, I learned about the current situation in the industry from various channels to see which link went wrong.

I don't know. I was really shocked when I knew it.

Sharing portable battery's high price chaos and sharing portable battery's price increase was reported by the media as early as 2019. The price changed from one yuan an hour to two, three, and four yuan an hour. At that time, portable battery's "differential pricing strategy" was well known by the public.

The so-called differential pricing strategy, to put it more popularly, is to "watch people eat dishes." for example, in some places with low passenger traffic, the price of sharing portable battery may still be one or two yuan, but in restaurants, KTV, bars or scenic spots, the price of borrowing portable battery will multiply.

In addition, in the media reports of that year, there is another official saying about the price increase, that is, "the charging standard is adjusted according to the market situation, and this price is not uniformly set by the company."

Let's understand this sentence from another point of view, that is, between the company's pricing and the store's price, there is a person who is responsible for the price of a certain region, he is the culprit of the "differentiated pricing strategy", this behavior has nothing to do with the company.

As to whether the identity of this person belongs to a company, a store or an individual, I dialed the cooperative number of portable battery shared by a brand and learned about the situation as a partner.

According to the information provided by the other party, there is indeed such a person between the shop owner and the company, and this person is not the company and the shop owner, but belongs to the role of a "middleman", in the words of the company, that is, "agent".

It is worth mentioning that the role of agent has a very high level of authority, such as pricing power.

The agent has the authority to set the price of a cabinet. For example, a restaurant has laid the agent's charging cabinet. He can decide whether the cabinet is two yuan or three yuan an hour. If it is a bar, KTV, bathtub and other long-term activity places, the price can even reach 10 yuan an hour, uncapped.

For the agent, after a portable battery goes out of the cabinet, all the time before the next cabinet, the profit is owned by him.

Then there is an interesting place here, that is to say, the longer portable battery is away from the cabinet, the more they earn. In this way, how to lay the location of the charging cabinet has also become a knowledge.

Earlier, some users said on the Internet that after consumers borrowed portable battery, some merchants took out a new shared portable battery and stuffed it into the original hole, causing netizens to walk several kilometers more before returning portable battery, increasing a lot of use time in vain and spending a lot of money. From my understanding, this situation does occur in some places where portable battery's high unit price is shared, such as bars and scenic spots.

The agent also has another right is the benefit sharing, the agent can decide oneself and the businessman's share, at present the more common is three or seven points, the agent three, the shop seven. In other words, the shopkeeper is linked to sharing portable battery's interests, not paying the shopkeeper a monthly fee. If it is some bars, scenic spots and other places, this share may have to change, the agent should give more profits to the shop owner.

In other words, today's upstream companies are just a platform, and what they are really doing is selling shared portable battery, charging cabinets, and equipment maintenance. The real dealers who are doing business with shopkeepers and consumers are these agents, who only need to pay 5% to 10% of portable battery's profits each year.

At present, the several companies I communicate with are some beast, some search, some street, some regiment sharing portable battery because of its own channel advantages, the sharing of interests is different, but the logic is generally similar.

After sharing portable battery's price chaos, let's talk about all kinds of fancy problems on the product itself.

When communicating with the other party, the other party made it clear to me that a shared portable battery cabinet could serve for about five years, and intimately calculated the product income for me within five years. This seems beautiful, but behind the promise of a "long product service cycle", I see many problems with the product.

The first is the aging of charging efficiency.

We all know about mobile phone batteries. If we use mobile phones for a long time, the overall battery will be aging more seriously after a year or two. By the same token, portable battery's shared battery capacity of portable battery is only 4000-5000 Ma / h. Taking into account the charging loss, coupled with the regular charge and discharge caused by long service, a portable battery is from fully charged to out of power. it is highly unlikely that a flagship mobile phone with 4000 + Ma is filled with a mobile phone.

Another is whether the charging line can achieve sufficient qualified charging speed and charging power after being worn out for a long time. Among the recent complaints about "shared portable battery assassins", there are many problems in the aging and wear of charging wires, often unstable charging of mobile phones, disconnecting and charging at a touch, wasting a lot of time.

In addition, some friends encountered some problems when portable battery returned them. For example, the platform continued to deduct fees when it was already in the cabinet, resulting in some experience impact.

The emergence of this problem is also likely to be caused by the aging of the product, sharing portable battery on the body of the contact contact is poor, resulting in the product can not be returned.

Picture source: black cat complaint

Picture source: black cat complaint

If the situation can not be returned correctly, customer service will also ask users to "compensate" portable battery, which is generally priced at 99 yuan per unit.

Although this is the price set a few years ago, now that portable battery is already in the era of cabbage prices, the price of 99 yuan has really "stabbed" consumers. With this money, it is enough to buy portable battery with a larger capacity of some big brands.

There are many complaints like this online, which also shows that many consumers are resistant to sharing portable battery's bad experience. In the black cat complaint, the search keyword "shared portable battery" can get 14686 results, many of the complaints are upstream companies and agents in the face of complaint inaction, charging confusion, product quality failure, and so on.

Picture source: black cat complaint

At present, the entire sharing portable battery industry is in a state of chaos that cannot be more chaotic. Perhaps it is a bit inspecific to say so. Let's put it another way:

Everyone is making money, and no one is responsible for the consumer experience. The idea of sharing portable battery is good, just like sharing bicycles, both are the products of consumers' emergency, but the routines of both are similar, first burning money to "horse racing enclosure", and then frantically raising prices to make money.

It is true that rising prices is the best way to improve earnings, but in addition to overcharging, whether it can improve the ability of fine operation and restore consumer confidence in products is the fundamental factor that determines the long-term survival of an industry.

All enterprises lie flat and raise prices, and the whole industry is like a pool of stagnant water, which in itself is irresponsible to consumers.

In addition, the price of each machine shared by portable battery is different, but there is no obvious logo to inform consumers of the specific price of each machine and the price increase strategy. Does this infringe consumers' right to know?

Coming back to our products today, it is difficult to improve the experience of sharing portable battery in a short period of time, so my suggestion is that you should go out or take a piece of portable battery with you, otherwise you will make mistakes several times. The money spent is enough to buy a new portable battery.

Image source: photo taken by LU

Will you continue to use shared portable battery?

This article is from the official account of Wechat: non-objective Laboratory (ID:zhinan617), author: ByArsT

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