Brompton Bike Hire/Subscription Reviews 

The second time I have used the hire service. Although the nationwide coverage is a bit patchy, if you life near a dock you have the ability to rent out a bike on an ad-hoc basis for as long as you like.

There are a couple of hoops to jump through to register with the app but it was a painless and quick experience for me. Booking a bike takes seconds so you can do it at the dock and once you have retrieved, unfolded and set off then you can keep it for as long as you like.

I had an issue on my last rental in that the dock door didn't open but a call to the emergency contact number (on a Saturday) resolved the issue in a couple of minutes and I was on my way.

I kept the bike overnight and returned it the next day for the sum of £5. I would recommend this over normal bike hire schemes if you want to keep the bike a bit longer than a single journey and especially if you want to try a Brompton specifically. You can also redeem our rental outlays against the cost of buying a new bike which is a great idea.

So easy to hire a Brompton, the app is great with useful guidance on how to unfold/fold for a novice. And the ride is great fun !

Booking, pickup was super easy. Getting there was tricky as the directions are not great. Bike itself was OK three gears are not the best as my ride home is on a steep inclination. Need to test with six gears perhaps before I buy one.

very easy, bike on his place, all good.
Ive taken to try, so just half an hour. No charge, so very please.
Brompton will be my next bike. Thanks

Simple app sign up, easy to locate and get the bike. All working well and such good value!
I kept it for 10 days and gave it a good test out. Have now bought my own on the cycle to work scheme.

I rent a lot of bikes from a lot of companies and almost always the tires are rock hard the handling questionable with many creeks and bangs along the way! When I rent a Brompton, I've not experienced any of this behaviour. It's like riding my own bike, only somebody else is responsible for servicing it!

I recently hired a Brompton during the Rail Strikes.

The freedom you get to just fold/unfold as and when is the best creation ever!

I throughly enjoyed the experience and the staff on the helpline were extremely helpful.

The customer service was fantastic. We could not register ourselves on the app due to a technical issue getting verification codes and the customer service team dealt with it very efficiently.

Excellent experience also when we got the bikes and was a brilliant day out.

I need a bike for a couple of days a week, without the struggle of having to store it in London. This seemed like a good option. Utterly pointless. The app is a non-starter, requiring a code texted to a phone number that never comes. I tried on several platforms and with different numbers. You cannot just hire a bike at the machine, and the ‘support’ (contradiction in terms) number just goes to an answer machine telling me to message via the website. If this is the Brompton Standard, then I will just buy a bike and risk leaving it chained up.

On the two occasions I have rung Brompton Subscription customer services, I have been greeted by a friendly sounding human who just gave the impression they valued me as a customer and did a great job of answering all my questions. Makes me proud to ride a Brompton!

A fast response to my query, with a detailed narrative. Best of all, the Brompton arrived the next day!

Excellent service. Incredibly easy to book and collect. It’s a bit of a trick to work out how to assemble and then fold but after a couple of times I was doing it in 30 seconds. Bikes are well maintained (tyres pumped, chainset ran perfectly). I used it for a week on a station commute and then from Waterloo to ride over to the City each day. I wish I had heard about this sooner. Thank you BromptonBikeHire

After resolving my initial issue with the manager, I've changed the customer service rating from one star to 4 stars, thanks

The bikes are well maintained and usually clean, they come with dynamo lights and telescopic seatpost, which is great. Three gears is enough, but a smaller chainring would be beneficial for many.
Their iOS app works well. Some docks are glitchy, but fear not, every time I called support, my issue was resolved in no time. The support team behind BBH is exceptionally polite, patient, helpful and professional.
I'm looking forward to seeing more docks (especially in North London), Explore and Electric models available for hire.
Keep up the good work!

I had small issues with the bike and a friendly lady from customer service helped me at 7am after nearly no tome at the phone to get another bike in London.

Love the bike, love the service and can recommend it to family and friends.

Brilliant all round! I called customer services before my first hire, as I'd been messed around and left in the lurch by another company and wanted to be sure I understood Brompton's terms. They couldn't have been more different: clear, to the point, friendly and helpful. The app was easy to use, and both collecting and returning the bike were quick and easy, all for a fiver a day. Will definitely use them again!

Top marks for the quality of the hire bikes and the whole rental experience. The App is so simple to use to both to hire the bike and return it to the easy to find docks. We hired two bikes from two nearby docks on the East London end of the DLR. This was due to low availability but the app was clear on that so no surprises there. Both the Android app and the iOS versions of the app are exactly the same and walk you through exactly what to do. The bikes were not new, but were clean and you could see are well maintained. The bikes are easy to fold up and down using the stickers on the main bike frame. At the end of the 4 day hire it was a 20 second chore. I was surprised at how easy the bike is to ride having not ridden any bike for at least 10 years. It handles very well in all gears and a very comfortable ride for the most part. The lack of any meaningful suspension made dealing with London's cobbled streets a bit painful on the saddle. The only reason for a 4 star review was that there are no docks on London's south bank. I would have expected a couple of docks in Lewisham, Greenwich and Woolwich. Otherwise a 5 star experience.

Was interested in the Brompton Jubilee free 4 day hire offer so I went to download the Brompton Hire App on the Appstore. Shocked by the initial negative reviews I saw, I decided to look at the most recent ones. I
stopped at the 100th, then counted back the number of 1 or 2 star reviews. There were 89 out of the 100.
That’s 89% of the people hiring (or trying to hire) a Brompton had a terrible experience. Shocking.
Brompton makes great bikes, but they surely should sort out their bike hire system.
Edit:
Many thanks to Brompton Hire’s Chung-Yen for replying to my review.
Hopefully things will improve in the near future!

First time around to hire a bike. Great brand great idea, should be a good experience so I thought. I get to the dock and try to release the bike. The display is strange and goes black in between. I search my text from Brompton fill in the pin number and insert my bay number. Then a QR code is shown. After a moment of confusion I open the Brompton app and scan the code. Nothing happens. I try it 4 times. Nothing. Then I call the helpline. I say 'it is not working' slightly exacerbated at which point the other person tells me I am shouting. I say I am not and she keeps on that I am shouting and that she cannot help me like that. I literally had not even said anything yet. Instead of dealing with the situation I now had to deal with someone who obviously had a few bad calls already and was not made for the job. Then customer service opened me the bay and I had to ask how I am supposed to do it, what did do wrong, keen to understand. The explanations were all given in an argumentative tone as if I had been all along rude, which I had not been. Remember I had hardly said much. The best is I was told that I am meant to put in bay number 02 whereas the text stated bay '2'! These are the finde details you need to pick up on - of course how silly of me. That being the reason it didn't read the QR code. Who would have guessed? So now I had gotten the bike with a really bad feeling - all that frustration of customer service unloaded onto me, plus not having succeeded on my own. A great start to get customers excited about your product and services. A complete failure and badly prepared. Bad customer service is the beginning of the end for any company.

Avoid, unless you want to get charged for nothing. It’s impossible to hire a bike using their app

Update: I’ve already contacted Brompton Hire via the Help widget on the website, at the time I wrote the review/ intended to hire the bike. Possibly there was no account created with my name, As I was not successful in my attempt to create one, however the charge was pending on my bank statement Immediately after I’ve put my bank details in. My partner tried too, twice, and guess what? Two charges were pending on his bank account too.
In the end we gave up on trying to hire.

The charges were never taken from our accounts; they remained pending for a few days and then were returned (in the meantime, the money are basically stuck/unavailable until released back).