The thing is though, Japanese society places such a high bar on customer service, engineering, and safety in its products that users will likely trust that there’s no need to worry. At the same time if there is an issue (say power outage) due to extenuating circumstances, the user will typically be patient until the situation is resolved.
Now if something does happen and the users can’t get their bikes, the users will complain, and the company will loose a considerable amount of face. The company leaders will have to publicly apologize, and someone will likely loose their job. If the reputation damage is too bad, they’ll have to go out of business. So the company will make a lot of painstaking efforts upfront to avoid this.
Now I can attest 99% of bike parking in Japan is not like this, and in fact, this service protects your bikes from their biggest risk: getting hauled off by the police because you parked it in the wrong spot and leaving you with a ticket. :rolleyes:
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