Charlie is a great guy, in the best Burning Man tradition of good people doing cre things for…read moreothers. His bikes are well maintained classics, suited to everyone. My husband and I rode bikes long distance on traditional bikes, Zurich to Winterthur to Rhein Falls, train back. We also took the ferry from Zurich to Rapperswil and took train back. Bikes worked perfectly but next time I will follow Charlie's advice and take the train to Winterthur. From there it's a 2 hour bike and hike to the Kybourg castle.

Owner is quite friendly and responsive - it's a very quick and casual system for renting bikes, and…read moreit worked well. Bikes worked perfectly.

The staff are defensive (actually, make that aggressive) and unhelpful. Too busy to change a tyre,…read morebut plenty of time to take money and verbally abuse people. I had an old bicycle with a flat tyre, and was also told to wait two days for a tyre change. When I came back, I was presented with a bill for over 100 Swiss Francs. That's a *hell* of a lot of money for a flat tyre. The new tyre was around 60 Francs, but I was charged nearly 50 Francs just for the tyre change. I later went to Happy Bike on Europa Allee with exactly the same problem (different bike). Total fee: 30 Francs. 25 for a tyre, FIVE FRANCS to change it. Now Happy Bike is unusually cheap (and unusually helpful), and they are probably just trying to build up their business (and might be no good in 6 months), BUT when I took the receipt back to Velofix and questioned the outrageous bill I got a wave of bullsh*t. The head mechanic got quite aggressive, and told me that the bill was reasonable because 1) they had to pay a lot of rent and have a lot of staff 2) the global financial crises of 2008 and had really affected the sports business It was quite a barrage, and by the end of it I was a little confused 1) I have to pay a lot of rent in my apartment as well, can I please have a 50% discount? 2) What the f*ck has the global financial crises got to do with overcharging people in a bike shop? To my shame, I paid the robbers, but I'll never go back there. Stay away from Velofix.

The city of Zurich allows residents of the city to rent a bike for free, but one must put down a…read morecash deposit and show identification at time of renting. Many bikes tend to be already booked out very early (esp to tourists), so make sure you come early or you have to rely on lady luck. Since there are different locations in the city, they will be able to tell you which location may still have some bikes left. I'd say the location at Hardbrucke is the one with the least amount of bikes. The reason it loses 2 stars is because: - 1 star off for many times being unavailable, and when it is, you have to return the bike to the original location: there are no exceptions. This is not always helpful, especially in big cities there has been bike programs on-going for many years already that allows you to rent bikes from A to B. - 1 star off for when I was able to rent a bike, I found out the minimum height was still a bit too high for me (I am 157cm tall). This means many people who are at my height or below should just not bother renting from here. I think the City of Zurich should rethink this especially if they want tourists to take advantage of this, esp since many of their tourists in the city I would assume could be around my height. But Limegreen (Silicon Valley HQ company) does rent bikes in the city that the seat adjusts low enough for my height, so I will have to (reluctantly) resort to that instead. They also allow you to return bikes at a different starting location from where you've picked it up, which is super convenient for A to B commuting.