Potentially hundreds of people wrangled a free Citi Bike subscription over the weekend after a promo code for company employees was leaked on Reddit and Instagram.
Utilizing the code "room120," users obtained a year’s subscription to Citi Bike free of charge. The Reddit post noted that the code was being sent around to allow people to travel to protests for free. The code was deactivated around midday Sunday.
“This was an old code created two years ago for employees to test the app, and is no longer active,” a spokesperson for Lyft, which owns Citi Bike, told Streetsblog. “Citi Bike stands against acts of racial injustice and supports the community’s right to protest.”
It’s unclear how many people managed to get a membership with the passcode, but dozens of Twitter and Reddit users posted about obtaining one. Lyft declined to comment on the numbers or whether users of the code would get to keep their membership.
A Citi Bike user who asked to be referred to as Spike told Streetsblog that he received a $170 yearly membership for free with the promo code — and it remains active on his account.
“I rode their bikes three times today,” he said on Tuesday.
Spike described himself as a regular bike commuter who often uses his own bike, but sometimes uses Citi Bike.
The code was circulating around the Internet throughout the weekend, based on timestamps of some of the earliest tweets to mention it.
Citi Bike was shut down at night during the citywide curfew, which lasted for a week until being lifted Sunday morning. The company was ordered by the police and de Blasio administration to deactivate its bikes as early as 6 p.m. nightly, and it complied, despite reservations.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office told Streetsblog last week that the system was shut down because the police had “security concerns about the way the bikes were being used.”
With the curfew over, the bikeshare system is back to 24/7 service.
