The 2020 Bike Bonus sold out 24 hours after 9:00 on 3 November, the day of the click day to obtain the longed-for refunds for the purchase of electric bikes and scooters. In truth, as has already happened on similar occasions, the dedicated site managed by Sogei went haywire from 9 in the morning, queues and long waits (ten hours) were created, after which only a part of the consumers who completed the purchases by 2 November 2020 or who asked for a voucher to proceed with the purchase managed to obtain the promised public contribution. The Spid identification system has further complicated things and social networks have registered numerous protests. However, the Minister of the Environment Sergio Costa invited everyone to be patient and to keep the invoice or receipt proving the purchase because the government intends to refinance the 2020 bike bonus so that no one is left out.
Here is the press release from the Ministry of the Environment with the first available data on the incentives distributed:
At 15 pm, 18.909 vouchers had been generated and 46.101 refund requests finalised, according to data provided by Sogei, which manages the www.buonomobilita.it platform. Already 103 vouchers spent.
“The part has been uphill, as recorded – observes the Minister of the Environment Sergio Costa on the basis of the data communicated by Sogei at 15 pm on Tuesday 3 November – with the portal still functioning slowly. There have been some problems, connected to various suppliers of the Spid authentication system, mainly due to simultaneous crowding, which, as Sogei personally told me, went far beyond all expectations.
On the one hand, therefore, I consider the great attention from everyone to soft mobility positive, on the other it invests us with a great responsibility. I invite everyone to enter the system calmly, even in the next few days, because we have placed other ad hoc funds in the Stability law and I assure that all those who have an invoice or a receipt dated November 2nd and those who book a voucher also they will be refunded in the next few days. No citizen will be left behind”, concludes the minister.
Source: Ministry of the Environment
Subsequently, the ministry issued a new note:
The endowment of resources of the "Experimental Mobility Voucher Program" for the year 2020, amounting to 215 million euro, a sum up to which the Law recognizes the right to the benefit, ended in the disbursement of refunds and the booking of vouchers .
The Ministry of the Environment considers the incentive policies for sustainable mobility and in particular for soft mobility as strategic, as they make it possible to satisfy the mobility needs in urban areas with minimal or no environmental impact. For these reasons, the Ministry of the Environment is committed to finding additional resources to allocate for the 2020 annuality of the experimental voucher mobility programme.
Therefore, those who have made purchases of goods and services promoted by the Program between 4 May 2020 and 2 November 2020 and have not obtained a refund due to lack of resources, are invited to keep the related accounting documents.
Source: Ministry of the Environment
The fact remains that at midnight on Tuesday 24 November there were 3 people in the queue, compared to a total of registrations made during the day for a total of 100 requests. For 390 people have asked for reimbursement for expenses already made, while 217 vouchers have been requested for new purchases, a thousand of which were immediately spent.
To find out all about the procedures for requesting refunds and vouchers: Bike bonus 2020, refunds from 3 November: here's how
How the Immuni app works, so the ministry website worked. That you have to queue in a digital system as in any office is incredible. Who are the incompetents who ran this operation ????