Three trips a day were promised to Metrebus season ticket holders, while the pass to use them was left waiting to be activated. In some cases for weeks, in others for months. The scooter, at least on paper, ran faster than in practice.
The Competition and Market Authority fined Bird, Dott and Lime a total of 2.675 million euros, at the end of the investigations started in November 2025. According to the Antitrust, the three operators authorized to manage electric micromobility in Rome hindered the use of the packages reserved for holders of an annual public transport season ticket.
The fines amount to 1.4 million euros for Lime, 525 thousand euros for Dott and 750 thousand euros for Bird. In the case of Bird, 300 thousand euros concern difficulties in accessing the rides included in the pass; another 450 thousand euros are linked to the deactivation of accounts, which according to the Authority occurred without adequate prior information and without allowing users to contest the blocking.
The packages were part of the commitments made during the procedures announced by Roma Capitale for the 2023-2026 service. Lime and Bird offered up to 80 30-minute rides per month, with a maximum of three per day. Dott arrived at 90 trips per month, always three per day, applying a symbolic cost of one or two cents. Behind the apparent simplicity of the app, however, a significant part of the work still proceeded by hand.
A spreadsheet and twenty activations per week
The provision on Lime features a rather artisanal structure for a digital service used in a city of almost three million inhabitants. The questions were entered into a spreadsheet, checked manually and handed over to a resource in the administrative office. The average capacity was approximately twenty activations per week. Between September and November 2025, 1,100 requests had arrived: 200 were processed, the others were still waiting.
During the inspection, the Antitrust also acquired an internal communication which spoke of the need to “make the activation process sufficiently difficult”. Another exchange described the attempt to keep new activations around twenty units per week and to further limit them when deactivations were few. The Authority linked these choices to the systematic delays and the often absent or inconclusive responses received from users.
Lime rejected the hypothesis of a strategy constructed to hinder the pass. He explained that the potential beneficiaries were many more than the 200 thousand initially indicated by the Municipality, reaching according to his estimates at 450 thousand also due to the subsidized season tickets intended for under 19s. He also recalled the presence of duplicate requests, incomplete documents and attempts to use invalid season tickets.
Even for Dott the bottleneck was in the manual controls. The people dedicated to this phase were initially three, then reduced to one to contain the costs of the initiative. Between October 2023 and November 2025 the average wait ranged between seven and twelve days, later exceeding nine to thirteen days. The pass lasted thirty days and the procedure had to be repeated upon expiration: a significant portion of the benefit thus risked being consumed waiting for the code needed to activate it.
Dott attributed the difficulties to the volume of applications, which was higher than he had expected, and argued that the reduction in staff responded to the economic sustainability of the promotion. The Antitrust observed that the requests had remained fairly constant, around 3 thousand-4 thousand per month, and that only 55-65% of the applications already passed through the first automatic check had obtained the pass code.
Bird and accounts terminated without notice
In the Bird case the investigation concerned two distinct conducts. In addition to the delays in activation, the Authority verified the deactivation of accounts without the contracts clearly explaining what behaviors could lead to blocking. There was also a lack of a warning prior to the closure and a procedure through which the user could provide their version.
Bird argued that the suspensions involved rule violations, benefit abuse and misconduct, including problems parking vehicles. However, internal communications examined by the Antitrust show that the company’s legal service had repeatedly reported the risks to consumers. In the same exchanges, some employees discussed the savings obtained by blocking the accounts linked to the Metrebus pass, because the vehicle could become available again for a paid trip.
Between June and September 2024, Bird pass activation took on average between 12 and 18 days, beyond the times communicated to users. The company explained that that period coincided with a sharp increase in requests and with the procedure being outsourced to an external supplier. It also recalled that it had provided over one million free rides between September 2023 and November 2025, a figure presented in public documents with a range between 1.4 and 1.9 million.
Operators will have to report within sixty days
During the investigations, the three companies introduced corrective measures. Lime has added IT tools, access to Atac data and new resources; Dott has reduced processing times; Bird automated the process, created a dedicated team and provided refreshments for some users who remained waiting. The Authority assessed these measures positively and reduced the sanctions compared to the amounts initially calculated.
Now Bird, Dott and Lime will have to send a report within sixty days on the actions taken to ensure rapid activation and full enjoyment of the rides. Bird will also need to document the new information on possible blocks and the planned system to listen to users before deactivation. The measures can be challenged before the Lazio Regional Administrative Court within sixty days of notification.
The rides included in the pass were one of the elements presented to obtain authorization from the Municipality. They had to complete their public transport season ticket with the last leg by scooter or bicycle. For many Romans, that stretch began in front of a module stopped in the queue.
