The "originator of the special car" is easy to sink and float: more than 30,000 users queue up for refunds, hundreds of employees ask for salaries...

Economic Observer Network reporter Qian Yujuan "At present, the refund has been arranged to 32285 people. At noon on March 16, Liu Dingding landed on the Easy-to-Use Car App and sent a screenshot of the waiting cash queue number in the rights protection plan to the Economic Observer reporter.

Liu Dingding recalled that at the end of October last year, when the balance of 464.74 yuan in the account was determined to transfer the debt, the refund queue was only 4668 people, and at that time he thought in his heart, "God knows when it is easy to return the money." Until he was interviewed by reporters, and then clicked on the background to see the current queue number, "there is no hope."

When Liu Dingding handled the refund earlier, he took a screenshot of the queue users, and now that more than half a year has passed, he has found that the account ranking in the refund queue has not changed in the slightest.

In response to the fact that the withdrawal ranking has not been updated for a long time, and the number of queues has risen to more than 30,000 people, Beijing Dongfang Cheyun Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dongfang Cheyun"), the main company of the easy-to-use car, issued a statement through the WeChat public account on the afternoon of March 15, saying that "the statement is ambiguous and inconsistent with the facts." ”

At the beginning of the launch of the "Easy to Equity Protection Plan", the number of queues waiting for cash withdrawal far exceeded this, and under its resources, "the number of queues waiting for cash withdrawal has gradually decreased, reduced to more than 30,000 people at present.".

Yito Also mentioned that after the launch of the "Yito Rights and Interests Protection Plan", it has "completed the conversion of a total of 70 million equity rights and interests in two phases, and gradually cashed in the historical rights and interests of drivers and passengers".

However, does reality really have to be this way? It is still difficult to get rid of the debt crisis twice, and even the easy-to-use car that was announced by the gold lord Taoyun Capital three years ago is now telling a new story?

In addition to more than 30,000 users waiting in line for payment, the reporter learned from Li Ping, a former employee of Yizhi, that there were 291 people in the Yizhi unpaid group, and there was also an yizhi car Fengtai court enforcement group, including Li Ping, a total of 133 people.

"The people in the group basically went through the arbitration process and sued the court." Li Ping could not imagine that the final result was that it was too easy to repay.

Today, Yito is still in continuous operation, its funding loopholes, debt gaps, and who will eventually make up for it?

Refund queues Users only increase and do not decrease

Yito proposed a plan to "properly solve the problem", starting from the "Special Announcement on Easy to Use Car", "Announcement on User Balance and Compensation Accounting Solution" and "Announcement on the Launch of The Rights protection plan" issued by Yito around October 2021.

Liu Dingding saw the user rights and interests solutions given by Yito, including mall consumption, waiting for cash withdrawals, debt-to-equity conversion, and self-operated deductions.

He once considered the above measures one by one, in which the debt-to-equity swap seems to be attractive, but in fact, it is "fishing for the moon in the water", and there are many restrictions on the consumption of mall points, which is very chicken, Liu Dingding feels, "What really makes users pay attention to is to withdraw cash." And the word waiting reminded him of ofo's 2018 queue for refunds: thousands of people gathered outside of Ofo's Haidian headquarters and lined up in the cold wind to refund their deposits.

Although there is no such humanoid queue outside the easy-to-reach Beijing headquarters, a refund queue has been lined up on the line.

Compared with Liu Dingding's number in line, Zhu Yu was a little closer, more than 3,000 numbers, but she still blamed herself: "The application is still late." ”

After the eleventh of 2021, Zhu Yu heard that Yi arrived at the refund plan, even if she needed to queue, she did not hesitate and decisively confirmed the balance of 1275.28 yuan into a debt.

In addition to the recharge amount of 795.19 yuan, Zhu Yu's account also has a gift amount of 480.09 yuan, if it is returned in 2019 for refund, the gift amount will also be displayed as "temporarily non-transferable compensation", but in the latest equity protection plan, the provisions have changed, and the balance can be fully transferred to replace the debt.

Zhu Yu found that the amount of his refund was not large, and there were many users close to 10,000 yuan, or even more than 20,000 yuan, in the front. "Slowly line up." She was ready and shared her experience with little red books.

Chen Wen saw Zhu Yu's sharing, and quickly logged into the easy to use car account and queued up for refunds. Just a week later, "the queue is 7,000." It made her less optimistic, "I don't know when it will be lined up." ”

The reporter saw on the black cat complaint platform that there were more than 1600 complaints about easy-to-use cars, most of which showed that users could not refund and APP could not log in.

Ms. Guo, who has been fleeing the easy-to-use car for nearly two years, was a driver on the platform. At the end of October 2019, the owner of the easy to use the car can not withdraw cash, she once angrily commented under the official Weibo of the easy to use the car, "Scammers, there is a lot of money in the account, can not get back." ”

Two and a half years later, when the reporter contacted Ms. Guo on March 16, she asked about the easy-to-reach withdrawal and payment, "It's been too long." She tried to download the Easy to the owner's app, bound the identity information, and found that there was no balance display, "The thousands of dollars in the account have disappeared." ”

In response to the problems of "can not log in to the easy-to-access software, open is blank, and can not be contacted at all", easy-to-use car said, since the announcement of the "Rights and Interests Protection Plan", there are prompts for users to download the latest easy-to-use APP, and in the easy-to-use car WeChat public account announced the customer service contact hotline and customer service mailbox, there is no situation that can not be contacted to easy to use the car.

Ms. Guo told reporters that she had called customer service numbers many times for help, "but she didn't pass." Referring to the latest statement issued by Yidao, Ms. Guo decided to send an email to the customer service mailbox, a whole day passed, as of the press release, she did not receive any response.

The originator of the special car was also a beautiful time

Liu Dingding's identity as an easy-to-use car client stays as a silver card user, and judging from the 10,829 kilometers of car mileage he owns, he can indeed be called "an easy-to-reach senior user." ”

Easy to reach the scenery moment, Liu Dingding still remembers it vividly. This online car platform, which is known as the "originator of China's special car", has opened a "special car battle" in China.

In October 2010, the easy-to-use car was born, after nearly 4 years, Didi chauffeur was launched, and in the same year, no. 1 car was launched. Since then, in 2015, Shenzhou Chauffeur and Shouqi Ride-hailing have successively entered the game. Thus, a qualifying race for the car market began.

Hit by competitors such as Didi Chuxing and Shenzhou Chauffeur, Tang Peng, then co-founder and CTO of Yidao Car, shared when he participated in the Beijing International Auto Show in 2016 that Yidao Car was once at a disadvantage in the competition of the special car industry in 2015, until October 2015, after LeEco invested 700 million US dollars in Yidao Car, it only let the platform Jedi fight back.

The reporter inquired about the information and saw that since the end of November 2015, the preferential policy of "how much to charge and how much to send" has been launched, and even the roof is not capped, which makes the price advantage of the car of the easy to use car in a number of special car travel platforms rise sharply.

"I recharged tens of thousands of dollars, and at that time, there were several LeTV mobile phones that were obtained as a recharge gift." Since Liu Dingding's profession is an Internet industry analyst, he remembers that after learning the essence of the "burning money" subsidy war brought by Didi and Kuaidi, Yizhi ranked among the top three in the urban travel APP ranking in the first half of 2016, and it was preceded by Didi Chuxing and Uber.

In addition to the recharge subsidies and gifts, the fundamental reason why Liu Dingding has become a sticky user is that he likes the unique "driver, passenger mutual selection" model. "When I start an order, there will be seven or eight or even more than ten drivers to take the order, but as a user, I can choose who will pick me up."

Talking about the experience of taking the easy to special car in the past, Liu Dingding will always chat with the drivers, even in the outside world rumors that it is easy to "wind and rain", there are still many drivers on the platform to pull alive, he got the most answer from the drivers is, "The quality of the easy passengers is high, and we still have money to earn." ”

Passengers and drivers have worked together to create a high reputation for easy-to-reach travel platforms. Zhang Qiang, from Wuhan, was considered to be the driver of the local early easy-to-use car, "The price was quite attractive at that time." In the group of drivers he was in, some people even changed a better car for the sake of running easily.

Zhang Qiang ran easy to about a year, and after running 1,000 orders at the end of 2016, he "put all the money forward", chose to leave, and only focused on running Didi. He told reporters that he was lucky, "There were drivers in the group who ran to 2017, and there were tens of thousands of yuan in the account that were not raised." ”

Zhang Qiang told that there are many local drivers in Wuhan who are easy to get to the platform to complain in 2017, and even call the police to withdraw cash, "After more than half a year, some people put forward the money, quickly uninstalled the APP, and did not dare to run." ”

Behind the change of ownership, the debt loophole widens

Referring to the driver's escape, Yi to the former engineering Hao pulled the time point back to the beginning of 2017, and Yi to successively issued a message of "delaying the withdrawal of the owner".

Looking back at the run brought about by the driver's cash withdrawal at that time, Cheng Hao can't forget that many Beijing drivers gathered at the headquarters of Haidian District, which is easy to use, and demanded payment. At that time, as a major shareholder, LeTV had already found a "receiver" for the debt-ridden Yidao - Taoyun Capital.

On June 28, 2017, after reaching an agreement with LeEco on the acquisition of yito's equity, only two days later, Taoyun Capital injected more than 600 million yuan of funds into yizhi to solve the problem of cash withdrawal by car owners.

The driver went to the door to block, so that Taoyun Capital entered the ownership very hastyly, "did not do a good job of due diligence." Not only Cheng Hao said so, As the founder of Taoyun Capital, Wen Xiaodong also mentioned in a public interview that he came from a financial background, and after risk assessment, he felt that "the easy-to-reach plates are clean, it looks like there is no mortgage, and there is no mess." Therefore, in the case of LeTV founder Jia Yueting saying that Yizhi's debt does not exceed 2.3 billion yuan, and more than some individuals provide joint and several guarantees, "Yizhi did not even do the early due diligence."

Wen Xiaodong has the following description of the hasty takeover, "Black eyes come in." Cheng Hao believed, "At that time, there were indeed some debt problems, and Taoyun Capital did not grasp it in advance." But he doesn't think that's the root cause of the easy-to-get status quo.

When LeEco invested in Yizhi for 4 months, it began to send executives to enter the management in February 2016, and Peng Gang, then the CMO of LeEco Holdings, joined Yidao Car as president at that time, although the official said that it formed a management portfolio with Zhou Hang, the founder of Yidao Car, Cheng Hao pointed out that Peng Gang's duties and responsibilities include large market, sales, traffic operation, user and user-side operation, LeEco ecological collaboration, strategic planning/implementation and execution of ecological innovation business, business indicators are achieved, and the construction and management of personnel and organizations are "this move is direct." Overhead' Zhou Hang, so that Easy to truly achieve 'LeTV'. ”

Cheng Hao recalled that during the period when Peng Gang presided over the management of Yi arrived, "it took more than half a year, and it did a good job, and the daily single volume could reach the million level." But after Taoyun Capital took over yi in mid-2017, "in less than two months, Peng Gang was suspended." ”

The reporter checked the public information and learned that Yizhi Travel announced the news of Peng Gang's departure in October 2017, "As early as the previous few months, Peng Gang had no real management power. According to Cheng Hao, Peng Gang's departure allowed Yi to complete the "de-Leshiization", and wen Xiaodong personally presided over the management of Yi for nearly half a year.

"The management meeting is organized by him, how the business is laid out, how to operate, and what angle of playing strategy is determined by him."

In Cheng Hao's view, at that time, Wen Xiaodong assumed the role of EASY CEO in a sense. In this regard, the reporter also got corroboration from an insider of Taoyun Capital.

Recalling the early days of Wen Xiaodong's takeover, "Yi to actually ushered in a wave of 'Xiaoyang Spring'. Cheng Hao said that at that time, relying on the "living expenses" allocated by Taoyun Capital, it was easy to face the urgent need - the problem of withdrawal was solved, and many drivers and users chose to return.

At that time, Liu Dingding also continued to use the account balance to call Yi to the car, but he said, "I dare not recharge." ”

Cheng Hao feels that users are "willing to believe in you again", which is easy to reach, and undoubtedly gives it the opportunity to continue to operate.

However, as an investor, Wen Xiaodong,easy operation management is not a long-term solution, "He needs a professional manager to be the CEO." So, in May 2018, Cheng Hao welcomed another new CEO he served during his work at Yito - Gong Zhenbing.

As an "old Baidu" person, Gong Zhenbing was originally the chairman of Baidu Takeaway, but after Baidu Takeaway was acquired by Hungry Mo, including him, the original core management team has left successively. "Gong Zhenbing led a team of seven or eight senior executives to join Yidao." Cheng Hao revealed that Gong Zhenbing was invited by Wen Xiaodong's "Three Gu Maolu", and the former also spent a short "honeymoon period" after joining.

But three months after Gong Zhenbing joined Yizhi, the driver's cash withdrawal problem broke out again.

Speaking of Gong Zhenbing's tenure as CEO, Cheng Hao felt that "half an arm was working". Despite having a well-formed and loyal executive team, Gong Zhenbing was unable to fully organize and manage it. "The three departments of finance, personnel and legal affairs are still the people of Taoyun Capital." Cheng Hao revealed that things involving resources such as people and money should be determined by Taoyun Capital, "How to use the easy people and how to spend the money, or Wen Xiaodong has the final say." ”

Not only what Cheng Hao said, the above-mentioned Taoyun Capital insiders also confirmed to reporters that Wen Xiaodong did not give Gong Zhenbing full decentralization, coupled with the lack of sufficient financial support, "not enough money, not only Gong Zhenbing is difficult to support, no one has to do it." ”

Less than a year after joining Yi, Gong Zhenbing chose to leave, after which he also sued Taoyun Capital and Wen Xiaodong in court in 2020. The reporter saw on the China Judgment Documents Network that on October 12, 2021, the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court issued an enforcement ruling, in which it ordered the executor Taoyun Capital to pay Gong Zhenbing a total of 11,526,905 yuan and 2 cents of the loan principal, as well as 862,717 yuan and 3 cents of interest on the loan.

For this lawsuit, Cheng Hao revealed that Gong Zhenbing, as a manager, "also wanted to do a good job of the platform, and did not hesitate to pay for it himself to reduce the burden." It turned out that a large part of the loans that Gong Zhenbing sued Taoyun Capital to return were when the driver asked for cash, and he paid out of his own pocket to solve the urgent need.

However, the fate that was easy to reach at that time was not reversed. On the eve of Gong Zhenbing's departure, Taoyun Capital disclosed the scale of Yizhi's debt as of January 21, 2019 in the form of a statement: total liabilities of 3.4 billion yuan and net assets of negative 2.1 billion yuan.

In addition, Taoyun Capital also announced that "the company is easy to rescue due to the large amount of money spent, and it is difficult to get financing and self-help, and it is currently unable to support the existing team to continue to operate." ”

Continue to operate Behind the "gold lord" ability geometry

Easy to every time the payment crisis came, Cheng Hao's memory had two words - moving, "less than two years, has been relocating." ”

From Haidian to Chaoyang to Jianguomen, "as large as a district, as small as a street, the relevant government will always deal with a large number of drivers' complaints and disputes, giving a lot of pressure." ”

When the platform lost credibility and a large number of users fled, the major shareholder Taoyun Capital was still holding its own opinion with LeTV, "dog bites dog", Cheng Hao fully realized that "a good deck of cards was played like this", he did not hope for easy resurrection, and left in the middle of 2019.

Because of the reporter's interview, Cheng Hao remembered that Yi to the company still owes him tens of thousands of yuan in salary. Not only him, the original Yizhi employee Wang Le did not expect at all, behind the gold owner Taoyun Capital in January 2019 announced the Yizhi debt, only a short interval of one month, it informed the Yito employees "just need to work from home, during the period to stop paying performance wages, only basic salary protection." After staying up for three months, she also resolutely left her job to find her next home.

Li Ping joined Yidao in July 2018 and left in April 2019. He recalls, "Since December 2018, wage arrears have been owed. Even before the Lunar New Year in 2019, he received a notice to "go home and work immediately." ”

In a hurry, Li Ping did not think much until a few days later, when he came to the company to see, "There are drivers with old people or pregnant wives to ask for cash." ”

Not only is the salary arrears of employees, Wang Le told reporters that in February of that year, the driver had been unable to withdraw cash for more than three months, but it was easy to arrive but only announced that the withdrawal would continue to be postponed. Such a series of signals are sent, "not only is it easy to run out of money, but even the capital chain of the gold lord Taoyun Capital has no small problems," Wang Le said.

The reporter saw through the enterprise information inquiry platform Qixinbao that the Oriental Cheyun, which belongs to the Yizhi car platform, has a total of 20 pieces of untrustworthy information since July 2018, and only the nearly 6 million yuan paid to Yihui Capital (China) Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. in 2019 is "partially unfulfilled", and the rest are displayed as "all unfulfilled".

When it comes to the easy-to-reach operating entity Dongfang Cheyun and the actual controller behind Taoyun Capital, Li Ping did not expect that they would become "Lao Lai". "After all these years, most of the people in the group have given up." Like Cheng Hao, Li Ping has no hope of recovering the arrears of wages, and only when he is asked in time will he talk about his experience as an easy person.

Drivers can not withdraw cash, users are difficult to refund, employees owe wages, platform taxis are difficult, "not only these problems are open, easy to get to the account has long been out of money, but also transparent." Cheng Hao did not understand that as early as 2018, yi to have no large-scale "burning money", and Taoyun Capital announced the scale of easy to debt in early 2019, compared with the amount of debt when it took over from LeEco, "in two years, billions of additional debts, why did it start?" ”

A relevant person close to Taoyun Capital revealed that in addition to the difficulty of returning some of the original investment funds, Taoyun Capital continued to invest billions of yuan after taking over the easy to this hot potato from LeTV.

According to the above-mentioned person close to Taoyun Capital, "there is much to talk about, but the asking price is too high, 2 billion yuan, can not be sold." ”

Cheng Hao also said that since 2018, giants including Ali, Suning, Chinese Insurance, etc. have negotiated with Taoyun Capital to acquire Yidao, "Who does a loss-making transaction?" According to the information he had, in the end, they all collapsed due to the easy-to-reach quotation problem.

The reporter saw on Qixinbao that Taoyun Capital, which was founded in November 2014, has had 4 pieces of untrustworthy information since January 2020. Not only that, as the founder, Wen Xiaodong was also on the list of untrustworthy people, and was restricted from high consumption because of his involvement in 13 judicial proceedings, and 8 lawsuits were punished with equity freezing.

Measuring the value of easy to reach, in addition to the net assets that the platform has already shown negative, Cheng Hao can only think of the user assets that are linked to the two sides of the division. The "receiver" is missing, and this card is still in the hands of Taoyun Capital. Nowadays, tens of thousands of people have lined up to pay for the delay in seeing results, and users have complained. What surprised Cheng Hao was that the easy-to-use car did not "disappear", and it was actually a "high-profile comeback" in 2021.

In a statement, Yidao Car said that since September 6, 2021, the platform has changed the traditional commission charging model to a ladder information service fee model, "aiming to increase driver income and maintain the healthy and orderly development of the industry."

Wen Xiaodong also said in November 2021 that he would not see an easy opportunity in 2020 until 2021, when LeEco announced bankruptcy and restructuring in the United States, "LeEco repayment is on the agenda." ”

This allowed Wen Xiaodong to describe the "source of living water", thus making a new thinking and planning for the future that is easy to reach.

In addition to adjusting the driver fee model, "replacing the traditional platform commission with information fees is the first step in our transformation of easy to get." Wen Xiaodong further indicated that he saw such a larger market for new energy vehicle sales, so he repositioned Yizhi to "create a comprehensive ecological platform for the full-scenario sales of new energy vehicles."

For such a new positioning of Easy to, what preparations are made behind Taoyun Capital, whether the relevant personnel, funds and other resources are abundant, the reporter asked Taoyun Capital on March 16, as of press time, only got "the current easy to the relevant business progress, this stage is not very convenient to the outside world" to respond.

The model is updated to attract drivers, and although the slogan is shouted well, it makes Zhang Qiang, the former easy-to-reach chauffeur, unmoved.

"In the early stage, the reputation was poor, it was so difficult to withdraw cash, and now even if the model is good, I dare not run." Zhang Qiang, who now focuses on running Didi's online car, although he will complain that "Didi is cheap and it is not easy to make money", he has never encountered the problem of withdrawal, "run at ease." Many of Zhang Qiang's peers are more loyal to Didi after being easily pitted.

The reporter saw that under the user protection and new model initiatives, Yi to not forget to express its "determination and courage to insist on serving the public" in the statement, which not only did not attract online car drivers such as Zhang Qiang and Ms. Guo, the new transformation positioning, but also made senior users such as Liu Dingding suspicious, "They are releasing signals, want to find a takeover man." ”

Although the account balance that Liu Dingding wants to pay is only a few hundred yuan, it can be thought that it has not yet been solved, and tens of thousands of people are still in the queue, ranging from one hundred yuan to ten thousand yuan, "it is a mess that owes money." As a silver card user, Liu Dingding feels that today's easy-to-reach brand equity is already negative.

The reality is like this, what Cheng Hao can't understand is why Taoyun Capital is still operating Yidao? In his view, Taoyun Capital is essentially not operating, "why not let go, and even now pull it (easy to) to the front of the stage?" ”

After issuing the above series of questions, Cheng Hao believed that only the owner who held the card of Easy to now, Wen Xiaodong himself, could give the answer. In this regard, the reporter also asked for verification through the public relations department of Taoyun Capital, but as of press time, there was no response.

(Subjects of interview request, Zhu Yu, Chen Wen, Cheng Hao, Wang Le, and Li are pseudonyms)