Where's the money? Many BCers still waiting on promised e-bike rebates
If you have been eagerly awaiting a rebate for an e-bike in BC, be prepared to keep waiting, as the government says it will be a while until some folks receive the cash.
On June 1, the province launched the BC E-bike Rebate program for people who want to switch to a greener form of transportation.
Applicants had to provide a notice of assessment to be considered, and once approved, they had 90 days to purchase an authorized e-bike and submit the receipt online to claim their rebate.
BC’s Ministry of Transportation told Daily Hive it will be a while before the program delivers on its promise to all applicants.
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“Upon reaching 4,000 applications, the decision was made to place further submissions in sequence on a waitlist while the initial round of applications was processed,” says The Ministry of Transportation, adding that there was $6 million in the program to go around.
By contrast, the new program received nearly 1,700 submissions in the first 13 minutes and 12,000 in the first 24 hours.
Traffic overwhelmed the servers and caused the site to go down for 16 minutes. The volume of file transfers also slowed the website’s processing speed, which caused some users to receive error messages.
As of October 30, nearly only 3,700 rebates had been delivered, and that has left a lot of people wondering about the status of their rebates.
The Ministry of Transportation says it’s clear that people are ready to get out of their cars and make electric bikes part of their daily routine; however, at this time, he says he doesn’t see the program resuming anytime soon.
“At this time, there is no new information to share about the future of the BC E-bike Rebate program.”
According to the ministry, the program reached a standstill because of the volume of people who applied and the technical issues experienced along the way.
“With over 83% of successful applicants receiving the full $1,400 and 94% receiving at least $1,000, the program was very successful in terms of uptake and reaching its target demographic.”
Anyone can still sign up for the rebate program but will most likely be placed on the waitlist.
They added that applying to the waitlist doesn’t guarantee a rebate and that applications are assessed based on eligibility criteria such as income.
The rebate tiers are as follows:
- Less than $38,950 = $1,400
- $38,950 to $51,130 = $1,000
- Over $51,130 = $350
So, if you were planning on dropping some cash on an electric bike in hopes of getting some in return, you may want to hold off until the smoke clears.