Urban Mover Get Into Halfords

[fcurran]

Halfords takes on Urban Mover electric bikes | Bicycle business | News by BikeBiz

Another good news story for electric bikes, hopefully it will further raise the profile of electric bikes as a genuine mode of transport.

Well done Keith and Mark!

[Bigbee]

This is good for the industry and raises the profile of ebike to the public,as Frank has said.I hope Hellfords train their staff and advertise the bikes fully.Having test areas would be good too.Im sure UM have covered this though.

[Barnowl]

Link to the bikes on the Halfords website:

Halfords for Electric Bikes

[Haku]

That's great, especially as an Urban Mover owner (& exclusive tshirt )

Though suprisingly when my rims wore out, my local bike shop doing the repairs was told UM don't have rims on their list of spare parts, luckily they had a couple kicking around the distribution warehouse, which were the only two spare in the whole country...!

Wasn't too inspired by the silver/green shading of my UM36, especially when they bought out a black version the next year, still I really enjoy riding it every day and it doesn't have that electric bike 'look' where the frame has been terribly distorted/warped to accomodate the battery.
Plus the Panasonic battery I've had for 1.5 years now is still going pretty strong, I thought I'd be getting frustrated by the diminishing distance but it hasn't changed in the past 6 months prior to the first year diminish.

I'd be interested in finding the actual capacity of the battery now, main problem is what voltage would be the cut-off, I have a highly accurate multimeter with logging/graphing/pc connectivity capabilities that can log volts/amps/watts so have the potential to calculate the capacity through discharging the battery.

[rog_london]

Just a small point - it looks as though Halfords are *marketing* the Urban Mover range, but they have nothing to do with distribution or servicing - in the event of any 'issue' they point you towards Urban Mover themselves. In other words, you send Halfords your money, and then they pass the order on to Urban Mover and bow out - so it's rather a tenuous connexion at best.

Maybe I'm being a bit picky, and it does definitely raise the profile of e-bikes in general if they are at least mentioned on the website. Better than nothing, therefore.

Rog.

[Alex728]

Originally Posted by rog_london

Just a small point - it looks as though Halfords are *marketing* the Urban Mover range, but they have nothing to do with distribution or servicing - in the event of any 'issue' they point you towards Urban Mover themselves. In other words, you send Halfords your money, and then they pass the order on to Urban Mover and bow out - so it's rather a tenuous connexion at best.Rog.

exactly. they have passed the hot potato of customer support back to Urban Mover, who I remember were pulled up on this aspect several times on this forum.

I do accept that the company may have improved and Halfords hopefully has assisted them with sufficient investment to beef up their customer service resources in anticipation of the increased sales.

That said, one of the bikes (UM36) shows a review from a Northerner who had trouble with the instructions and went into his local store in inner city Manchester ; and came back with a glowing report on how the store's staff helped him set up the bike! Clearly the staff in that particular store "went the extra mile" there- but will they be prepared do it as a matter of routine across the country?

I hope they do have sufficient customer support, as this could turn out to be an expensive failure for both companies and damage the reputation of ebikes if its not the case. That said I did/do get the impression that urban mover make reasonable bikes; and it was just the support that needed work.

[Bigbee]

I didnt realise Hellfords werent stocking them.Therefore I now find this pretty naff and rather pointless.

[Haku]

One of the major reasons I bought a UM36 was that Urban Mover's head office/distribution center is only about 15 miles away from me, something that proved to be a useful buying point when I had problems with the original battery & earlier this year when I had a whole bunch of worn out parts replaced (I run things down into the ground, almost literally, I like getting my money's worth ).
Oddly they don't have a distributor in their own town, Cheltenham, so had to buy it from Gloucester!


rog_london, excellent observation & point, I wouldn't like to buy something as expensive & complex as an ebike online from effectively a mail-order place where if I had problems it may be difficult to physically take the bike back to somewhere that can sort things out, rather than have the hassle (& possible expense) of courier companies.

[Pedelit]

Hi Just to update you all on this
Halfords will be stocking Two of the Urban mover bikes in 100 stores from early March. I can update you on which stores once I have finalised them, and from February when availability is back in place the full range will be able to be ordered in all stores. The Store Satff will be trained on electric bikes.

So from March Urban Mover will truly be in halfords!

[Northern Irelander]

Speaking as a petrol head and usually seen browsing a Halfrauds store.

I went into one of the local stores and asked about purchasinga an ebike.

'We dont stock them but can order them in' Sir
'but if you'd just let me check, I think we have a boxed return out the back'

'great' I said

So he returns with a cycle box and opens it up, inside was an Apollo frame with SRAM 15v setup.

The bikehut manager said they might be able to drop some discount from £690 RRP, it was 2nd hand afterall, previous cuctomer had it for around 2 weeks.

Anyway never heard back despite me phoning the store several times keen to purchase, something to do with Head office not giving them the green light, or so I was told!??