BH Emotion serious problems

[trex]

And as is the case in most industries, the spares and servicing is where shops make their money. They don't make that much of the bikes themselves. If you want to cut shops out of the equation that's an option that's open to you with many brands, personally I think a network of retailers is vitally important to the industry and to cyclists generally, so we offer our bikes to them to sell, rather than cut them out and sell direct.

the shop makes most of the money selling the bikes.
Service, especially under warranty, is a chore, the margin on parts is barely sufficient to cover time spent on the phone to locate the parts and cover courier cost.

 

[RobF]

the shop makes most of the money selling the bikes.
Service, especially under warranty, is a chore, the margin on parts is barely sufficient to cover time spent on the phone to locate the parts and cover courier cost.

The owner of my local bike shop would disagree, which is why he's happy to service any bike no matter where it was bought.

I guess volume comes into it.

Realistically he's not going to sell many bikes each day, but can do lots of service jobs.

 

[Electrifying Cycles]

the shop makes most of the money selling the bikes.
Service, especially under warranty, is a chore, the margin on parts is barely sufficient to cover time spent on the phone to locate the parts and cover courier cost.

I would suggest this is correct. In the future the market may be different perhaps similar to the car market but this will take time. I am particularly referring to the e bike market rather than normal bikes.

 

[trex]

The owner of my local bike shop would disagree, which is why he's happy to service any bike no matter where it was bought.

I guess volume comes into it.

Realistically he's not going to sell many bikes each day, but can do lots of service jobs.

If your LBS services more bikes than he sells in a day then his bikes are not very good for requiring so much servicing!
In all the bikeshops I've been to, I always see salesmen with some double up as technician.

 

[trex]

I would suggest this is correct. In the future the market may be different perhaps similar to the car market but this will take time. I am particularly referring to the e bike market rather than normal bikes.

The problem is scale. If you sell 500 bikes in a year, less than 10 will need major servicing. Such small scale will not pay the salary of a full time mechanic. I think the KTM distributor's approach to service by passing the bucket to a third party (the agent for SR forks in this instance) and the BH's approach by referring to Spain for decision do not re-assure potential customers who pay top money and expect first class service for buying locally.

 

[El Champiero]

There have been a lot of problems reported regarding breaking spokes on hub motor e bikes. It happened to me on my old e bike. Extremely annoying - 5 broke in one day which wrecked the rim!! I rebuilt the wheel myself using 13G plain gauge Sapim spokes and a new freeride grade Mavic rim. Never had any more problems - best wheel I ever built and I have built a few in my time. I guess I could have used double butted spokes but I just went with these and they were perfect for me.

The place where I bought the spokes from, Tiller Cycles (Home/About Us) is very good and was able to provide useful advice regarding spokes and correct tension for hub motor wheels. He said that he gets lots of enquiries from people with e bikes with breaking spokes.

Make sure you get proper branded ones fitted (I wouldn't use any other brand apart from Sapim now that I know they work for me) and get the tension correct and you shouldn't have any more problems. Make sure your rim is also straight before you rebuild a wheel out of it.

I am convinced that a lot of the problems are due to really poor quality steel being used for the spokes and to some extent, incorrectly tensioned wheels.

 

[Electrifying Cycles]

Exactly which is why service very much depends on individual dealer. To give an example we had someone who ordered a 2.5k bike to help with a knee recovery, to save them waiting we loaned them a Bosch powered bike until the bike they ordered arrived. Not sure many would offer this but I find if you go the extra mile people really appreciate it.

 

[KTM Bike Industries UK]

The problem is scale. If you sell 500 bikes in a year, less than 10 will need major servicing. Such small scale will not pay the salary of a full time mechanic. I think the KTM distributor's approach to service by passing the bucket to a third party (the agent for SR forks in this instance) and the BH's approach by referring to Spain for decision do not re-assure potential customers who pay top money and expect first class service for buying locally.

Shops do service bikes not bought from them, and also bikes not purchased that year.

The majority of bike shops will have workshops that are booked up weeks in advance doing servicing and repairs on bikes that were not bought in their store. I appreciate there will be many shops that don't fit this description, but we visit an average of 10-15 stores a week, and we are members of the industry only forums where bike shop owners discuss these things.

I admit this is mainly in the non Ebike sector, but I'm afraid it isn't something we are just making up, it's a fact.

With regard to your specific point about ktm.

I think the KTM distributor's approach to service by passing the bucket to a third party (the agent for SR forks in this instance) and the BH's approach by referring to Spain for decision do not re-assure potential customers who pay top money and expect first class service for buying locally.

This is I'm afraid not a decision ktm have made or even have any input on. If you spec high quality brands on your bikes, eg Bosch, shimano, rockshox, Fox etc etc, all these brands have specific service agents in the relevant countries. So this isn't a KTM thing, it's a decision taken by the brands to ensure their products are looked after correctly.

So the system is this. Ill use Fox Suspension fork as an example.

If you as a ktm customer have a problem with your fork. You take the bike back to the dealer you bought it from. They call us and complete a warranty return form, so we can monitor it. The problem forks are then sent to mojo for repair under warranty. The dealer can either send them to us, and we will send them to mojo, or they can send them direct to mojo themselves.

We are not passing the buck, it's how the system works.

 

[Electrifying Cycles]

Bosch do not have service agents in the UK. Magura are based in Germany, the e bike hotline is a German number.

The servicing in the e bike industry will change as sales increase. We have had one issue with a brake on a new bike and FreeGo sent us a replacement. If we would have gone through the brake manufacturer this would have taken longer. For most parts this is not an issue if you have spares as you can simply use the spare until the warranty replacement arrives. What I do not agree with is expecting people to wait weeks for a part particularly when they need it to commute.

 

[trex]

Shops do service bikes not bought from them, and also bikes not purchased that year.

The majority of bike shops will have workshops that are booked up weeks in advance doing servicing and repairs on bikes that were not bought in their store. I appreciate there will be many shops that don't fit this description, but we visit an average of 10-15 stores a week, and we are members of the industry only forums where bike shop owners discuss these things.

I admit this is mainly in the non Ebike sector, but I'm afraid it isn't something we are just making up, it's a fact.

With regard to your specific point about ktm.



This is I'm afraid not a decision ktm have made or even have any input on. If you spec high quality brands on your bikes, eg Bosch, shimano, rockshox, Fox etc etc, all these brands have specific service agents in the relevant countries. So this isn't a KTM thing, it's a decision taken by the brands to ensure their products are looked after correctly.

So the system is this. Ill use Fox Suspension fork as an example.

If you as a ktm customer have a problem with your fork. You take the bike back to the dealer you bought it from. They call us and complete a warranty return form, so we can monitor it. The problem forks are then sent to mojo for repair under warranty. The dealer can either send them to us, and we will send them to mojo, or they can send them direct to mojo themselves.

We are not passing the buck, it's how the system works.

the UK market size for ebikes is 30,000 a year out of 2 millions bikes, it's maybe cost effective to distribute e-bikes alongside your other bikes but this system leaves the customers short-changed on service if they (the customers) buy from e-bike only shops when something mechanical fails and vice-versa if something electrical fails.
I don't know how many KTM e-bikes you sell in a year - I expect a figure around 1,000 - just too small number of units spread out over the number of dealers you have for proper backup if it has to be provided by the dealers.

 

[El Champiero]

Just something on SR/Suntour forks - I found them to be very poorly built and after 6 months of use in all weathers on my Scott, I got rid of them as I could not face getting another identical pair of inferior forks under warranty. They began to seize up and when I opened them up a whole load of brown water came out. The sealing on them was absolutely appalling - I have never had this problem with Rockshox forks.

I fitted a pair of Rockshox XC30 forks. The benefit of using RockShox or Fox is the fact that spares are readily available for servicing - long after the fork warranty will have expired. They also last well. Trying to find spares for Suntour forks was a nightmare. My XC30 forks are also built significantly better than Suntour ones and don't seize up after a few months of use and they are not very expensive either (I paid about £130 several months ago).

 

[KTM Bike Industries UK]

the UK market size for ebikes is 30,000 a year out of 2 millions bikes, it's maybe cost effective to distribute e-bikes alongside your other bikes but this system leaves the customers short-changed on service if they (the customers) buy from e-bike only shops when something mechanical fails and vice-versa if something electrical fails.
I don't know how many KTM e-bikes you sell in a year - I expect a figure around 1,000 - just too small number of units spread out over the number of dealers you have for proper backup if it has to be provided by the dealers.

scale isn't really relevant in this case.

the problems that are being discussed in this case are with spokes and suspension forks, both these items are not eBike specific parts, and therefore the small scale of the eBike business in the UK isn't relevant.

Bosch will have a UK service centre soon.

however your point about dealer support is correct, we'd expect any quality dealer to be able to loan out a courtesy bike, if a warranty was likely to take more than a week to sort out, as Electrifying Cycles have talked about above.

If the dealer couldn't do it, firstly we'd question their status as a dealer and then if the problem could not be sorted out, we'd supply a loan bike from our stock, to help the customer out.

 

[trex]

if the dealer gets passed from pillar to post, chasing a third party for replacement parts, third party who has no special motivation to sort the problem out quickly, you'll end up in this present situation, with customers kept waiting for weeks.
Contrast that with the Freego example above, you can see that the Freego model is clearly better for the customers and the dealers.

 

[Electrifying Cycles]

They also offer a new bike if it cannot be repaired within 5 working days during the first 12 months.

 

[KTM Bike Industries UK]

You're basing this on a couple of very specific cases, that are being handled very very badly by a dealer. If this was our dealer I'd be going mental at them and I'd have sorted these customers our direct and closed the dealers account.

The problem in both these examples is caused by the dealer not doing their job and BH hiding from the issue. So again I'd suggest that the problem isn't the system.

The freego model does works fine for small scale brands selling bikes that are built using own brand products, and whilst it has short term advantages, it's not a long term sustainable system that can operate via a large network of dealers selling volume of bikes with multiple branded components.

I can give you hundreds of examples of where warranty processes work and where they don't. Every brand has good and bad examples, all we can all do is try to make sure we do our best every time.

For instance, we had a dealer contact us last week about a problem with the torque sensor on one of their ktm Panasonic equipped eBikes. We had a replacement sensor and the tool needed to fit it shipped out the same day.

It's invoiced to their account and then credited when the faulty parts are returned.

There are other examples when we haven't been able to be so efficient on our side, but in these cases we'd expect our dealer to lend a customer a bike (if their bike was unrideable) whilst we try to resolve the problem.

 

[El Champiero]

I actually did the best service I could do on the Suntour forks before getting rid of them - got them going reasonably well and left them outside my house with a note on them saying "free suspension forks - light riding only. For 29" wheels." They disappeared in 10 minutes probably to one of the many folk who look around for metal items to get a bit of money from the local scrap dealer. About £0.50 in scrap metal.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

The freego model does works fine for small scale brands selling bikes that are built using own brand products, and whilst it has short term advantages, it's not a long term sustainable system that can operate via a large network of dealers selling volume of bikes with multiple branded components.

Hi KTM guys, and happy new year to you!

I understand the point that you are making, but completely disagree with you.

Of course the FreeGo brand is much smaller than KTM (currently!), however in the electric bike market within the UK the FreeGo brand is probably more widely recognised, but that is besides the point.

We are electric bike experts, and understand that an electric bicycle is more often than not a serious mode of transport. Many of our customers rely on their bikes to get them to and from work. So it would be inexcusable for us to leave them without a bike for more than a week.

The reason we can offer the 5 day replacement scheme is that we are absolutely confident in our bikes. The branded components we use and most importantly our ability to resolve an issue, quickly and efficiently, within a week enables us to make and keep this promise. The reason we are so nimble and on the ball is being a dedicated electric bicycle supplier and manufacturer, we know the electric bike market is very different to the vanilla bike market, and are not restricted in our thoughts and actions by old traditions. We keep more than £100,000 (cost) of FreeGo and Wisper components in stock in Southampton at our dedicated service centre, and employ electric bike experts to manage the centre. The five day scheme is just about to be extended to the Wisper brand. We will continue to extend the scheme through our stockist network, a network we believe already to be the largest in the UK.

You may be surprised to hear, that in the last 12 months, we have only exchanged three bikes under this scheme in the UK. These bikes account for not much more than 0.1% of our total sales. We very rarely need to exchange a bike, due to the quality of our build supported by our outstanding back up.

All the best

David

 

[Emo Rider]

Wow! With all this negativity about Suntour forks you'd think that there are presently millions of Suntour equipped bikes sitting around waiting for parts. The rest soon to follow. I took up serious cycling again back in 2003 and from then until present I have probably racked up over 15,000 miles on Suntour equipped bikes with no problems with the forks period! My newest bike is, btw, a Suntour equipped BH. Again with just over 1,000 miles and no problems.

I presently weigh 15 stone 10 and was much heavier in the past. All my kit held up becuase of regular maintanence (daily when required) and useing my bike for its design purpose. If you are using a peice of standard kit in extreme conditions, expect it to wear out quicker. It's not the manufacturers fault. It you replace with the same fork, expect the same results. The Suntours usually go for between £50-£60.

As others have suggested, going to a better fork. You are going to pay much more that the cost of the Suntour you have had. Much more. I have seen forks going for £500 plus. If the bike would have been equipped with a £130 Roxshock it would have cost more and you probably would not have had the same issues.

Having problems with the dealer or the company in having the issue resolved is not the Suntour's fault. Sorry for the rant but I like my Suntours. It's all about you get what you pay for.

 

[hoppy]

David, 3 bikes ~ more than 1% of total sales? ie.total sales less than 300? Really?

 

[Wisper Bikes]

Ooops! Thanks Hoppy.

Edited now.

All the best

David