How do they do that?

[Alex728]

I'm not saying Synergie couldn't have done better, just describing what inevitably makes a business what it is.
.

If the cash isn't there to provide a premium service, all customers want is honesty - for many people £600-800 is still a lot of money to pay for a bicycle.

A simple and cheap solution would have been for Synergie to notify ETS (and their other dealers) if delays to repairs as soon as their engineer was off sick - as dissapointing as this would have been, most of us in East Anglia have either had a bout of this flu / similar illnesses or know a fair few people who have (ditto Scotland) so might have had some sympathy and been able to accept the bad news.

 

[flecc]

In an ideal world I agree that might have been better Alex, but it takes time that in short staffed businesses is often not available. We're talking about contacting bike shops remember, some of them the most backward businesses around, and some as in my area may not have email. Phoning around takes very much longer and letters longer yet. In any case, most businesses might not want to advertise a weakness in such a widespread way, so I don't see it as practical.

Stand in the other mans shoes and you can begin to see the problems.
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[Alex728]

Stand in the other mans shoes and you can begin to see the problems.

I have done - saw this occur with one of my former employers, and another small business I was once trying to help out...

unfortunately the market has no sympathy or tolerance (despite a comment like this I am far from a fan of the ruthless business culture brought in around Thatcho's time but its what my generation has grown up with)...

Both businesses suffered heavily for the customer service issues - one went bankrupt (costing the owner his personal investment of his pension nest egg) - the other only just survived but is a far worse place to work at.

I'd just hate to see the UK e-bike industry repeating past mistakes and "doing a Sinclair" (now there was a man who had some innovative ideas which were let down by poor service and reliability)

I just hope ETS can restore confidence by providing Rob with a well built and reliable wheel...

 

[flecc]

unfortunately the market has no sympathy or tolerance

I agree, but that can only lead to less choice and service in an undersize industry.

I'd just hate to see the UK e-bike industry repeating past mistakes and "doing a Sinclair" (now there was a man who had some innovative ideas which were let down by poor service and reliability)

Indeed. Sinclair was typical of a man who should never run a business*, and it's also true that he was a very poor developer of ideas too. He was only a very good ideas man, from his earliest days as a teenager writing for Babani Publishing through to the present.

I just hope ETS can restore confidence by providing Rob with a well built and reliable wheel...

Me too. Fortunately the bike shop can't always avoid facing the customer in the way an internet business often can.

*Like some e-bike suppliers I could mention.
.

 

[Alex728]

I met Sir Clive in 1987 at Oxford train station, not only was he a very pleasant man he even sat down and had a chat with me and my friends (then young teenagers), on finding out we were interested in computers and engineering/science produced a magnesium casting from his pocket (we asked if it was part of a "new C5" ) but just he laughed and and explained how he was going to make computer cases out of this stuff..

I learned electronics from Babani books..

To their credit all the East Anglian bike shops I have dealt with (including ETS) are far from backward - they all pick up the phone fairly quickly, are honest about repair timescales and do a decent enough job of it... you can request quotes for repairs online on one of them (I tried it expecting the email to fall into a black hole, but got a telephone call an hour later to confirm!)

Again I expect this is a regional thing, utility cycling becoming increasingly popular here as I have mentioned elsewhere...

 

[MonVal Electra]

Hello Alex728

What FLecc has said about manufacturers and pricing in this thread is pretty correct. I'm not by the way, dismissing any of your points as they are very valid.

Unfortunately at the moment with electric bikes, they are very similar to the early growth years of the PC, so you will get what you pay for - For the reasons that Flecc has already outlined.

Basically, as a general rule, the more you pay, the better the components used and the better the aftersales, service and repairs, because these elements have been factored into the sales prices.
Obviously this is not always the case as a few people here will atest and there are exceptions for eg, Powerbike, reasonably priced as you would see it - And apart from the weight of their bikes, how often do the owners moan about anything else to do with their machines? - practically never. And why, because they've got a good support structure set up, but then they did have a few years head start on most of us other manufacturers, so they've had time to make their mistakes and learn from them without competition breathing down their necks during their formative years.

Like you, I did alot of research before launching the MonVal Electra and this particular website (pedelecs.co.uk, incase anyone didn't get it), was and still is, an absolutely invaluable source and wealth of information regarding what people like and dislike, their experiences, their issues, hopes and aspirations, and problems etc, etc, etc.

So, based on this information and the type of people and entities that we are hoping to sell to where questionable reliability and 'lack of aftersales'/back up is NOT an option, we decided to launch with quality components from the start. We also factored in the aftersales that I mentioned previously so that non of our 'early adopters' would endure the experiences that others have had on this site, which means setting up a network / facility for problem solving - and all this costs money. The amount required, being recouped via the eventual sales price.

 

[carigada]

My son raised the question "How do they build wheels when bikes are made. Are they all put together by hand or has someone invented a machine to build a wheel?

Frankly I don't know. Could anyone enlighten us please?

Rod

Going back to your original subject Rod, assembling the wheel usually isn't the hardest bit as you just have to be logical and methodical. Getting it tight, true and centred in my opinion is far harder. Once you have worked out how to do this then as a bonus, re-trueing your wheels becomes an easy DIY job.

Wheel jigs can be bought for under £100 but I usually use the bike as my jig so I can vouch for the fact that it is perfectly possible to build a wheel without buying one.

 

[Rod Tibbs]

Thanks for returning us to the original question, Carigada. We have wandered off the subject a bit in the meantime!

I have found ETS a very reasonable bunch to deal with and I know they are often frustrated by the suppliers with whom they deal. I simply asked the question about wheel building because I got a message on my answerphone from ETS saying they had been landed with a motor and not a complete wheel and they were going to have to unbuild one and build it into another.

At that point my son and I got into a discussion about how wheels were built in large production numbers and through this Forum I was astonished to find someone had invented a machine to do such a tricky manipulative job.

On service in general we can only keep the pressure up and accept the fact that we are pioneering something for the future.

Rod

 

[Alex728]

Thanks for returning us to the original question, Carigada. We have wandered off the subject a bit in the meantime!

I have found ETS a very reasonable bunch to deal with and I know they are often frustrated by the suppliers with whom they deal.

this too is my experience with ETS (although thankfully I've not had too many issues)

At that point my son and I got into a discussion about how wheels were built in large production numbers and through this Forum I was astonished to find someone had invented a machine to do such a tricky manipulative job.

On service in general we can only keep the pressure up and accept the fact that we are pioneering something for the future.

Rod

Depending how old he is, maybe you should get your son a copy of the Sheldon brown site and some old wheels and spokes to practise on, thus ensuring these skills are preserved for the next generation

 

[flecc]

To Rod and Alex

Regarding the prospects for e-bikes future and their service etc, way back in April 2008, I started a debate on whether e-bikes would exist in 10 years time. Here's the link:

The motion:

E-bikes will not exist in 10 years time, and may never really catch on anyway
.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

I've been monitoring the old posts as well and I do think some companies definitely do have a policy of continuous improvement - for instance the Wisper 905SE had clearly had a lot of improvements made due to Wisper monitoring issues raised on this forum - I would hope its still kept in production in 2 years time rather than abandoned for the "latest and greatest developments"!

Hi Alex

We trust that we will still be here for many years to come and the 905 range will certainly be here for the foreseeable future. And I can assure you that the bikes arriving on the April container have the last little tweaks that should make the bike perfect. I am not saying that we will not add a few extras as they become available and more up to date components but the 905 range is pretty well set in stone now. We will however be introducing new bikes to the range such as the 905XS (dual motor) and the 906se but they will be substantialy different to the 905's and will be additional to the existing Wisper range.

Further to your point regarding stock in the shops. The problem with any new market is the lack of people wanting to invest the kind of money needed to get these products built to perfection and into the shops.

We are having a great time with Wisper and are now selling all over the world. For nearly two years I have been working full time on the project with absolutely no payment (So has my business partner Douglas Lawson). We have also invested a substantial amount of money into the project. Tooling, trips to China and keeping an office and personnel in Shanghai etc is very expensive. However the main expense has been funding manufacturing.

We start off by paying for the frame tubing to be extruded and ordering and paying deposits on all the components. Shimano equipment and our PC mudguards for instance take up to 5 months to deliver into the factory in Shanghai. Only when all the parts have been collated and the frames made and painted, can we construct the bikes. By this time they have been paid for in full. It then takes 4 to 5 weeks to ship them from China to UK and another week or so to get them through customers and into our warehouse in Portsmouth. We are currently selling a container a month and have just upped that to two containers. The "time tunnel" as we call it stops both us and other smaller manufacturers and importers form having masses of stock available, and of course the more successful one is the bigger the problem becomes.

All that said we have just about hit critical mass and after April when the first two container order comes in with eight more in the "time tunnel" things will change and hopefully others will be in the same position soon.

Maybe we can even have some Marmite on our toast and butter again!!

Best regards David

 

[carpetbagger]

dual motor 905xs......are we talking congestion charge for you people down south here....can't wait to see what this is like.