Thanks for the response, Chief eZee. It's useful to know the detail - at least I know to avoid 50Cycles for a replacement bike.

Scott,

 

I understand and appreciate your putting your side of the story over - it was not my aim to get the 50Cycles/eZee relationship breakdown debated in public.

 

If you read the entire thread, you will see that I am a 50Cycles customer, who received a duff battery, and on contacting you received no response. I then found out that you had terminated with eZee and were advising customers with battery issues to email them directly.

 

So unfortunately you didn't get all of your customers - here I am and I have never had any of the restitution you offered to others.

 

Happy to discuss that with you offline - I will PM you.

 

David.

I have no particular axe to grind here, as you no doubt know both Ezee and 50Cycles are our competitors.

 

From this completely unbiased view point I believe the comment not to go to 50Cycles for a replacement bike is unfair. Since their move to Kalkhoff 50Cycles have had an excellent reputation for quality, back up and service. They did suffer from a little bad press a few years ago but that was at the time they were selling Ezee products. The breakdown in that relationship has been well documented already and IMO does not need revisiting.

 

One point in Scott's reply I dont agree with is that all Chinese factories are the same. Ezee may have supplied inferior products in the past from a factory with awful working conditions and they may have become worse over the years, however that is not our experience. (I should also say that I know through my dealings with On-Bike that Ezee have made huge strides to improve their products since that time, as have we all!) Our time working in China has been quite superb and there is no doubt that, many electric bikes coming out of China now are as good as anything you would hope to find in Europe.

 

All the best

 

David

Edited April 13, 201115 yr by Wisper Bikes

The current issue of AToB lists their experience of a number of batteries Inc 3 Ezee types....

 

 

Sorry 2 types....

Edited April 12, 201115 yr by NRG

Unfortunately, this thread has descended to mudslinging in public. It does credit to no one. There are events that happened in the past which clearly still raise high emotions, anger those concerned and will probably never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

 

In a public forum, there will be those who find this amusing and others who think it is quite pathetic.

 

I think it is time to move on for the benefit of the industry and more importantly, the customer.

Hi John, I believe the guys at 50Cycles have the right to and should defend themselves on the Pedelecs forum or anywhere for that matter. As you know 50Cycles and Wisper have not always seen eye to eye but I do believe in fair play and the right to reply.

 

I too hope this does not degenerate into a mud slinging exercise, as you say it does no-one any favours and probably damages the industry.

 

Let's hope it stops here.

 

Best regards

 

David

 

Let's hope it stops here.

 

Best regards

 

David

 

No more from me David.

 

Have nice day;)

You too John!

 

All the best

 

David

Hi

 

OK folks Hear is my two penny's worth

 

If I look at the Lead acid kit we sold 4 years ago they where rubbish

 

Compared with what we sell today it was a total new market for all supplier and manufacturers to put it into context look at the 1960 ,s Mini

 

Then look at the BMW Mini

 

That is how far the Electric bike and kit market has developed

 

We now have Cosworth Volkswagen and others in the Market

 

so looking back is NO way to go

 

Just look at the Fantastic products on the market today from 50 Cycles and wisper and look forward to further developments

 

Frank

Unfortunately, this thread has descended to mudslinging in public. It does credit to no one. There are events that happened in the past which clearly still raise high emotions, anger those concerned and will probably never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

 

In a public forum, there will be those who find this amusing and others who think it is quite pathetic.

 

I think it is time to move on for the benefit of the industry and more importantly, the customer.

 

As a customer, I'd much rather that bad news was discussed out in the open than covered up. Coming from the IT industry there is too much of a culture of problem denial and burying bad news and disputes which is thankfully comparatively absent in e-bikes. I do appreciate it might affect John more as it could cost him sales, but not facing up to bad news does no one any favours in the long run.

 

Ezee were a close second for my upgrade to Wisper, but lost the business as I could clearly see in 2008/9 there was a customer service problem caused by miscommunication/disputes between dealers and Mr Ching.

 

The average e-bike customers is no fool and can read between the lines. I wasn't even sure then TBH, despite the wealth of information on here who was the UK dealer for Ezee bikes!

 

However I don't think Mr Ching was at all acting maliciously - perhaps I know a bit more about how he thinks in business, he comes from the same country and Chinese ancestry as my late father (well it was the same country when they were both born )

 

What he is more guilty of is overestimating the amount of resources required for customer service whilst trying to expand the customer base worldwide, and thus overstretching himself.

 

At the same time Wisper appeared to concentrate on reliability as much as innovation, concentrating on some core markets (the UK and NZ) and most importantly customer service, whilst 50 cycles concentrated on European bikes- even then they had some issues with these such as the bizzare choice to use 32 spoked wheels on some Kahlkoffs, and the early Wispers having less robust wheels.

 

Even with e-bikes, Mr Amstrong was right to an extent "its not about the bike" - its long term reliability, and customer service that matters most! When it came to dealing with the problems/bad news, Wisper and David consistently came out on top, engaged in dialogue with forum users here (whilst other dealers/manfacturers walked away and/or actively discouraged their staff from discussion).

 

David and his colleagues came across as approachable and dedicated in both UK and China.

 

At the same time, the intrepid Mr Ching often gave the impression he was always off jet-setting in foreign nations and pitching his latest project - whilst others were left to do the customer service job but weren't always brought to the right level of scrutiny and assessment. I doubt this was his intention at all, but for a variety of reasons (not even that much to do with nationalities and cultures) you simply can't afford to take your eye off the ball in a small business.

 

More importantly the culture of frank discussion on this forum has raised the bar for everyone..

 

A couple of years ago I would have hesitated to recommend an e-bike to anyone other than an engineer - not because they were rubbish but due to the lack of timely support. Things have got better since then - though there is still room for improvement - but this forum and the discussion on it help keep the industry sharp and competitive. I feel that if the bad news had been covered up more there wouldn't be the level of progress and innovation there is today.

Edited April 13, 201115 yr by Alex728

 

£500 for a battery does make you think twice though doesn't isn't it - especially when looking to save on motoring costs (indeed, I do hope soaring motoring costs don't tempt them into nudging the price up even more as a relatively cheap alternative to the car !). Every few days another Ezee appears on ebay with a dud battery (or more often than not they just don't mention it but the cyclepoint sticker on the casing gives the true age away ! ).

 

.

 

i bought an ezee torq last month off ebay. i did worry that the battery might be dreadful but as the guy said the battery was approx two years old (bike is from 2006) and has not seen a huge amount of use i took a pop at it. Yesterday I got 14 miles out of it (at reasonably low throttle) in fairly hilly conditions (talking cornwall here). In fact yesterday I got from truro to portreath in 45 minutes. I was stunned and felt bionic! quite good performance but i would like to be able to go both ways without recharging; although recharging in the pub whist reading tolkein wasn;t so bad!)

 

however i didn;t realise that new batteries were quite so expensive when i bought it and had a bit of a shock when i logged on to onbike to get a replacement. prices seem to have shot up since last year when i was first looking for ebikes. the double battery option is quite interesting but i'm not sure if it's a good idea to couple the rack battery with an ageing main battery? once that main battery is run down i would in essence be powering from the rack battery, which is a smaller battery i believe. any thoughts here would be appreciated.

 

it seems like my best option is to make the most of this battery first; i can get most places i need to (only one way though) and nearly all of these are within spitting distance to a train station anyway. and when i've well and truly pummeled it, then buy a new battery.

 

@dbcohen i think if you like the bike and feel comfortable riding it then i reckon that's a more important factor than a few hundred quid here and there as you'll get more use out of it in the long term. i tried out most of the bikes on the market and found that the ezee torq just felt like the right fit to me comfort-wise.

 

With all bikes, over time what with all all the wheel, gear replacements you will at some point think 'hang on why don;t i just buy a new bike?!'. however, you have to remember that the new bike will also run into exactly the same issues in a few years as components fail with wear and tear. And the battery will need replacing in a couple of years too; so you'll be in a similar position to now if battery prices remain this high.

 

And there are more issues than just economics. Old bikes are less likely to be nicked and there's also the environmental issues of disposal and new manufacture.

 

however i didn;t realise that new batteries were quite so expensive when i bought it and had a bit of a shock when i logged on to onbike to get a replacement. prices seem to have shot up since last year when i was first looking for ebikes. the double battery option is quite interesting but i'm not sure if it's a good idea to couple the rack battery with an ageing main battery? once that main battery is run down i would in essence be powering from the rack battery, which is a smaller battery i believe. any thoughts here would be appreciated.

 

The sudden leap in Oriental product prices was mainly due to the banking crisis which ruined the exchange rate of the pound against many other currencies. This coincided with new technical improvements in the high end batteries, which made matters worse and widened the price gap between old tech batteries and the high new performing ones.

 

Although twinning the old battery with a new small rack one would extend the old ones life a bit, I'm inclined to agree that it would be a disadvantage once you are left with only the smaller one. Probably best to get what's left from the old one first and start afresh with a full size one. The 14 Ah option is a particularly good performer.

.

Edited April 15, 201115 yr by flecc

I've quite enjoyed reading this thread.

 

Its very rare you get to come onto a forum and read from suppliers and manufactures / partners etc on get the chance to see how you've dealt with the situation.

 

I currently work in Buying and Merchandising and its always interesting to see how other retailers deal / diffuse the situations that occur with any oversea's supply and demand.

 

I work for a well known fashion retailer here in the UK. An understand about factories over in China (Our homewares) / India and Bangledesh and have got to learn over the years what they are good at. An also what they are hopeless with.

 

maybe when E-bikes are more popular I can swtich sectors and have a go at hard goods.

 

Regards

Scott