Canyon Bikes CEO Roman Arnold has penned an open letter, profusely apologising for subjecting customers to “ridiculous delivery times”. The reason? In 2015 they tried to implement better company systems, and it went very wrong. He wrote:
“Towards the end of 2015, in response to the rapidly growing demand for our products we took a major step for the future of Canyon. We opened up a brand new, state-of-the-art factory and implemented a new company-wide IT system. Our goal was to streamline our processes to provide all of our customers around the world a simpler and better experience when buying a Canyon bike.
Unfortunately, at the start, the total opposite occurred. As soon as we began implementing the new system unexpected problems arose. Instead of improving our processes, they were brought to a standstill. Customer and order information vanished and we subjected many of you to ridiculous delivery times. On top of that our customer service was ill-equipped to answer the huge number of enquiries quickly, nor could they access the information necessary to give you the answers you needed.
All of these problems, while unintentional, were our responsibility and I deeply regret how many of you have been affected.”
It’s a terrible situation to see a company and their customers in.
(Update) You can could read the full letter at this llink, but despite being widely reported it seems to have disappeared entirely from the Canyon website.
linky not taking me anywhere with more info.
That’s odd, the post seems to have entirely disappeared, despite being widely quoted in the past day.
did anyone get a copy or screen dump?
aha, someone had foresight….
http://enduro-mtb.com/en/update-von-roman-arnold-an-alle-canyon-kunden/
reading comments on the pinkbike thread on their news item makes me chuckle. The FIRST thought I had on reading the quotes from Mr Arnold were “I wonder if they tried implementing SAP and it all went arsebiscuits?”
Mine was pretty much on time, probably because no one wants 29ers anymore…… Bonus.
Seems to have reappeared. Not ordered a Canyon so not affected, but fair play to Roman, takes guts to write that type of letter and certainly the right action. Time will tell I guess
My first thought was SAP too!
Its back this morning. Three cheers for SAP. Not! I love my Canyon. Took me a while to bond, but damm it is fast. Glad I got it before all this happened.
I managed to get my new Spectral just before this happened – took about a week from ordering. However my old bike which went back under crash replacement took 3 months to be assessed to say – yep – that’s a crash replacement.
It is indeed SAP
http://news.sap.com/canyon-bicycles-innovation-wheels/
Mind you, IME it’s the business that usually causes the issues rather than the system itself…
Well I am still awaiting an apology after sending Mr Arnold a detailed letter including copies of all my emails when I ordered a Strive Race twice and twice they cancelled my order without any prior discussion or notice.Why because they did not have stock even though the website clearly said they did have stock and when I pressed for any answer I was told we don’t have stock and we don’t know when we will ! So next time some halfwit goes banging on about Teutonic efficiency tell them to read Mr Arnolds letter.
Piss up – brewery -organise – couldn’t – a. Rearrange to claim a free Canyon bike subject to stock availability.
I’ve been waiting over 6 months for the Shapeshifter on my Strive to be fixed …