 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Next year is a big birthday and plan to have a new bike (well probably 2 replacing the well worn road and mtbs which are 4+ years old now)
I have knackered 2 frames in the past, and given I like to hold onto my bikes rather than chop them in for the latest colourway I'm only going to consider bikes which have long / good warranties with bonus points if they do a crash replacement scheme.
Recommendations? (and ones to avoid...)
Santa Cruz do a lifetime warranty plus lifetime bearing exchange, which is pretty impressive on paper, and they're pretty good at honoring it too.
Bird do a transferable lifetime frame warranty.
Liteville - 10 year transferable warranty.
Trek weaseled out of a warranty issue for me, so I won't be buying one of their bikes new again.
do go on, chakaping - they are one of the brands I thought were supposed to be good
chakaping - Member
Trek weaseled out of a warranty issue for me, so I won't be buying one of their bikes new again.
Interested also - loads of people I know have broken Treks and they've always been looked after
Trek weaseled out of a warranty issue for me, so I won't be buying one of their bikes new again.
Interesting. They also replaced a 2 year old road frame for a colleague (that had slight play in the dropout fixing bolts) with a brand new one (this year's model).
I thought they were one of the ones that looked after people, from what I've read on the net?
It's been a while but I used to work at a Specialized dealer with various other accounts.
Specialized UK were always very fair, often replacing frames and kit long out of warranty within a day or so with new foc or heavily discounted equivalents.
We had the Bonty, Lemond and Fisher accounts from Trek UK and they were similar in that they turned around stuff pretty quickly and fairly although we didn't shift a lot of their stuff so we weren't a huge priority to them.
We also had a Giant account but didn't shift many bikes simply because of the after sales care being so poor - the shop owner didn't want to put us or the customer in a position he wasn't happy with so we only sold them to fill holes in the Specialized ranges or if asked for specific bikes. Warranty support was shockingly bad; poor comms, lots of wriggling etc.
This was all a decade ago though so things may have changed!
Bear in mind though, as implied above, the warranty performance is also linked to the relationship the shop has with the dealer.
Double post
Kona offer a lifetime frame warranty - They've just replaced my almost 4 year old cracked aluminium, (ridden to death) Taro with a fine steel Honzo without question. Allowed me to keep the old frame as well.
Santa Cruz do a lifetime warranty plus lifetime bearing exchange, which is pretty impressive on paper, and they're pretty good at honoring it too.
Which may be true for owned from new bikes - my mate snapped his seatstay on a tallboy and they point blank refused to help him without proof of purchase. He wasn't trying to pull a fast one - he'd offered to pay for a replacement part rather than write the bike off. They just told him "sorry, you're stuffed".
I know this isn't a warranty, but put me off buying from them nonetheless.
Lapierre - I snapped my Zesty after 5 years. They sent a new triangle and Evans (from whom's I'd bought the bike) reassembled things for me within a fortnight.
Boardman - My ride to work hack snapped after 2 years. Halfords replaced the frame like for like. Snapped again after 2 years in the same place (Seat tube meets top tube). They didn't have like for like so gave me a voucher, despite bike being out of warranty. Can't ask for more than that really.
Trek [i]were[/i] good - I had four replacement frames over a five year period after failure of the first. Still got the last one...
Salsa via the Bikemonger were unbelievably awesome with my warranty claim. They had tons of room to wriggle out but didn't, and sorted me out beautifully. Might've helped that I was honest with them too though.
I'll chuck a 'from first-person experience' +1 in for BIRD.
Lifetime, transferrable frame warranty (though, to date I don't know of anyone that's actually had to use this), direct contact with the guys that own and run the place and, to date, a 100% positive turnaround and resolution on any repairs or warranty issues I've had in 14 months ownership.
It's worth mentioning that all the issues I've had have related to standard, third party components - i.e. stuff that can and does happen with any bike. It's not BIRD's fault my Reverb developed a leaky lever, but they sorted me out with a replacement, no quibbles.
It wasn't BIRD's fault that I ham-fistedly snapped the lever on my Maxle Ultimate two days before an event, but they sold me a replacement (at well less than RRP), posted it the same day and had it on my doorstep within 24 hours.
It's also not BIRD's fault my Monarch's developed a clunky action, but Dan (one of BIRD's founders no less) still hooked me up with a returns form, direct to SRAM to cut down on delivery & faff time to get it looked at.
They really are quite excellent to deal with. I can only begin to imagine what my experience might've been like had I had to go through someone like Canyon for help on this stuff... Traumatic, no doubt.
You know where you stand with Planet X of course!
Ibis do seven years on the frame and have been good with coma when I had a query about my freame
I work in a Giant dealership and find the Warranty service is very good.
I do have a good relationship with a lot of the staff which often helps so stick with a shop that deals with them a lot?
Maybe a concept store might be good or I could help you out if in the Warwickshire area?
Thanks,
Max