I Am Slowly Getting Fed Up (Crybaby Rant)

[patliean1]

This week has been a disaster for Chinese brands. I've seen forum users in here, myself, and viewers of my videos all get treated unfavorable as customers. The same brands I've highlighted on my channel.

True we have come to accept the small quirks and extra effort required in exchange for saving a few dollars on a frameset and wheels. Mistakes happen across all price points from bike brands. However, this underlying attitude from these companies is reaching a boiling point for me. I don't believe in the philosophy of "the customer is always right" but..."making things right/fair" should at least be a priority especially if a company actually cares about their public perception.

Here are few examples....from just this week.

#1 - I recently posted a video about my favorite Chinese cycling apparel brand. Yesterday a viewer subsequently made a purchase of a particular jersey. The brand then contacted the customer to tell him the style he wanted was sold out, despite the website showing in stock in his size. The brand refused to refund him his money and told him simply to "select another style." That's not how customer service works.

#2 - Being sent a set of wheels to review only to discover the end caps are faulty. I appreciate the brand immediately responding and admitting fault for sending me a pre-production wheelset. However, I have no assurance (other than their word) this wont affect future (paying) customers in the production version. Why wasn't this issue caught during the testing phase? And how do I know paying customers will be treated with the same level of customer service?

#3 - Both the Elite Wheels and VeloBuild wheel issues this week. Ehhhh I'll just leave it at that...

This may sound radical but, sometimes the customer is actually right. The sad thing is I have YET to see any of these budget/open mold brands openly take full accountability for the clear cut mistakes. Refusing to honor warrant claims, offering only partial refunds, ghosting customers, bait & switch tactics, and asking the customer to pay for postage for missing components is disappointing.

I can't continue to fully support/endorse the sub-$1000 brands if they aren't making strides to improve their customer service. And this is despite personally having a generally positive experience with all of them. The root issue isn't "cHiNeSe bRaNdS" like Reddit wants you to believe. It's customer service.

[FHS]

Yeah...no...I don't know.

I don't know enough about business practices to really judge. I don't have enough experience with bicycle companies to really judge. I've had a handful of customer service issues and it's been about 50/50, across the board regardless of the company as long as we are talking about Direct to Customer. I can go into details about my dealings with Giant Bikes, Scribe Wheels, Light Bicycle, and you can read about my recent issue with a Chinese frame in the 26er forum, but I really don't think, given the business model and geographical location of the businesses we are dealing with, that Chinese companies are qualitatively much different than other companies when it comes to the bottom line of customer service. They just seem to deal with customers more "creatively".

I'm certainly not defending Chinese companies or belittling anybody's terrible customer service experience. I just think they know where their bread is buttered, low cost alternatives to the major brands, sold to customers who know what they are purchasing.

I've never bought another direct to customer bike, but can you imagine what it must be like being a Canyon customer with all their recent issues if those issues hadn't been so spectacularly public?

 "What do you mean your intricately engineered, highly innovative handlebar on your $9,000 bike just 'broke'? Can you send some pictures?"

[patliean1]

Funny enough, my "dream bike" is a Canyon Aeroad. Between the price and Canyon's unwillingness to offer a different size cockpit (without paying added surcharge at retail for it) to work with my bike fit means it's probably never going to happen. Buying a fully built bike doesn't make sense for most people other than the marginal savings of components.

It would be rather presumptions of me to assume my opinion on Chinese brands holds significant weight. As unbiased as I possibly can be, end of the day I still received the products for free. So even if problems arise with a frame/wheels, my n+1 takes effect and doesn't keep my sidelined.

Generally speaking, I still believe in the frames to be a solid value. It's when you start getting into wheels and accessories that it gets tricky. One of my VeloBuild carbon bottle cages already broke in less than 500 miles.

[FHS]

Hang in there man. Definitely plenty of reasons to post this, but keep doing the good work.

[1Sigma]

I'm certainly not defending Chinese companies or belittling anybody's terrible customer service experience. I just think they know where their bread is buttered, low cost alternatives to the major brands, sold to customers who know what they are purchasing.

I think this is the crux of the issue - this seems to be the general MO for many Chinese companies, but lately a lot of companies appear to want to grow beyond that and have to learn to evolve past that habit.

Mainland China today reminds me of Korea and Taiwan in the ‘90s.  Just starting to evolve beyond their cheap  manufacturer status and trying to develop into internationally respected brands, with the notable difference that this is orders of magnitude greater in China.

Maybe off topic, maybe not, but the incentives to grow beyond their borders are much lower than they were for Taiwan and Korea.  Whereas accessing international markets could potentially result in 10X growth or more for Korea, it would be significantly lower for a similar Chinese firm. This could account for the somewhat lazy marketing and support strategies employed for international markets.  Could be a lot of things though - I am only speculating based on my observations

[Velovelo]

I think at this point the best thing for us in this forum is to come up with our own frame and wheels design that solves all our issues and then get a manufacturer to make OUR frame and wheelset.
One Open Frame To Rule Them All (OOFTRTA). Then hold the manufacturer accountable for quality and warranty services.

-Ok Bye-

[kr78]

To me, quality and customer support is the most important aspect. This, I am not trading off against a reduced price. Even from the sub-$1000 brands I expect that they do their homework right:
-   No misplaced holes
-   No misplaced or warn out rivets
-   Frames delivered without scratches
-   No frayed drill holes/recess
-   Headsets without play or improperly sized gaps
-   Avoidance of sliding seats posts
-   Good quality paint jobs without jamming the cable holes etc.

I know that these frames cannot compete with the higher end frames from the big brands. But there are only two reasons for which I accept that:

• Less amount of engineering, R&D: the sub-$1000 brand companies closely look to the design and engineering considerations of higher value brands. They become "creative" for taking over ideas into their own design. However, they do not invest in wind tunnel test etc. Squeezing out the last bits of power savings is a huge amount of engineering work which has to be paid. I would roughly say that the last 10% of improvement make up 90% of the engineering. Since I am a hobbyist I am not depending on these marginal improvements.
• Less expensive fiber: the higher value brands use more expensive fiber and more sophisticated layouts for achieving frame weights of ~750 grams. I am fine with a frame weight of ~1050grams.
  

Instead of providing good quality and customer support, it seems that several of these sub-$1000 brands take us for fools – I have made my experience with Velobuild. They know that there are no laws which protect us customers. We are totally at their mercy. They have their money and do not really care about satisfied customers. There are still plenty of buyers left that are not aware of the situation or are dazzled by the bling bling photos posted on Instagram or sponsored reviews with selected parts that do not show the otherwise usual shortcomings. Thus, there is no need to change strategy – still a lot of butter left for their bread. The only way to change that is to write objective reports on forums like this.

[patliean1]

Instead of providing good quality and customer support, it seems that several of these sub-$1000 brands take us for fools – I have made my experience with Velobuild. They know that there are no laws which protect us customers. We are totally at their mercy. They have their money and do not really care about satisfied customers. There are still plenty of buyers left that are not aware of the situation or are dazzled by the bling bling photos posted on Instagram or sponsored reviews with selected parts that do not show the otherwise usual shortcomings. Thus, there is no need to change strategy – still a lot of butter left for their bread. The only way to change that is to write objective reports on forums like this.

I actually most agree with this, only in the sense of as long as the prices are "cheap" there's not much incentive for super affordable brands. Really and truly the only way to change is to vote with your dollar and take your money elsewhere.

With that said there are PLENTY of satisfied customers, myself included. And I really believe the majority of brands in general are making efforts to improve their customer service. Having access now to several industry insiders, I can you that ramping up customer service is a very slow process. Lot's of moving parts. It's not as easy to simply hire someone who's knowledgable about bikes, let alone fluent in English. I just want to see real improvement.

[eucalyptus]

I cannot recall to have used warranty claims that much for Chinese products, haven't bought THAT much either, mostly accessories and all my wheels.

But I do have to give +10 points to "timetec bike" which are selling wheels. Extremely good customer service, ordered a custom wheelset for my gravel, pretty decent wheelset at 999 grams. Very satisfied and pleased with this one, I then ordered a pair of road wheels.

Somehow the front rim of the road wheels developed a white coating on the entire rim. This turned out to be a failure/problem with the matte varnish coat that they had used. The varnish did not protect from UV, so the UV from the sun reacted with the carbon and made it all white

When I contacted Timetec bike he would discuss this with his engineer,  he then came back to me and admitted fault and would replace the rim free of charge.

But as I would had to pay 100 dollar for a LBS to have the wheel rebuilt I asked for two new rims in case there ever would be an issue again or one of the rims would crack as they are extremely lightweight.

I received 2 new rims for free on warranty so there are some Chinese companies that actually honor their service and take responsibility With that said, I have a custom modified Tarmac SL7 copy on the way from TFSA, take on wood it is flawless

[StiffWeenies]

There's always going to be an element of risk because the most legitimate brands and sellers are preoccupied with selling to the Chinese domestic market rather than chasing international customers. The domestic brands popular in China are unheard of in overseas forums. Likewise, nobody rides Velobuild frames or Elite wheels in China.

This is to say that you really need to do your homework when choosing who to buy from. If you need the most thorough support then you're stuck with the most established brands. I also steer clear from first batch products because the game plan for most small companies is to rapidly iterate and issue warranty replacements to early adopters - something easy to do within China where shipping is fast and subsidised but practically impossible outside.

[patliean1]

There's always going to be an element of risk because the most legitimate brands and sellers are preoccupied with selling to the Chinese domestic market rather than chasing international customers. The domestic brands popular in China are unheard of in overseas forums. Likewise, nobody rides Velobuild frames or Elite wheels in China.

This is to say that you really need to do your homework when choosing who to buy from. If you need the most thorough support then you're stuck with the most established brands. I also steer clear from first batch products because the game plan for most small companies is to rapidly iterate and issue warranty replacements to early adopters - something easy to do within China where shipping is fast and subsidised but practically impossible outside.

What are some popular Chinese domestic brands? I'd love to get my hands on a Pardus, Dare, or DIZO frameset...

[StiffWeenies]

What are some popular Chinese domestic brands? I'd love to get my hands on a Pardus, Dare, or DIZO frameset...

Here's the thing, if you manage to get your hands on one of these brands it's because you're buying through a shipping agent or unproven seller where your back to square one of having no support

Pardus is only in the business of selling complete bikes via dealers so getting your hands on a frameset in China means working something out with your dealer (expensive) or waiting for one to pop up on Xianyu (second hand/bulk goods platform). They have some overseas dealers but only in UAE and Malaysia IIRC. People on the forums love the Super Sport (cheap but decent starter bike like BROSS) and Spark EVO. The ZGL CR41 SL2 is an internet darling WW frame that was popular a couple years back when the company (huge OEM that supposedly weaves their own carbon) was still trying to promote their own brand. The Quick Zeit Pro (aka Carbonda CFR 1056) was also pretty popular. BROSS is a new, aggressively marketed brand that was supposedly started by the Cube OEM and official China agent, but their bread and butter is super inexpensive partial 105 endurance geo complete bikes rather than anything high end or racey. The mid range complete race bike segment is dominated by Giant and Merida. People like to recommend SCOM, UP-VINE and Weir (eponymous brand of a prominent LBS in Nanjing) for wheels. Farsports was actually in hot water for having super rude customer service in China but quite a lot of people do ride their in-house brand (not Wheelsfar). Winspace was also embroiled in forum controversy when they swapped parts without notice (Sapim spokes to Pillar due to shortage) so their reputation has basically plummeted. SEKA is slowly and steadily gaining in popularity for custom frameset builds while EXS is easily the most legit high end component brand.

My personal favorites: Elilee (really nice frames, OSPWs & upcoming crankset, paint done by CarbonExpert), EXS (aims for the absolute best stiffness-to-weight in their products, makes cockpits, wheelsets and has an upcoming crankset IIRC), Pardus (proper in-house brand from a huge OEM), Caffeine Frameworks (custom steel framebuilder who experiments a lot with carbon, paint done by Unice Colorworks), CarbonExpert (carbon repair & painting), Kong 2 Studio (best custom painter in China IMO), Incolor (painting, crankset), Voicevelo/Voice for Victory (XC MTB frames, cockpits, seatposts, wheels), Builder Reserve (custom wheelbuilder), Trigon (OEM of Pinarello MOST & Shimano PRO cockpit components, their new AR01 frame is seriously cool), BLKTEC (cockpits and wheels, OEM is Trigon), HSCER (ceramic BBs), RCRACE (super boutique cassettes & TCR Adv SL ISP clamps), 0011 Cycle (hubs), Niuju (custom 3D printed headset covers for cable routing e.g. adapting Venge/SL7 stems onto Cannondales), S-PARTS (Ti screws) and Slipstream Cycling (clothing).

[1Sigma]

Dude, where did you come from and are there more like you?

Seriously though, out of curiosity are you actually part of the industry or just a prolific researcher of all bike things in China? Of course, only if you are comfortable answering

I gather that you are actually located in China.

[eucalyptus]

Dude, where did you come from and are there more like you?

Seriously though, out of curiosity are you actually part of the industry or just a prolific researcher of all bike things in China? Of course, only if you are comfortable answering

I gather that you are actually located in China.

Hahah this!!! I had exactly your question in mind as well 

Stiffweenies is just way too knowledgeable about the Chinese market not to be a Chinese or living somewhere close. With that I assume you also speak/read Chinese since the amount of knowledge you carry is not available to english speaking people and without reach for translating tools 


Bonus question @stiffweenies what do you think of this? https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/T1000-Carbon-Bike-Handlebar-Fully-Internal_1600457733782.html?spm=a2756.order-detail-ta-bn-b.0.0.3acc2fc2w9Nt1I
It is the same handlebar that is sold as "THE ONE PRO" on Aliexpress, although the bars on AliE must be re-sellers as this one looks like the OEM manufacturer. *I have ordered one from here as there is an option to "buy a sample of min Q. order 1"

[StiffWeenies]

Thanks guys, I'm just a huge nerd who found himself an exciting but digestible niche to obsess with

Regarding The One Pro, not many people use it. It's in an awkward market position where people with higher budgets would rather buy Seka or Farsports cockpits and those more price sensitive just use the existing ones included with their framesets. IIRC some forum posts talked about the topcap not fitting well and the bar end wall thickness not being uniform? There was also this very scary stem area failure that I think put a lot of people off buying it. But it happened half a year ago at around product launch so perhaps the issues have been ironed out by now?

A lot of people are now either using the EXS alloy stem/carbon bar combo or waiting for the EXS Aerover cockpit to come to market. The latter definitely won't be cheap though.