Has anyone tried the Chaoyang H496 Merlin Tyres?

AFAIK: Chaoyang is produced by ZC Rubber. ZC rubber makes close to all non-blackchili compound tyres for conti.

Pretty much every wheel brand uses OEM hubs and rims in one form or another. Very few companies actually manufacture their own hubs from the ground up, including a lot of premium brands.

Of course, but sourcing an appealing, reliable product lineup is exactly the brand's core job: that's where they earn their margin. Saying "everyone uses OEM" is not a free pass; the question is which OEM parts they pick and how they vet them.

Ultimately the things that matter are rim quality, build quality, reliability and after-sales support. That's what separates a good wheelset from a bad one, not whether the hub started life with an OEM manufacturer.

Rim quality: fine, most rims are decent these days.
Build quality: sample size of 1 on this forum = 100% failure rate. That bearing mismatch was a basic error.
After-sales support: Not a single C1-C2 speaker?
Reliability: still unknown.

You admit you've spoken with Jason a lot and got FedEx spares overnight at no cost. That's not how every retail customer can get treated.
So genuine question: are you defending the wheels as being good enough, or are you defending the VIP experience you received?

Just got the information from Wendy that they reversed their decision regarding the $300 fee.

Yes, you are allowed, but please make it clear that it's for without any decals and just ud carbon black matte.
Meanwhile, we hope to receive more order with our brand logos .
Ud carbon black matte with our brand logos also costs US$869/set for LCR020-D paired with HBR020 handlebar .

I think that's great decision! Also I will reply to her, that if they make the option to put their logo on the frame free and only charge for custom paint, a lot more people will take the option with the LC logo

So 300USD extra for UD glossy?
Uh okay ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well that's sad. Just add a couple of hundred dollars more and you'll get XMCS.

The Hongfu Avenger R8-RS feels like the actual alternative in this bracket. It's around $200 more than an LCR020 and you get:
  Paint included
  TT / tri builds and ski-bar options
  Full build option or groupsets at reasonable prices
AND
  Actual published wind tunnel data, comparable to Y1RS. The faster one depends on weighing yaw angles.
  (Yes it was only a validation run, but to validate the CFD done. Something we get zero of from LC's camp. I am in the market for an aero bike, not an aero-looking bike)

But this is 500USD more than the original price of the 020...

Sad to see what looked like the goldilocks option get watered down like this.
Hope to see Mondince, Velobuild, and even Tantan step up to fill that gap and not try to be cost leaders.

Groupset is 2599 CNY / 385 USD on Taobao

This makes it so much weirder: This is without 14s casette, 14s chain, chainset, aero chainring....
How does TanTan/Seraph/Twitter sell this at a profit?

If you message tantan directly they can do almost any bike with that 14 speed group.

Really? This seems like an off the shelf Twitter repackage, same paint jobs, same components, only 3 bar widths?

Swiftofo all the way!
They made the earlier generation of the nero show suits, not sure about their latest tough