Frame warranty - am I being unreasonable?

Posted by: nouseforaname

Posted by: andy-eunson

It’s not analogous to a car tire. Way back when Bridgestone tires were falling apart on Fords, it was Ford that dealt with the replacement. You follow the supply chain. If a person bought a bike from a shop, the shop has to deal with it. The shop can go after the manufacturer and the manufacturer goes after their supplier of parts. Sale of Goods act. Look at it this way, if the chainring failure cause a serious injury, any lawsuit would include the shop, the bicycle manufacturer and the parts manufacturer as they would all have some culpability.

I think Tony's point is that the tire failing causing you to go into a wall doesn't mean that the damage from the wall is warranty damage. Warranty policies are written specifically to exclude this kind of liability.

Like I said, it'll suck for the shop, but they should be doing better. In store credit, labour credit, discount off next new bike, leverage relation ship with brand for a solution. There are creative ways that are less destructive to margin to find a solution that keeps the customer happy.

These days, the destruction to a brand image that can be done with honest instagram accounts of issues is immense. Even without hyperbole.

Anyone old enough to remember the "Caps wouldn't lend me a chainbreaker" thread"? I knew customers who would bring it up 5 years after the fact.

Ah. That makes sense. But the bike was bought from a shop and that shop should do more. Way more.

I'm a little surprised that the shop/rep didn't even try to help you at all, they could have offered crash replacement pricing  on a new frame.

Have you tried a different Cervelo dealer to see what they might say?

Posted by: andy-eunson

Posted by: nouseforaname

Posted by: andy-eunson

It’s not analogous to a car tire. Way back when Bridgestone tires were falling apart on Fords, it was Ford that dealt with the replacement. You follow the supply chain. If a person bought a bike from a shop, the shop has to deal with it. The shop can go after the manufacturer and the manufacturer goes after their supplier of parts. Sale of Goods act. Look at it this way, if the chainring failure cause a serious injury, any lawsuit would include the shop, the bicycle manufacturer and the parts manufacturer as they would all have some culpability.

I think Tony's point is that the tire failing causing you to go into a wall doesn't mean that the damage from the wall is warranty damage. Warranty policies are written specifically to exclude this kind of liability.

Like I said, it'll suck for the shop, but they should be doing better. In store credit, labour credit, discount off next new bike, leverage relation ship with brand for a solution. There are creative ways that are less destructive to margin to find a solution that keeps the customer happy.

These days, the destruction to a brand image that can be done with honest instagram accounts of issues is immense. Even without hyperbole.

Anyone old enough to remember the "Caps wouldn't lend me a chainbreaker" thread"? I knew customers who would bring it up 5 years after the fact.

Ah. That makes sense. But the bike was bought from a shop and that shop should do more. Way more.

Yes and no, if you understand how the bike business works vs the automotive business, it makes more sense. The automotive business is vertical, with direct partnership of the manufacturer and dealer (thats why all the car dealerships say Ford, Honda, Hyundai, BMW, etc... in their location name). The bike business is completely seperated, the shops are on their own, out side of implied warranty by the manufacturer, so the relationship is tenuous, the retailer might have the pull to ask for 1 or 2 favors a year (outside of legit warranty).

Knowing now that it is Cervello, my guess is the retailer did everything they could do for you, why wouldn't they, it costs them nothing to make that effort. My only hope is that the retailer stops selling a third rate quality product and decides to work with a better company that gives a crap about the people who actually ride their bikes.

If the retailer does help him out with a replacement, they should put you onto a different brand that might support the retailer and consumer going forward.

Posted by: thaaad

I'm a little surprised that the shop/rep didn't even try to help you at all, they could have offered crash replacement pricing  on a new frame.

Have you tried a different Cervelo dealer to see what they might say?

He didn't say that this was not the case, this may have happened from the retailers end, he didn't say anything other than the frame wasn't being warrantied.

Posted by: grambo

but if the shop/manufacturer don't do anything for me beyond chainring then I'm never supporting either again.

Will probably call the manufacturer and explain the situation and see if they will do anything for me.

I guess I took these to statements to mean that the shop offered basically nothing. I could be wrong.

That's why I asked him for the pictures of the frame earlier in the thread.

We are all commenting based on super limited/one sided information. 

As far as I am concerned, the frame manufacturer is not liable for anything, which makes the bike shop not liable for anything to do with the frame. That said, the frame manufacturer sucks, but that doesn't have anything to do with this transaction, just an oppinion based on direct information from retailers and consumers of their products.

The shop that sells the entire thing is responsible for it. If they then recover from a supplier is another issue.

That's not really the way it works in the bike biz though.

The standard bike shop program is the shop requests a warranty RA from the distro and sends it in, the distro's warranty team look at it and decide whether they deem it a warranty issue, if approved they ship a new frame / frame part back to the shop. It's supposed to work that way for 99% of shops and merch in the bike biz. Some shops will replace small things like P&A on the spot and then send the defective goods back to the distro on the assumption they're going to be credited/replaced but that's not really the way the distro's like to do it. If a shop replaces something that's not deemed warranty in the end they can be out the cost of the item. Those costs should really be on the manufacturer who made the defective product, which is where the distro will place them in the end, but the bike shop can't really do that all the time.

Posted by: TonyJ

Posted by: Brocklanders

"The shop should eat the cost, IMO. The supplier won't warranty it and that's understandable."

I 100% disagree with this. The shop is at no fault and if they did the replacement of the parts without charging labor, they have done enough.

It's like blowing a relatively new car tire, then running your car into a wall. Do you go after the car manufacturer, NO, do you go after the dealer, NO. Neither were at fault for the manufacturing defect in the tire, so how are they responsible for anything.

Grambo, I'm interested to see the damage, post up the pictures of that.

The shop sold the bike, who's fault it is should be between the supplier and the shop. They sold the faulty equipment and now are brushing it off. I know how it all works but now they have a pissed off customer who who could very easily just say the name of the shop and that will damage their reputation. Not good business practice really. 

I had a binding pull out of a new pair of skis some years ago. The ski shop gave me a brand new pair right away. Who's fault was it? The ski manufacturer or the tech who mounted them?  Didn't matter, they replaced the skis no questions asked. Where do I buy my skis from, where am I getting new boots this season? That shop. They take care of their  customers, it's good business practice. In the end they win even if they lose a little here and there.

Now Grambo probably will never set foot in there again....Their loss. They could have replaced the frame at cost, repaired it, sold it as a cosmetic repair/demo. Lost very little, and kept a customer.

Posted by: Brocklanders

Posted by: TonyJ

Posted by: Brocklanders

"The shop should eat the cost, IMO. The supplier won't warranty it and that's understandable."

I 100% disagree with this. The shop is at no fault and if they did the replacement of the parts without charging labor, they have done enough.

It's like blowing a relatively new car tire, then running your car into a wall. Do you go after the car manufacturer, NO, do you go after the dealer, NO. Neither were at fault for the manufacturing defect in the tire, so how are they responsible for anything.

Grambo, I'm interested to see the damage, post up the pictures of that.

The shop sold the bike, who's fault it is should be between the supplier and the shop. They sold the faulty equipment and now are brushing it off. I know how it all works but now they have a pissed off customer who who could very easily just say the name of the shop and that will damage their reputation. Not good business practice really. 

I had a binding pull out of a new pair of skis some years ago. The ski shop gave me a brand new pair right away. Who's fault was it? The ski manufacturer or the tech who mounted them?  Didn't matter, they replaced the skis no questions asked. Where do I buy my skis from, where am I getting new boots this season? That shop. They take care of their  customers, it's good business practice. In the end they win even if they lose a little here and there.

Now Grambo probably will never set foot in there again....Their loss. They could have replaced the frame at cost, repaired it, sold it as a cosmetic repair/demo. Lost very little, and kept a customer.

Exactly.

Just to balance out the discussion we don't know why the chainring failed. I've been around lots of people who kept riding bikes with missing chainring bolts...some of which eventually had failures. That's not a warranty issue. A company may decide to replace the chainring just to resolve the issue rather than try and Sherlock Homes the situation with the customer. They wouldn't be inclined to repair ancillary damage. The bike was 4.5 months old which is long enough to expect the customer to do some preventative maintenance on key components. 

I'd also say the folks saying the shop should just give the OP a new frame to resolve the cosmetic issue are underestimating the margins on a new bike and the cost to replace the frame in that case. I'd give the shop the benefit of the doubt that they:

1. looked at the situation carefully

2. advocated to the bike company and the component company as strenuously as possible given the facts of the situation

3. considered what else they could do to make the customer happy and selected the course of action that was the most reasonable in that situation

4. were not being dicks

We are only getting one side of the story in this thread and as most reasonable people know there are three sides to a story like this: the customer's, the shop's and the truth.

So we've got some cosmetic damage where the OP can't see it when using the bike normally. That's not ideal, but the bike functions as expected. The chainring was replaced. It's not like anyone was screwed over here. I don't believe if ether the shop or the bike company thought there was any structural damage they would leave the situation alone as the liability concerns would be too great.

It's an unfortunate situation, but if the OP told me this story it wouldn't make me avoid that specific shop.

Vik.

You can pull it apart and analyze it as much as you want. It's a very strange situation but keeping customers happy is what business is about. Nothing changes the fact that Grambo is pissed off and they should remedy the situation. Shit the amount of money I spend in my LBS annually is substantial. I'm sure they would hate to lose that revenue stream. Also you have no idea how much business I have pushed towards that shop being the in-house MTB/ cycling nut at work. They have probably sold 6 bikes to coworkers, friends of mine in the last couple years. They would be crazy not to remedy my dissatisfaction.

So did we ever learn if Cervelo was going to cover this or not, I think it would be up to cervelo to cover,  it would be nice if they did but i'm assuming/ guessing not ?

Posted by: Brocklanders

Posted by: TonyJ

Posted by: Brocklanders

"The shop should eat the cost, IMO. The supplier won't warranty it and that's understandable."

I 100% disagree with this. The shop is at no fault and if they did the replacement of the parts without charging labor, they have done enough.

It's like blowing a relatively new car tire, then running your car into a wall. Do you go after the car manufacturer, NO, do you go after the dealer, NO. Neither were at fault for the manufacturing defect in the tire, so how are they responsible for anything.

Grambo, I'm interested to see the damage, post up the pictures of that.

The shop sold the bike, who's fault it is should be between the supplier and the shop. They sold the faulty equipment and now are brushing it off. I know how it all works but now they have a pissed off customer who who could very easily just say the name of the shop and that will damage their reputation. Not good business practice really. 

I had a binding pull out of a new pair of skis some years ago. The ski shop gave me a brand new pair right away. Who's fault was it? The ski manufacturer or the tech who mounted them?  Didn't matter, they replaced the skis no questions asked. Where do I buy my skis from, where am I getting new boots this season? That shop. They take care of their  customers, it's good business practice. In the end they win even if they lose a little here and there.

Now Grambo probably will never set foot in there again....Their loss. They could have replaced the frame at cost, repaired it, sold it as a cosmetic repair/demo. Lost very little, and kept a customer.

How do you know they sold faulty equipment. Certainly the frame wasn't faulty unless the BB/frame is crooked causing the chainring to break, then, like I said before, that would be Cervellos problem.

If your binding pulled out, that is either the fault of the tech (impropper installation), or your fault (putting extreme forces onto the ski/binding that it cannot withstand).

Again, do we even know if there is any real damage to the frame (other than consmetic)? No, we don't, the only ones that have seen the frame are Grambo, the shop and Cervello.

I guess what we can agree on is, Grambo and the shop both have the right to make the choice to deal with in whatever way they want. If Grambo doesn't want to shop there again, that is his choice, if the shop feels like they don't need to do anything more than replace the chainring, that is their choice. The chips will fall where they will.