bart profile

LinkGlide and Cues are some of the most exciting product launches I have seen in a long while - Shimano really giving a lot of  people what they want deep down and a long term view into a solid range of products.

Problem Solvers has been making something like the Aimy for a bit now - Great for cyclists who travel and need to remove bars to fit their bike in a bag/box.

Profile pic is definitely a work of art!

Also Liteville has had a 10 year transferable warranty for a long time now but having the big brands change a bit is BIG.

Motors and batteries are definitely a big ticket item on an e-bike and it would be nice if those were covered for anyone in the first 2 years for any owner ... assuming they weren't tampered with .. but we can check for that pretty easily these days . 

I'd almost have a freewheel over a freehub in the same price range these days... entry level freehubs have been terrible in quality and to secure replacements for warranty.

My mistake 2nd owner is 2 years from original purchase date with POP.

Transferable warranties are challenging because of the nature of the sport and the abuse our bikes take.  Declining a second/Third/fourth owner because the issue at hand was actually due to crashes from a previous owner would become just plain not fun - subsequent  owners do not know the history of the bike and bikes aren't often inspected properly on purchase, bikes no longer have a service record at the shop as they can be shipped across the country or world and we have no way of tracking services.  Of course there will be fees and labor and a whole myriad of charges for the second owner because the shops aren't going to absorb the cost with our ever slimming margins.  If companies would cover labor and shipping to shops like they do in the Moto and Auto worlds it would be a different story... but that would bump the price of the bikes up further, which consumers already struggle with (I'm looking at you , $850 bike with Tourney components)

Aluminum has a fatigue life - so longer warranties don't make sense there.

But what I will say is Specialized has changed their warranty ... Second owner gets a 1 year warranty on the frame within the first 2 years of original purchase date and i think that is reasonable.

I've been lucky enough to have had Honey's shipped overnight to me and could not have been happier!  Also the time I had Schwartz's Smoked meat with a loaf of Rye Bread and a bottle of Mustard delivered was plain Epic!  The most recent tip was a really super nice bottle of Olive Oil.  The thought that went behind these will be remembered for much longer than beer.

Thank you for sharing this!

That is definitely the challenge, with the amount of "innovation" in the bike industry things get outdated and in recent years faster than ever before.  as much as I would like to think dropper posts won't change much will this lifetime warranty still be able to help the rider out with a 15 year old post? only time will tell, but for now it is an exciting catch phrase that has a lot of people taking notice, good on PNW for pushing the envelope none the less!

As an industry guy, I warranty stuff every day -  I find most of the manufacturers pretty easy to deal with, certain brands go above and beyond while others follow a little more closely to the wording.  But from my point of view some products do have a usable lifespan.  Lifetime warranty is great in theory but there are some problems in it's execution as time goes by. Take the Easton example, sure they got bought and that can change everything, but that isn't always the rule...lets say they kept the warranty timeline - How many Haven rims should they have kept? hubs? if they run out 10 or 15 years down the road should they be forced to do another production run of what could be 100 rims in 26"? How many 26" frames would still be in one piece?  These are all the questions all these brands have to think about - Its complicated and some people do get left with a bad taste in their mouth and that sucks from a consumer point of view. but how do you manage that?  Does a shorter Warranty timeline fix that bad taste and manage a consumer expectation so they don't feel short changed down the road on a product that really has a usable life?  From my experience most companies are pretty reasonable and if you can start a good dialogue a pretty decent resolution normally comes through.  Just keep in mind your local shop is just your voice between you and the manufacturer, we go to bat for you so you don't have to navigate all the nitty gritty back end details.

As another bike industry guy - I find myself very fortunate to still have a job and have work,  but it has definitely been challenging -  when we talk about the whole supply chain it goes all the way down to raw material.  if your bolt supplier to make your component is late on delivery, your small parts is late, which means your frame is late, which may mean you missed your container ship you booked which means the distributor is late, which means we can't get it to the customer.  So many things need to go right these days.  You can't substitute parts from what you ordered at a factory level cause there are no parts available to substitute.  I have heard of some parts suppliers being 400+ days out for delivery.  The good news.. you will see more component manufacturers with OE spec.  Microshift for sure is on a lot more bikes for next year, hopefully this bring some value and competition on the OE side of the buisness.