Please see my comments below to each of your concern:
Building wheels on a bike shipped from China? I thought it’s ‘made in China’, shipped from China, then assembled in Canada. How can you build anything if you haven’t received it yet? How does this justify a $350 (for me) 10% restocking fee on a bike not received by you or even shipped to me yet? The restock fee of 10% is the same if I already received the bike and send it back to you, compared to you not even getting it from China yet and me deciding to cancel? How can this possibly be the same expense for you? And even if it costs to allocate parts, it’s not like I bought a unicycle with little resale value. You could easily sell my custom bike in five minutes, probably at a markup, to 500 people. Especially as it would then be ‘in stock‘ and even more attractive.
Not all our bikes come ready to go in a box from China. Almost all of our bike that are priced over $2500 come from Taiwan or China or US in bare parts - Ie. Frames come in (biggest bottleneck) from the factory by sea/land(for US), Rims come in from Alex, or Surly, or Norco, or LTP, or Wienmann, or one of our partners in Asia. The spokes come in from Sapim. The wheels then get built and allocated for each order while we wait on frames. This is why in most of our videos taken at the HQ, there are lots of wheels everywhere and often people building them. The brakes then come in from Magura/Tektro etc. and each brake hose is pre-cut and bled for each bike as every bike is slightly different in overall length. Then when the frames arrive, we assemble bikes and ship to customers.
When an order comes through our system, we hold it for approx 48h before doing anything - just to give the customer an opportunity to make changes or cancel. Once that timeline is passed, we start preparing parts for that order. This is how we're able to offer different brakes, wheels, batteries, display, seat, handlebar options for customers. We are not the typical importer and reseller of bikes like most of our other competitors online.
And it‘s not a few days late. I was told ‘end June’. That’s already two weeks late off your ‘mid June’ timeline and could easily be more. Then another delay? What do you say when delays add to delays? I just sit and wait it out? The contract was I pay, and you ship a bike, at the promised time (mid June) , which by the way was already a 5-6 week wait for me. My receipt and your web site at time of order said ‘bike ships in mid June’ I screen shot this. It did not say ‘Estimated to ship mid June.’ If you want to call it an estimate now, you need to make this clear up front at time of order.
We actually say these exact words in our terms of service: "
We do our best to keep full stock of all products, but unforeseen circumstances may arise. Pre-sale stock will attempt to ship by promised date, but logistic delays are common so +/- 3 weeks may be added to your order.".
We're not off by the +/- 3 week period.
These are the terms you agreed upon by checking the "I accept to have read all terms and conditions" checkbox during checkout.
I talked to one of your former 2.5 year employees on the Facebook biktrix owners page and even he said you need to be more transparent with possible delays.
We would be more transparent if we could be more transparent. There are several factors in logistics that can cause delays and no one can accurately predict them. For example: Shanghai and Taipei port estimates loading period to be anywhere between 2-20 business days. Customs in US and Canada estimate clearance to take 1-30 days. Port availability in Vancouver claim to be 3-15 days. Typical time taken at any of these bottlenecks are completely up in the air. We make best estimates based on our past experience. If we know something for sure, then we update customers.
You can understand that I get nervous when a small, practically unknown bike company sits on $3500 of my money on top of a 2 month ‘minimum‘ delivery date, with no assurances it won‘t go beyond, and then also takes 5 days to answer a chat question or phone call. I should not have use a Facebook bike owners page in a desperate attempt to reach your company. If you are overwhelmed, hire more CS support. Must be tons of people, like me, out of work.
That's totally understandable. If it makes you feel any better, Biktrix is backed up by PFM Capital (a venture fund that manages approx a billion in assets). So we're not going anywhere. We do have 6 full time staff in CX but these days they have been slammed - which is why we sold out of almost all bikes we have in stock and pre-sold almost all bikes coming in.
Now I’m at the point I consider wanting to cancel my ‘non assembled/non existing/non shipped‘ bike order and actually buy a bike I can get today or within a week, and I have to pay a $350 restock for it? Make that restock fee clearer in your terms as well. Put it right on the front page after assembling the bike and before hitting buy button. This is not something that people experience on a regular basis. I‘ve never had a restock fee come up on a non delivered item In my life, from any vendor. You must know you are an exception, so make it CLEAR.
We have our terms and condition on every page on our website. Look at the footer link for terms of service. We also have a mandatory checkbox that you HAVE to check prior to purchase. PS: we are not the only ones that charge restocking fees. Here are some others:
RAD: " Any and all pre-orders and backorders that are canceled prior to shipping are only eligible for a 90% refund of the total order price. " source:
https://www.radpowerbikes.com/pages/terms-of-service
Juiced: " Cancellation of unshipped orders will be subject to a 10% restocking fee (for pre-orders as well as in-stock items). " source:
https://www.juicedbikes.com/pages/cancellation-returns-policy
There are many others, you can simply Google it.
bottom line: knowing what I know now, with surprise restock fees on a bike you don’t even have yet, extended delays, slow response to chat/phone calls, more work and stress for me dealing with Facebook page (ugh, the usual internet drama from ‘biktrix owner’ ahole within 5 seconds of my first innocent post), I likely would not have ordered from you. Be assured that the fb page does biktrix NO favours from some people to help your reputation. I’m sure most of them are fine, but it only takes one idiot to ruin it all. Keep customers away from FB. Answer your phones. I instantly regretted even going there to try and contact you.
Sorry to hear that you weren't a fan of the facebook owners' group. I personally think that the group is great. 1600+ folk posting about their rides and how their lives have changed from owning an ebike. I also love the community there as they help each other with various recommendations and troubleshooting/assembly tips. But I guess to each his own.
Like I said previously, it is unusual that we don't get back to customers/anyone that leaves us a message. Feel free to email me directly at
[email protected] and I can look into what happened in your case.
Ways to improve your service: How about sending an email to all prepaid customers apologizing about your delays, etc? If you know you are swamped and can’t even answer the phone (I tried 3 times on different days. Sorry, this is ridiculous) you can at least send out a mass email to your pre paid customers explaining the situation. Ie: “sorry for delays...sorry if you tried to contact us by phone or chat and we didn’t respond. we don’t have enough people to handle it...” It’s easy and that could already go a long way. You must also understand that there is very little feedback about biktrix out there. Virtually nothing on youtube. I could barely even find a single juggernaut video review not made by Biktrix.
We are just waiting for more info from the port. We will be sending an update email as soon as we have more info - likely this weekend. Here are reviews made on Biktrix bikes that are on youtube made by others:
Bonus: review from 4+ years ago when we were the only mid-drive fat bike with 750W of power:
I can’t be the only one wondering what’s going on. We are talking about thousands of $$$ gone from my account on day of sale May 7, not removed at time of delivery. This is not a delay on a $15 amazon shipment. Keep in mind, YOU are doing very well in covid times, so well you can’t even supply Customer service anymore, and many like me, are not doing well at all, so I do not feel sorry for you. Step it up.
I understand and we are working on it. Unfortunately, we have to manage with the 6 staff on phone lines for now because we are not allowed to have more people working together due to Covid. Remotely training CX staff to have consistent messaging is not easy - we're working on it. Just not there yet.
Like I said before, apologies for your rough ride. Shoot me an email at
[email protected] and I'll dig into what happened to your email/call.
