Evans and Madison servicing times rant

Conjoy

So I took the plunge and bought the 11 speed 2011 Charge Mixer that uses the new Shimano 11 speed Hub gear system.
The first week or two were fairly staight forward, and I was very happy with my purchase, expecting that the odd issue with gears would be fixed by the usual 1 month service.
How wrong was I. I put my bike in for a same-day service with Evans (from whom I bought the bike) on a Tuesday, with specific instructions that some of the top gears were reluctant to go in and sometimes didn't stay in gear.
Despite the one hour wait in-store to be served I finally had my bike returned to me, only to discover on my cycle home that the service had made no improvement at all.
A week later, having given the bike a little more time to wear-in, and the gears time to stretch and hopefully improve, the opposite had occurred. By the time I put the bike into again be serviced only 2 gears effectively worked and the with the others experiencing a range of issues: some gears had no torque (I must have looked hilarious peddling furiously as the bike didn't move), other gears would simply not change, or would change unexpectedly during use.
So the second service at Evans starts on a Friday morning. That was over a week ago. From what I have been told there is a serious and unexpected issue with the Hub Gears (no kidding), but it took from the Friday I brought the bike in, until Wednesday for Evans to get hold of the supplier, Madison (apparently Shimano) were simply uncontactable. Since Wednesday, Evans inform me that they have had no feed-back from Madison.
I’m talking about a cheap bike or cheap piece of kit that you might expect to have issues with. This is a £1200 bike.
Should I have expected no better from Evans and Madison?

Rule74Please

Being let down by EVANS tech support from Madison is top drawer.

At a guess I'd say no-one even phoned.

Alfine 11 was very late due to a few tech issues but I think they were cured. My guess is Evans staff are not trained in hub gears and have just stuck yours out the back and forgotten about it.

JamesFree

I have only had brilliant service from Madisons, I had a 105 shifter break on me after 2 and a half years, i returned it to them to see if they could fix it and they sent me a brand new one FOC!

watchfire

Yep, very unlikely to be down to madison. They are generally pretty sharp. As Rule74 said they probably haven't been called by evans.

The Rookie

Evans seem to be setting out to make Halfords look good.......

Monkeypump

I think you've been far too tolerant here.

It sounds like there were gear issues from the start, yet you didn't go back immediately to get it sorted. When you did take it in to be serviced, it wasn't fixed yet you still took the bike away and expected it to sort itself.

The issues then became worse and you still waited to take the bike in for attention. How did you put up with a faulty set-up for so long without escalating the issue with Evans?

Sadly, poor service from Evans is far from rare.

walkingbootweather

I blame Wiggle.

Seriously though this bike is not fit for purpose. I would document what has happened sending copies to local Evans store and Head Office. Give them a final chance to fix or suggest they give you a new bike. If you get no joy Take your dispute to the small claims court

PS sounds like the Rohloff hub is worth the extra then...

shouldbeinbed

walkingbootweather wrote:

I blame Wiggle.

Seriously though this bike is not fit for purpose. I would document what has happened sending copies to local Evans store and Head Office. Give them a final chance to fix or suggest they give you a new bike. If you get no joy Take your dispute to the small claims court

PS sounds like the Rohloff hub is worth the extra then...

I'd also clearly include Madison in the correspondence, it'd be interesting to get their take on the problem and Evans comments about them, which if untrue may spur Evans into action or prompt Madison to take them out of the equation.

PS one potentially faulty unit shouldn't be taken as representative nor a prompt to go for a hub costing way out of the same price range.

MrRex

Aye, Madison tend to be pretty good. I work in the trade and in general, they are prompt and deal with service issues as quickly as they can.

Sometimes they may not hold a replacement or need to contact a sales manager or something so there may have been a break in the communication chain....

My local Evans shop is the best in the area.....beats LBS hands down for quality of service etc. Very helpful bunch.

The Rookie

Of course we don't yet know if it's a hub issue (or other part) or an Evans set-up issue!

Simon