Poor factory assembly by Fahrradmanufaktur

okthought

Towards the end of last year, I bought a Fahrradmanufaktur TX-1200 tourer with a Pinion gearbox.

I was disappointed to discover that, after only a few months’ use, the gearbox's expensive-to-replace alloy chainwheel had lost a tooth, although I’m fairly sure that I’d never grounded it! Otherwise, I’m generally happy with the bike.

However, something still rankles. Having spent more on the bike than some cars I’ve bought, I suppose I wanted to believe Fahrradmanufaktur’s spiel about “carefully made by hand in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony”, but I was amazed to find two significant faults in the machine delivered to me by carrier from a German retailer. If the retailer had set the bike up properly, they would have spotted and rectified at least one of these, but the faults appear to have arisen from very poor assembly at the factory.

Firstly, the pull-pull loop of gearshift cable was too loose at one end for the adjusting barrel to be able to take up the slack. It was relatively difficult for me to re-clamp the cable correctly, since the inner wire had already been cut close to the clamp.

Secondly, and more importantly for my safety, although both the front dynamo-powered light’s "out" terminals and the rear light's terminals had polarity clearly marked, the connecting cable did not preserve correct polarity. Consequently, the rear light's standlight function did not operate and possibly the rear light did not operate at all.

I emailed Fahrradmanufaktur twice, hoping for an acknowledgement at least, and ideally an apology, but received no reply whatsoever. I didn’t bother complaining to the retailer, mainly because I didn't think my German was up to the complexity of the issues.

BTW, I would have bought the bike from my LBS in the UK, but they only had the 2016 model with a Gates belt drive, which I didn’t fancy. Though after my experience with a chainwheel failure, perhaps I should have gone Gates, after all.

Have other folk had similar experiences with poor assembly? Has anyone ever received a reply from Fahrradmanufaktur?

Bobbinogs

To be clear, your case is with the supplier, not the manufaktur.

okthought

Yes, you're probably quite right from a legal point of view, Bobbinogs, though I am completely ignorant of German consumer law. Fortunately, I didn't need to return the bike for a repair or refund and, on the positive side, I have learned a bit about the gearshift mechanism and lighting system through rectifying the faults that I found.

However, unless Fahrradmanufaktur supplies its bikes to retailers as kits of parts, I very much doubt that the supplier could have introduced either of the particular faults that I found, so I still think the “carefully made by hand” manufacturer has a moral case to answer. Where is their internal quality control? And since a very high proportion of the parts of a bike are safety critical, is it safe for Fahrradmanufaktur to rely on their retailers for QC and to assume that even a very thorough retailer will spot misassembly at the factory?

Although I emailed Fahrradmanufaktur in English, it was via their English language website, https://www.fahrradmanufaktur.de/en/index/kontakt.php. If they would engage politely with me and at least go through the motions of saying that they will try to do better in future, it might make it slightly easier for me to recommend their bikes to other potential purchasers. At the moment, I have grave reservations.

chris_bass

to summaries, after a few months your gears needed indexing and you had to swap a couple of cables over?

not the end of the world, hardly going to fall apart on you I wouldn't have thought!

drlodge

I can hardly believe someone would pay EUR 3,600 for a heavy pile of **** I mean why have this when you could have something really quite beautiful, handmade and probably half the weight? Am I looking at the right bike?