Jonny Chalk
New Member
I purchased a Vitus e-sommet VR in January 2019. It came from Wiggle and as I already had the 5% discount the price was very good. It arrived without any damage (I realise that was quite fortunate) and I paid my LBS a trivial sum to set the tyres up as tubeless and give it a once over. After adding my pedals the XL bike tipped the scale at almost exactly 21 kilos.
On the first ride the cable to the dropper post snapped. Not a good start, but my LBS replaced it with "a proper cable" for fifteen pounds. Wiggle responded quickly to my emails but wouldn't give me the money, only a credit for that amount at their store. I thought that a bit poor, but as I regularly need various consumables it wasn't worth making an issue of it.
Riding for the first twelve months was great. I found that the range was less than I had hoped - but about what I expected. A full battery gave me about 25-30 miles with a climb of around 120 feet per mile, almost all off-road in eco. As this was about the range of a ride on one of my normal bikes I bought a second battery which pushed my ride range up to around fifty miles. Much better. I don't mind riding with a pack and bought an Ergon back-protect pack for the battery as well as my usual spares etc. I highly recommend the pack.
Autumn and Winter 2019 in the UK were wettest ever, I think. I ride all year round, and by January 2020 I had racked up close to 2,500 miles. Then the bike started to give me error messages; mainly E010. I'm pretty sure that the root cause of the issue will have been that it was so wet for so long - although the motor was never submerged or washed with a power washer. Wiggle suggested eventually that I either sent the bike back to them or took it to a Shimano service centre. My LBS had already had a look and told me that it was a motor fault according to the diagnostics. Given that it was an hour's drive to the nearest service centre I chose to send it back to them.
The bike was packaged in the box that they sent me for the return (kudos to them for sending the box), and collected by their courier. A couple of weeks after it went back to them they came back and told me that the bike had been damaged in transit. No mention of any repair, but I replied pointing out that I expected them to sort it out. They never responded regarding that. Many months later - July 2020, so that is six months after the fault was reported, and after about twenty emails, various FB direct messages and posting on their various FB adverts about how useless they were, they advised by email that the bike would soon be repaired. But then the next email said that they couldn't repair it as the replacement motor was "incorrectly programmed" - which I presume means set up for the wrong wheel size as I can't think of anything else that they could mean. The tone of my emails had become increasingly direct over the dozen or so emails leading up to this, and they would have been under no misunderstanding about what I thought about their lack of customer service.
I'd already decided that I didn't want the bike back after not having it for six months, and had decided to sell it if it came back repaired, so the final happy resolution was that they eventually agreed to refund the bike. So, finally I had by money back but no ebike. On the plus side, I then sold the spare battery and the charger for as much as the second battery had originally cost me, so I've ended up essentially hiring an ebike for zero cost for a year.
So now I have no ebike, but I still have my various traditional bikes and I'm having just as much fun on them. The e-sommet was an awesome bike when it worked, and if you have one without issues then you'll be very happy. But I'm not going to get another one, at least not until the reliability of the motors improves. Even if Wiggle had replaced the motor promptly then it seems most likely that it would have failed again after a year leaving me with the options of binning the bike or spending around a grand a year on replacement motors to keep it running after the second year's warranty expired. No thanks.
So this thread is about Wiggle/CRC's customer service. Six months to sort out a problem and then giving a refund? Whilst the refund was the best possible result, it shouldn't have to take twenty emails to get them to sort something out, and the time taken was a joke. I wouldn't recommend that anybody wastes their money buying from these companies.
Final point - I have a brand new replacement hangar. If anybody in the UK wants to send me a message with their address I'll stick it in the post to them - it's no use to me any more and I can't be bothered sticking it on ebay...
On the first ride the cable to the dropper post snapped. Not a good start, but my LBS replaced it with "a proper cable" for fifteen pounds. Wiggle responded quickly to my emails but wouldn't give me the money, only a credit for that amount at their store. I thought that a bit poor, but as I regularly need various consumables it wasn't worth making an issue of it.
Riding for the first twelve months was great. I found that the range was less than I had hoped - but about what I expected. A full battery gave me about 25-30 miles with a climb of around 120 feet per mile, almost all off-road in eco. As this was about the range of a ride on one of my normal bikes I bought a second battery which pushed my ride range up to around fifty miles. Much better. I don't mind riding with a pack and bought an Ergon back-protect pack for the battery as well as my usual spares etc. I highly recommend the pack.
Autumn and Winter 2019 in the UK were wettest ever, I think. I ride all year round, and by January 2020 I had racked up close to 2,500 miles. Then the bike started to give me error messages; mainly E010. I'm pretty sure that the root cause of the issue will have been that it was so wet for so long - although the motor was never submerged or washed with a power washer. Wiggle suggested eventually that I either sent the bike back to them or took it to a Shimano service centre. My LBS had already had a look and told me that it was a motor fault according to the diagnostics. Given that it was an hour's drive to the nearest service centre I chose to send it back to them.
The bike was packaged in the box that they sent me for the return (kudos to them for sending the box), and collected by their courier. A couple of weeks after it went back to them they came back and told me that the bike had been damaged in transit. No mention of any repair, but I replied pointing out that I expected them to sort it out. They never responded regarding that. Many months later - July 2020, so that is six months after the fault was reported, and after about twenty emails, various FB direct messages and posting on their various FB adverts about how useless they were, they advised by email that the bike would soon be repaired. But then the next email said that they couldn't repair it as the replacement motor was "incorrectly programmed" - which I presume means set up for the wrong wheel size as I can't think of anything else that they could mean. The tone of my emails had become increasingly direct over the dozen or so emails leading up to this, and they would have been under no misunderstanding about what I thought about their lack of customer service.
I'd already decided that I didn't want the bike back after not having it for six months, and had decided to sell it if it came back repaired, so the final happy resolution was that they eventually agreed to refund the bike. So, finally I had by money back but no ebike. On the plus side, I then sold the spare battery and the charger for as much as the second battery had originally cost me, so I've ended up essentially hiring an ebike for zero cost for a year.
So now I have no ebike, but I still have my various traditional bikes and I'm having just as much fun on them. The e-sommet was an awesome bike when it worked, and if you have one without issues then you'll be very happy. But I'm not going to get another one, at least not until the reliability of the motors improves. Even if Wiggle had replaced the motor promptly then it seems most likely that it would have failed again after a year leaving me with the options of binning the bike or spending around a grand a year on replacement motors to keep it running after the second year's warranty expired. No thanks.
So this thread is about Wiggle/CRC's customer service. Six months to sort out a problem and then giving a refund? Whilst the refund was the best possible result, it shouldn't have to take twenty emails to get them to sort something out, and the time taken was a joke. I wouldn't recommend that anybody wastes their money buying from these companies.
Final point - I have a brand new replacement hangar. If anybody in the UK wants to send me a message with their address I'll stick it in the post to them - it's no use to me any more and I can't be bothered sticking it on ebay...
