Inside information about warranty coverage

Posted by Dr. Yan Lyansky on Sep 9th 2021

We are good about warranties for our bikes. Naturally, we assume the companies we deal with are good, unfortunately that is not always the case. Let's discuss our drivetrain suppliers:

1. Shimano: They make the Alfine & Nexus internal hubs. They are a pleasure to work with. I had a personal Nexus hub that was 4+ years old ( well out of warranty ). They replaced it anyway. Shimano has great warranty service!

2. Sturmey Archer & Sun Race: These are the same company. Back in 2008 we received an entire container of bikes with faulty Sturmey Archer 8sp hubs. I ended up liquidating the bikes for pennies on the dollar because Sturmey Archer refused to do anything about the faults. They did promise me free internal hubs on future orders....they lied about that. We have given up on Sturmey Archer as a viable providor.

Sun Race is just as bad. I had a few customers with legitimate warranty issues. David is their only USA rep and I know him from the trade show circuit. I think he's a really nice guy. However he gave me the same story every time..." I don't have the parts", followed by " we have never had that warrantied before". If you never honor a warranty, then you can claim nothing has ever been warrantied, so there can not be a problem. Ridiculous in every way.

Eventually, I had a brand new 9FS bike that has a faulty spring in the rear derailleur. I called David assuming he would take care of me....a friend & owner of the business. He said the same thing...I don't have any derailleurs, followed by that never happened before. However this time he asked me for a receipt, which is the most ridiculous thing I could have imagined. I own the company and I take bikes as needed. I don't buy my bikes from myself.

We gave up on Sun Race after this debacle, and moved onto Microshift.

3. Microshift: We started with Microshift a couple years ago. Thus far they send out parts as needed, and are appreciative of our business. So we anticipate good things moving forward.

People ask why don't we use Shimano multispeed drivetrains. The new XFS has 10 sp microshift drivetrains, that are Shimano Deore quality ( or higher ), for the price of Shimano TZ ( really really low end ). Therefore we will continue with Shimano internal hubs, and microshift 8,9, and 10 speed derailleur systems.