Not the wheels I recently built but a set bought from a well known company (will refrain from naming but I suspect a few will be able to guess).

Have done 5 rides and I noticed the front spokes were quite uneven after the first ride then when servicing the bike this weekend I noticed that a few rear spokes on the disc side were distorted. Checked them and found they were so loose I could spin the nipples on about half a dozen spokes with my fingers, whole build has gone to crap and I am amazed the wheel is as true as it is actually is. Spoke distortion seems to tie up to breaking loads but I assume they will pull straight.

Contacted the “store” and got their standard response of send them to us for a free true, am I right in expecting a response more in line with “sorry this is not right, we’ll get them shipped back and rebuild them”?

Wondering if I should just rebuild them myself and save myself the postage and risk of a quick “true up” approach that comes undone again in a few rides.

id go with the free true up, the wheels I got from the store you are probably talking about have been fine for over a year now

A rebuild isnt going to be necessary. A truing/detensioning/tension check by the shop or yourself should suffice.

Send them back, a “quick true” up isn’t all that’s required if your description is accurate but they’ll know that when they get them back and – based on my own experience – fix them for you.

Qc is a bit hit and miss, though more hit than miss these days judging from the increasingly positive reports when a few years back it would all have been of the “you’ll die in a ball of flames” variety.

As for not immediately saying “OMG that sounds terrible, let me get you a cup of sweet tea, and we’ll get someone round to collect, fix and return them whilst you get over your ordeal” if the problems with kit were as bad as described by [anyone’s] customers on a regular basis I think the world would long since have ended, so yes “send it back” and we’ll take a look is about right, plenty of time for contrition after they’ve established it’s actually a build problem not cack handed spannering/abuse and really is bad not just not quite right and hyperbole.

yeah I guess they probably have a lot of chancers who wreck wheels and then expect them to be covered by warranty. Just a bit disappointed to have a set of wheels end up in this condition after 5 rides with about half a dozen spokes rattling around with nipples just about holding on to the end of the spoke thread.

By rebuild I mean back off all the nipples and start again rather than a quick nip up and true. Just a bit miffed I seemed to get sent a standard cut and paste truing reply instead of some acknowledgement they are not built right.

Now which courier for wheels?

That’s a question for them rather than for us, there’s no way you should be paying for a return.

Me, when I bought my wheels from Them, if it’s who it seems to be, I figured it was basically a well packaged collection of parts- the price was so good that I couldn’t have got hubs, rims and spokes for the same. If they’d needed rebuild I’d have got a local to do it. As it turned out, 2 were excellent, one was adequate, one was fairly bad.

I’ve had this happen to a wheelset I built myself on 29er Crests. The rim and spokes were so noodly, that even though they’d been tensioned to the max allowed for the rim, as soon as tyres were fitted and inflated, the spokes started to come loose.

A quick re-tension later and they’ve been fine for hundreds of miles.

Not the wheels I recently built

TBH i’d save myself the hassle and just do it myself. apparently you’re also capable. whether you should have to is a different question, but i prefer pragmatism as the shortest path to happiness, for the most part. YMMV.

usually the cost of a wheelset (whether correctly tensioned or not) is less than the cost of the parts if bought separately for your own build anyway.