Thing is i didn't make any demands? I just stated my issues. I didn't go straight in with a negative comment. Any decent company would be looking to offer advice and guidance not insult me and my technical knowledge. For the final time I know the shop is where my contract lies with I just had sore time to email the wheel manufacture to enquire he options before going back to the shop with the facts.
I don't believe I was excessively rude. Not to the point those responses were justified. If you had a complaint with your bank and they said oh I'm sorry sir if NatWest isn't your cup of tea there's plenty of other banks out there I'm sure all your responses would be completely different.
As for me asking the shop to strip and re-grease I didn't. I purely mentioned my issue and this is what they done to resolve it. Which obv didn't work.
Did you tell the bank that they were sub-par quality?
I once worked in customer services at a bank. We'd get the occasional nut job that was just out for an argument on the phone. They'd quickly go quiet if I acknowledged that "We're clearly not able to meet your expectations as a bank so I'd suggest you bank elsewehre". They never did though.....
They're a business at the end of the day.
I don’t believe I was excessively rude. Not to the point those responses were justified.
And that's where I, Novatec and the majority of posters on here would respectfully disagree with you. Your comments were rude, and as many of us have said, there is NEVER an excuse to be rude - and if you choose to go down the path of being rude in the hope of forcing someone to help you, you'll be sorely disappointed.
Mate a new freehub bearing is 10 quid [almost certainly be just the outer one that has gone]. Your bike cost six grand. It's an error of scale to get upset about this. Personally I'd have just fixed it, stopped fretting, started shredding.
Either way just look at it as an opportunity to rectify an incompetent bike spec - I like novatec just fine but it's a joke to buy a bike at that price point and ride around on those hubs. It's not like they've snuck a heavy seatpost or stem in there, it's the wheels FFS!
As an aside, how much does one have to spend these days to get a mountain bike where you can genuinely say these wheels are awesome? OP is an extreme example but generally wheels seem to lag miles behind overall build quality.
https://www.bird.bike/product/aeris-145-x01-eagle-12-speed/#configuration
If this link works, £3700 gets you a 145mm Enduro bike with Lyriks, DT Swiss xm1501 wheels, Maxxis tyres, dropper, Eagle XX1, Sram Code RSC etc.
Im sure there must be loads of brands with better wheels for a £6k bike or less. Depends if you want Santa Cruz written on the downtube or not I guess!
The SC Nomad for £3600 has Yari RC’s / 1x11 NX / Novatec’d hubs, basic Sram Guide R’s etc. Crazy spec difference.
Canton Spectral - similar price to Bird but fits in a carbon frame / Sram x01 / Mavic wheelset (no idea how good this is).
Im sure there must be loads of brands with better wheels for a £6k bike or less.
Hope HB160 is £5,500. Guess what hubs that comes with....
Rebranded Novatecs?
Yeah £3500 or thereabouts gets you bikes specced with DT XM1501/Newmen evolution SL A.30 (look them up!) - both £600-700 wheelsets weighing 1600g or so.
I was looking at a Tallboy in a shop yesterday. I was surprised to see DT 370 hubs on it. I thought that was stingy. The wheels on a Norco that cost half the price were better.
Id rather buy the frame and get the bits on line and put a bike together myself than buy a complete bike at the price of a Santa Cruz (or similarly priced bike). That way I can be sure the money has gone where I think it's best used.
None of that has any relevance to the op, Who doesn't have any relationship with novatech. Santa Cruz bought the hubs from them and sold them to Jungle, etc...
anyways, OP take the wheel back to the shop and ask them to replace the hub or the wheel. My guess is that you'll get a new wheel. If you are given a hub take the opportunity to replace the rim et while you're at it.
hope you get it sorted out.
My old man always called the difficult customers in his shop custards,
i clicked the one day, it meant a cross between Customer and Bast... 🙂
Pretty reasonable response from Novatec and I'm amazed you got one at all really, though it probably involved a lot of google translate. I've got a pair of novatec hubs must be eight years old now and still going as good as the day I got them with just bearing changes. Novatec hubs are pretty much everywhere under various rebranded guises. Your lbs needs to up their game a bit though
Can we see the original email you sent? Just to complete the set
Hmm this thread has possibly put me off Hunt wheels - I’ve had shyte hubs before (Surly) and don’t want a repete performance.
We’ve had 4 pairs of Novatec hubs here (possibly five but not sure), I wouldn’t be at all put off buying another set. I’m also sure that Hunt would look after you.......unless you start saying all their products are shit of course
No the response I was expecting from any self respecting company who cares about loyalty and customer satisfaction...
"Great! It comes with Novatec hubs!" said no-one, ever. My understanding is they are up there with Joytech – they supply huge amounts of hubs to the OEM market. I doubt consumer customer loyalty is really a major consideration, unless hosting someone else's brand sticker.
With that in mind, what did you really expect? Your issue is with the shop.
Novatec hubs on my road bike and changed bearings once in four years and thousands of km .
I d be annoyed to have them on a 6k bike though . my wheels were less than £300 .
Just for balance - we have 3 racers with Novatech CXD cross wheels in the family. Best wheels we could find £ per lack of kg, recommended by friends who run a local shop with a top notch workshop and reputation. Came with graphs of spoke tension and vertical / lateral run out.
The last two cross seasons have been dire and the filth / wash / stand for a week / repeat duty cycle has killed a lot of gear (jockey wheels, bbs etc) but the hubs have been fine and all wheels are still tight and straight.
Warranty excluding bearings etc is irrelevant on an almost new £6k bike - CRA states something has to be fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality.
Not sure quite what remedy you expected from a tier 1 supplier on the opposite side of the planet. I'm surprised Novatech even entered written dialogue - even Hope never discuss reasons if something fails, they just fix / send new stuff foc (provided you aren't a dick).
I'd be pissed at the shop for not replacing a £10 bearing on the £6K bike you bought form them personally. I'd take my business elsewhere. And it's santa cruz UK (distribution, Jungle in other words), not santa cruz (manufacturers) themselves which spec these shit wheels so far as I am aware.
Just had a look at this year's SC range on Stif's website and it's astonishing to see how much money you need to spent before you get rid of the Novatec hubs. I mean, they're not bad budget options, but to see them on a £5k bike took me back a little. My own Tallboy 2 came with Hope Pro 2 Evo hubs, custom branded for SC and while I do see the newer version on some of more expensive models, I thought these were pretty universal across their whole range.
I've noticed that SC bikes have really jumped in price since I got mine and I can only assume that downspeccing the hubs is a reaction to increased cost at import to attempt to keep the prices sane. I don't think it's working, looking at the eye watering prices!
FWIW, I'm surprised that the LBS didn't just sort the problem out. Seems a quick thing to fix, tbh. I've had a few things go adrift on my own bike and most of the time I just sort it myself in the garage as it often would cost more to take it back to Stif than to just fix it myself. Oh, and don't forget the lifetime frame bearings warranty! I chomp through a set of upper bearings every 12 months, although the lower ones (which have grease ports) appear pretty much indestructible. I've just replaced them at 2 years, but in truth there was nothing wrong with them, but I now had two spare sets as they come with the uppers, so I thought I might as well swap them anyway.
“Great! It comes with Novatec hubs!” said no-one, ever. My understanding is they are up there with Joytech – they supply huge amounts of hubs to the OEM market.
Which really goes back to the email they sent the OP ...
Novatec are a fully owned subsidiary of Joytech ... making the "premium" products.
Premium might not be Chris King or Hope but they don't mae crap because they have their parent to do that .. and even then I'd say Joytech are not crap... there are far more flaky manufacturers.
I’d be pissed at the shop for not replacing a £10 bearing on the £6K bike you bought form them
This here too. Not really sure what you expected from Novatec but also agree whatever it is you didn't go about it terribly well. They don't owe you anything, but they may have made an effort if you'd gone in saying "realise you don't owe me anything, but anything you could do to help me get the shop to sort it out would be really appreciated".
The shop on the other hand really have missed an opportunity to do things right, regardless. The bearing would have cost a trivial amount. If you said that you'd lost confidence in the hubs they could even have suggested that they do you a good deal on some replacement hubs/spokes and they'd build the rims onto the new hubs for free. Or something. But not nothing on a £6k bike.
The shop on the other hand really have missed an opportunity to do things right, regardless.
Agreed. Most Novatec hubs use a combination of 6903 or 6904 2RS bearings. Even top spec ones like INA are less than £2 a pop at a bearing supplier, so they could have easily said "bearings are a non-warranty part, but you've bought a £5k bike off us, they **do** seem to have gone a bit quick, so we'll pop in better ones FoC and give the bike a quick general check over too".
But again, even that hinges on an element of goodwill - and goodwill is something that's entirely dependent on the way it's requested........
60+ posts about a failed bearing
“Great! It comes with Novatec hubs!” said no-one, ever. My understanding is they are up there with Joytech – they supply huge amounts of hubs to the OEM market.
PMJ, I'll be controversial here and say I have KT and Novatec models that I prefer to my Pro IIs for a couple of reasons, having had a few of each for long enough to go through bearings and service them.
I paid trade for the KTs under another name that are on my long-distance bike rather than ask for a sample set, worth the £ at RRP tbh. A set of Novatecs in the office are arguably better still. They make quality stuff as well as mid-range stuff. Novatec are the TW arm of Joytech, they make a lot of hubs and they range from JT steel stuff for Cycle King bikes to NT stuff that's as good as all but Hadley or DT240 level kit, imo.
To the original point - bearings aren't warranty items. They're consumables and they vary in quality, many aren't really up to UK conditions though, for that you need the top spec stuff. Just fit some good ones once the originals die and all's OK. A really good set of bearings can be close to the OE cost of a mid-range hub.
even tho bearings are consumables they still have an expected life. If they fail in the first mile clearly a fault. If they fail after 10 years then thats just wear and tear. trouble is th OP is in the gray area in the middle and having trashed the rim he now has no comeback IMO
I'd say the response received was due to the way you spoke to them in the first place.
Straight on the attack.
Did the bearings fail due to machining tolerances on the hub?
Did the bearings fail due to enthusiastic jet washing?
Did the bearings fail due to side loading? Are you a lazy whip master?
The grievance of novatec being specced is down to you, you knew what the spec was when you bought it, same as if you bought a ferrari with linglongs all round.
I would put your feelings aside and look at it pragmatically.
Do you want to send the wheels to Novatec for inspection?
I’ve noticed that SC bikes have really jumped in price since I got mine and I can only assume that down speccing the hubs is a reaction to increased cost at import to attempt to keep the prices sane.
It was always going to happen as soon as Pons Holdings bought them.They've got to recoup a LOT of money they paid to buy them.Prices up,value down.
Same happened with Cervelo.They immediately started down speccing complete bikes (for the same money) and the build quality of the frames went though the floor.
60+ posts about a failed bearing
i thought it was 60+ posts about how to ensure you don’t get good service
PMJ, I’ll be controversial here...
I like it when you're contraversial JamesO. 😉
I think my post has been misinterpreted. I'm not doubting Novatec or Joytech as hub makers; if they weren't that great they wouldn't have sold OEM for the last few decades. I'm pointing out that Novatec are a predominantly B2B company and as such an email from a gentleman in a different country, several points along the supply chain, is unlikely to get a huge response. They have no real consumer brand to speak of that excites riders or that needs protecting, and from that point of view spending a lot of time and money sorting out a single problem in a different country isn't really a sound business decision.
On the flipside, if Jungle emailed Novatec and said 'we've had failures on 400 sets of hubs' I imagine it would be taken a little more seriously.
As said: the issue is with the shop, and then with Jungle. And to echo JamesO's point, bearings are consumables, so the OP may just need to be nice.
I accept with anything novatec/formula/superstar etc I may have to change bearings reallly quick or I'm lucky and they last ages !! Cheap to replace with better quality ones 🙂
PMJ, ha.. was just expecting the Hope comment not to go down too well : ) Actually Novatec do talk about brand-building hence my interest in the post but it's up to them how they respond and you're right, they're not really a consumer-facing brand anyway. OEs might pick up on brand rep though.
Daern wrote,
"Just had a look at this year’s SC range on Stif’s website and it’s astonishing to see how much money you need to spent before you get rid of the Novatec hubs. I mean, they’re not bad budget options, but to see them on a £5k bike took me back a little. My own Tallboy 2 came with Hope Pro 2 Evo hubs, custom branded for SC and while I do see the newer version on some of more expensive models, I thought these were pretty universal across their whole range."
I'd not be that pleased to see Hope on a £5000 bike tbh, again not bad budget items but that should be DT territory.
As long as it's not the dt370, explodey hubs SC pec on their SE builds, which are possibly rebadged budget novatecs?
Edit apparently rebadged Onyx hubs
should have used the <b>Consumer Rights Act </b>and get the bearings sorted for free by the shop.
More importantly, you wrote 'far and few between' which is plain wrong. If you can make that sort of mistake, who knows what else you're capable of?
