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To everyone concerned. This is indeed a new issue for us, but rest assured we will do everything to get to the bottom of this matter. We are in the process of obtaining the defective seat posts for evaluation. I will post the findings as soon as I find out.
Just noticed mine has cracks around the front of the post where the rail clamp mounts. Mine is quite an old post, but got used half a dozen times in the lakes over new year, and lived outside in subzero temps for the week I was there.
Chris - do you want me to send you the post?
SDG_Chris
you have not been in contact with me and like I say, the importers just stopped short of being rude (in my opinion).
What process is there for sorting this out?
Sale of goods act? Usually offers more protection than any warrenty and remember your contract is with the shop not the importers.
From the government guidance:[i] Do I have to produce a receipt to claim my rights?
No. In fact the trader doesn't have to give you a receipt in the first place so it would be unfair to say that you had to produce one. However, it might not be unreasonable for the shop to want some proof of purchase, so look to see if you have a cheque stub, bank statement, credit card slip etc., and this should be sufficient.[/i]
So you do not need a receipt to make a claim under the sale of goods act. If you have a faulty part and the shop will not play ball small claims court will only cost you £50ish
SDG_Chris
likewise you have not been in contact with me.
What process is there for sorting this out?
good sh!tstirring TJ.
SDG_Chris is clearly intent on dealing with the issue, how about giving him a chance to do so?
rest assured we will do everything to get to the bottom of this matter
Let's hope that'll be with a saddle still attached 😯
I'll reply tonight, the stuff is stored on my PC at home.
🙂
I agree with Stoners comment about restraint, It's certainly worth giving Chris an opportunity to help, however he still hasn't been in touch, I would have at least expected an email to say that they'd be in touch with a full response after say 10 working day's
Aye - stoner does make a good point but there is nothing like a threat of legal action too concentrate folks minds
The posts split at the rear with the crack running approx 60mm down the post, where the head is bonded into place
This type of failure isn't particular to the I beam clamp, I had a normal post fail in the same way about 3 years ago. A nice loud "crack" followed by a circus ride home on a rotating saddle!
Chalkyslide, I'd agree about the 'failure mode' my concern relates to the robustness of the construction one post failed after approx 12 month's... that I can forgive..... the other failed after 4 local XC rides and it failed on a canal side Sustrans trail which is unforgivable especially for a 'premium' product
Well, I have had no contact from SDG.
I have contacted silverfish and they are still unwilling to do anything.
They have taken exception to my opening statement, so I will clarify:
I stated
"they are a bunch of lying ***"
which I retract.
Whereas I think the accurate statement should be:
STW is not a massive web site and probably only represents a small portion of the MTB community. But upon posting the thread a small number of people reported similar failures. If you extrapolate that out I would guess that you are looking at a reasonable number of failures .
I guess lots of people put it down to usage/age and an isolated incident and just bin it.
What caused alarm bells to ring was when one person had a failure, then mine failed and then his REPLACEMENT failed.
I see that SDG in the states has only a 30 day warranty for manufacturing faults.
Silverfish still are not interested.
This was their original reply:
We see very few warranty returns on the I-Beam seatposts, but we do of course stand behind all of our products and provide one of the best warranty services in the industry; the normal course of action would be that the seatpost would be taken back to the bike shop, who would replace the seatpost (providing it’s a legitimate warranty claim of course) and we wouldn’t even be contacted by the consumer. The issue with your warranty claim is that not only do you not have a proof of purchase (which is always required when making a warranty claim), but you can’t even name the dealer that sold you the product (who you would need to return the seatpost to); this leads to a great deal of ambiguity as to the source of the product, and we are acutely aware that there are a lot of OE SDG grey imports and possibly even counterfeit goods available in the UK which obviously would not be covered under the official UK warranty.
why arent OE "grey" imports covered? Do SDG and other manufacturers sell substandard kit to the OE market? If the parts were sourced within the EU then they have to honour any warranty as we are a single market, and the warranty is provided by the manufacturer not the importer.
And if they are so confident in their products and so customer focussed, why discriminate?
Counterfeit SDG products? Really? "possibly even" is a nice vague get-out. I assume those at SDG could easily identify geniune versus counterfeit if they recalled them all, and if the problem turned out to be fakes then all to the good, a quick press release with ways of identifying them and job done.
I along with everyone else am interested to see how this pans out, but how can SDG Chris say they have taken steps to get the broken posts to them if they havent contacted the people with broken posts (who have been shunned by the importers)?
The internet is the bane of manufacturers claiming innocence, and has been instrumental in some product safety recalls (yamaha R1 throttle sensor, where your 150bhp bikes throttle gets a mind of its own was prompted by US forums). Years ago Manitou tried to tell me theyd never heard of brake arches cracking when dozens of MTBR users had had failures. They eventually replaced it under warranty, despite it being a mail-order former OE bargain.
If I worked for SDG I'd be making efforts to get these posts in, and inviting owners to bypass the importer (or maybe give the importer words of advice). Brits arent as litigious as our friends in the US but they have been made aware of an apparent defect with potentially serious consequences. I wouldnt want to be in their shoes when a failed post pitches someone into a tree or under a car and the unlucky owner takes legal advice.
Don't let them talking about warranty confuse you - your rights under the sale of goods act are unaffected.
After an answer like that from the importers I would be going for them.
Remember your contract is with the person you bought the thing from - not the importers.
Go back to the person you bought the post from after carefully checking your rights under th sale of goods act.
my LBS (Leeds) has sent 3 back this week alone!!!
Its been kept secret but Sam Hill was breaking 1 or more on one practice race/run!!!
Another "well marketed" crap product
"...We see very few warranty returns on the I-Beam seatposts" ... garbage!
Silverfish have a very good point re: imports though - why should they warrant a product that has no provenance as being soemthing they supplied?
It does sound liek they are honouring claims where there is a clear trail of import and supply (via their retailers).
Silverfish may have a point but it's not how to win friends + coments from them and SDG saying that they've had only a couple of failures, don't seem to 'hold water' given the train of emails and peoples experiance......
the question intended in my post was is there a design flaw......SDG & importer seem to imply failures are exceptional... yet experiance here would imply a serious problem exists.
Although SDGChris comments that they have theyre products CEN fatigue tested for 100,000 it makes me want to question the validity of these tests and said certification...... this may mean pursuing this though some other route (i'll be investigating if it should be trading standards or some other UK or EU agency)
Yes i would have liked a replacement for my post which is out of warrantee, i've resolved the replacemnt of the on which was less than 4 Weeeks and XC rides old.......
However I'm very concerned about the safety of this product and nothing I've read has provided any comfort
Doesn't turn up any results other than this thread, which if there was a massive problem and considering the amount of these they must have sold you'd expect it to be all over the WWW.
Would it, that was what I was getting it. My own failure, taken in isolation, resulted in my shrugging my shoulders and just replacing it. It wasn't until I was aware of others failing that caused me to want some action on my old seatpost.
Could some one post some pictures of the failed posts please.
New to this thread but DaveP
Your first port of call should be your LBS or the shop which supplied you the seatpost. Take in your reciept or a bank statement showing the charge etc and they will help you out. You entered into a contract with them when you exchanged the cash for the goods and so your warranty lies with them.
If as you stated
'you not have a proof of purchase (which is always required when making a warranty claim)
and
'you can’t even name the dealer that sold you the product'
That is going to make this harder. Can you really not remember where the post came from???? If it is not that old then surely you must remember buying it?
Counterfit part!!
Why would a company want to 'recall' every product both real and fake!!!! That would cost a massive amount of money. Just think if rolex did it. They would have to go down the market and buy up all the 'genuine' Roolax and Bolex watches they could find!!!!
If the item is within the waranty period, it is a genuine warranty issue, you produce a valid proof of purchase to the store you purchased the item from I do not see how an issue can arrise.
CEN tests are meaningless if a specific production run has a problem, unless theyre claiming they test a post from every batch?
Given how long theyve been around if there is a design problem it would have been more extensively experienced by now, but a manufacturing problem could show up as a spike in time and potentially geography if it only affected a specific batch which had been shipped to one market.
I can certainly name where I purchased my out of warrantee post and the one that failed in under 4 weeks / rides came from a internet retailer in the UK on Silverfishes approved list of suppliers....... the whole purpose of starting this thread was to see if there was a patern or if I'd been genuinely unlucky
As I'd had a search on the web and hadn't seen if any one had asked the question "SDG is there a design Flaw"
KINGTUT - MemberI was going to order a saddle / post combo, I thought the breakage problems with earlier posts had been resolved.
Obviously not, I won't bother now.
I should add that I was mistaken when I posted the above, the early problems were with the saddle snapping not the post.
Any updates? Concerned about my micro I-beam post now!
Yes, nobody every got in contact and nobody offered to sort out my post!
Based on experiences highlighted you only have to be worried in 6+ months time (if you live in the UK)
Without wishing to discount the obvious failures apparent here, how many people own i-beam saddles/posts that have not failed? I do, and I've bent two saddles and a post before I got an i-beam and it's been fine for well over a year.
Saying there are 8 failures in a single thread on a forum does not mean that a product is inherently faulty, what you really need to see is the percentage failure rate in context. If there were only 16 posts sold in total, this would be a 50% fail, but if there were 16,000 then this drops down to 0.05%.
Most people will only ever complain about products and not praise them when asked so any complaints on an internet forum will not necessarily be a true reflection of a product's quality.
I will of course retract the above when I tear myself a new a-hole if mine breaks 😉
I bought a saddle post combo at the time this thread was started, i've used every week since, no problems yet.
[i]Its been kept secret but Sam Hill was breaking 1 or more on one practice race/run!!![/i]
I too carry several posts on every run I do.
I now have a new insight into how rumours spread!
An interesting point from AlasdairMc, I would comment that the manufacturer / importer implied that they’d only had acouple of failures…yet this thread attracted significantly more that they admitted to (maybe they don’t know or don’t log defects?)
I believe the product is inherently flawed and from personal experience would not recommend using them, particularly in cold weather….
I've got 7 bikes in total with varying makes of posts and in over 20yrs mountainbiking only had one other failure (a USE in the early 90's which they replace without any hassle....) compared to 2 SDG ibeams within the space of one month.
Compared using any usual of performance say; time, mileage or longevity or any combo of these; the of the performance of SDG I Beam seatposts has been shocking and I for one will not trust my safety to them
Unless you’ve got Kevlar reinforced shorts then I’d pick another post, or run the risk of having a ragged edged piece of aluminium tube rammed between you internal organs
So no reply from SDG, time for legal action boys, seriously if they have such scant disregard for your safety they do not deserve to be in business.
I think a thread on MTBR might help stir things up.
I've used them for ages on my DH and XC bike, have never had a single problem with them. Have had hours and hours of use and both are still working perfectly. Before getting the SDG's I used Race Face and Thomson posts both of which I broke.
Sam I'd be careful... I certainly won't be using they're posts again.....particularly in cold weather
Interesting coming back to this thread and not seeing any sort of resolution to it. There don't appear to have been any further failures, could this be due to riders stopping using I-Beam posts? I have a particular interest in that I have three bikes fitted with I-Beam posts and saddles, the oldest six years old, the newest pair around a year old. The thing that strikes me is that the failures seem to affect the newer micro posts, which have the head bonded into a tube. Mine is all one piece, so there is no joint to fail. Could the problem lie in the fact that the saddle is so much more rigid fore-and-aft, which may place a greater strain on the joint, especially in very cold conditions. I'm no engineer, but there's a sense to it; conventional saddles have a fair bit of flex, which would take the strain away from that joint. Pure speculation on my part, but it adds up to me, and I'm not stopping using mine.
CountZero of the two failures, which occurred to me one, was on a 12 month old 'old' style post and the other on a 4 ride old 'New' micro post...
Common denominator for these failures and for one the other failures posted here was that they were 27.2 dia and had been ridden in cold weather failures seem to occur to the rear of the post where the head is bonded into place
As for the question of usage or stress one broke on Weavern Lane nr Chippenham and the other on the Canal path to Laycock
Despite getting a refund under warrantee for the 2nd post, I've not seen any one get an explanation from the importer or manufacturer
I really liked the I Beam system but, after having a 2nd one fail after 4 rides on nothing better than canal paths, I have extreme doubts about the durability of the head & post junction and if anyone is using these posts be alert for creaking noises as these proceeded both catastrophic failures
Hmmmm.....plastic seatposts....
Just fell victim to an SDG I-Beam failure. Reading this thread it looks and sounds like an identical failure to that described in this thread.
[IMG] 
[/IMG]
The post/saddle was fitted to my Intense Tracer and I was only riding the Marin trail in N Wales, Hardly extreme!
Still waiting for a decision from Silverfish on the warranty claim.
Will update the thread as soon as I have an answer.
Just had a close call - thanks to Martinxyz for spotting it! That's a crack running down from the top of my seatpost.
[url= http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5150/5642455193_feac500b66_z.jp g" target="_blank">
I've been using SDG I-beams on all my bikes for quite a time now and never had a problem. Built this bike up for road use last week and it's done all of 120 miles on the road. One factor is that the saddle is about 10-15mm forward of the position it would be in normally while I wait for a shorter stem, so the leverage is higher.
Although the seatpost has been used on my cruiser earlier, it has never seen arduous use.
I'm not greatly upset, but very concerned at the potential damage that could have been inflicted when that crack propagated and the post failed.
The I-beam seatpost on my rigid 29er which has seen several 24 hour races looks perfectly ok, but now I'll have to worry about that too.
Edit: [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/ibeam-seatpost-woes ]another I-beam thread[/url]