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TBh I have bought loads of stuff from them and have never had a problem. Mistakes always happen. A few days wait after New Year is not the end of the world OP needs to cool his jets.
For balance have ordered a couple sets of wheels (including in the recent sale) and other orders over the past five years and have always been really pleased. Thought I had an issue with the first set of wheels and sent an email and got a helpful swift reply and offer to sort. Turned out it was my error anyway! I would definitely use them again, and have been impressed at how they have branched their offering out over the years. Still miss their brake pads though although appreciate they've moved on!
Original pads have got so much cheaper now its hard to be sad about not getting cheap knock offs now. OE ones are so much better.
I've been very happy with the products I've purchased from them (a n/w chainring for me then one for my son, brake hoses, and other bits), but I have found their communication wanting.
I know how frustrating it can be when you've ordered something that you're relying on for a ride and it either doesn't come on time or it's faulty!
I hope you give them another chance after this...
Slight tangent, what's the current thoughts on Superstar Kevlar versus Uberbike Race Matrix? SS still have pads for my brakes in stock so thinking of grabbing some
I wouldnt trust anyone to build a wheel for me.
best way is to buy the parts and assemble the wheel your self - then pay a local shop or mechanic to dish/tension it.
this way you can lube the spoke threads with the correct lube and know its a bonza job.
Afterall, the first thing you will do when you get a new wheel is balance it, right?
I have done 3 wheels like this and have refurbed 6 Crossmax Wheels this way.
Sometimes its the only way you can get what you want - in this case I wanted a V brake UST 26" rear wheel.
Funnily enough fotorat I normally do build my own. I bought theirs as the 40% off made them super cheap- which I guess caused half the issues in the first place with so many people ordering them.
I wouldnt trust anyone to build a wheel for me.
best way is to buy the parts and assemble the wheel your self – then pay a local shop or mechanic to dish/tension it.
So you're giving the wheel to a shop to sort out the most important part of the build. Any monkey can put the bits in the right place!
also I normally drop a spot of 3in1 on every nipple when i get new wheels so that solves that...
Balance? What? HOw?
Personally I would have no qualms about buying a set of wheels from SS.
I was/am skint though so couldn't take advantage of the deal.😋
Balance? What? HOw?
Of course not. Round enough is round enough for bicycle wheels. Check the spokes every so often and give it a quick belt with a hammer (spoke key) if it's wobbly but who balances bike wheels? The tyre and tube/sealant'd chuck it straight back out.
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I wouldnt trust anyone to build a wheel for me.
best way is to buy the parts and assemble the wheel your self – then pay a local shop or mechanic to dish/tension it.
Don't get this. You've just contradicted yourself in the space of two sentences, as the bit that defines the longevity and strength of the wheel is not the lacing (unless you completely screw it up of course!), but the tensioning process. Also, most LBS or bike mechanics do wheel building / repair as one of many services they offer and are unlikely to produce wheels to the same consistency as a dedicated wheel-builder (although obviously, YMMV).
FWIW, if you're going to the faff of sourcing the bits and assembling the wheel, you might as well learn how to tension and true the wheel too. It's not hard, although it can be time consuming if you are inexperienced, but there's no magic involved. Be systematic (Musson's book helps here) and take things steady and you'll produce a wheel that's every bit as good as one a shop will produce...and you can bore your mates stupid with tales of your homemade wheels 🙂
(Source: me, (very) amateur wheel builder, who can now claim that 75% of the regular use wheels were built by me in the garage and, despite my son's best efforts, none have required more than a tweak in many hundreds of miles of use)
y'all need to check who's posting prior to responding...
Thought I'd order another set of wheels with their bargain £100 offer, whilst I wait for my original wheels to be re-laced with the correct spokes and nipples. This time they have turned up with the wrong freehub on ... great service, not 🙁
Mistakes happen. Now see how they respond and judge.
Lightning does strike twice GeForce...
'Send the freehub back and we'll send you a replacement when we receive it back' ... So that's 4 visits to the post office (the first 2 DPD return shops wouldn't accept the wheels as they were too big, so had to go to the depot 20 miles away!), with no gesture of goodwill.
It's a 1 star rating from me! Shame it's so hard to support uk manufacturing companies when they are so incompetent.
That's unfair, it's not totally incompetence on their part.
They don't really give a shit either.
GeForce Junky
Subscriber
‘Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back
Ok, that's ****. They have messed up your orders twice and won't even send you a freehub until you send the old one back??!!
Isn't it a small family run business trying to be a "bit different" from the rest?
They should be all over complaints like this on a public forum. "Keep the freehub, we'll send the right one,our apologies."
There are mistakes and there is bloody minded "couldn't care less" mistakes. This is the later. 👎
Avoid Super Star seems to be the moral here. So much for their mission statement BS on their website.
Shame it’s so hard to support uk manufacturing companies when they are so incompetent
Don they manufacture in the UK? EDIT I see they assemble wheels tho 🙂
Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back
That's just pants. FFS, just send the right part out and wait for the wrong one to arrive back in the post.
That's what they did when they sent me the wrong axle width on a wheel one time, but they seem a bit more stretched on the CS front now.
Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back
That’s just pants. FFS, just send the right part out and wait for the wrong one to arrive back in the post.
That's totally unrealistic for an online business - I guarantee you'd end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.
In situations like the one described, if it were our fault, I would usually reimburse the customer for the return postage and knock off the original postage, as a gesture of goodwill. Sending out a replacement before receiving the original back is generally not an option. People can be incredibly dishonest/lazy.
As an example, a customer recently kicked off about not receiving something within the 2-3 days we quoted. I refunded him, then shortly after I did that he emailed to tell me it had arrived. I asked if he could reiumburse us but he's been strangely silent for the last 10 days, so has effectively got £160 worth of our products for free. Surprised people can be so unethical.
The moral of the story is that it's very easy to throw your toys out of the pram with online companies, but in most cases they're just trying to make a living and do as good a job as they can.
JP
jjprestidge
That’s totally unrealistic for an online business – I guarantee you’d end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.
Ordinarily I would totally agree. However As they got 2 consecutive orders wrong for the op I think that would call for going just that little bit further for him if I were running super star.
As it is, this thread will be sitting there in search results showing poor CS from super star when it could have shown a busy company going out of its way to rectify a mistake it made on 2 orders. One right after the other.
I guess I could be accused of throwing my toys out of the pram but I don't think the op can. He seems to have been far more obliging than super star have in all fairness.
That's my take on it all anyway.
Perhaps use your local bike shop?
"davosaurusrex
Subscriber
Slight tangent, what’s the current thoughts on Superstar Kevlar versus Uberbike Race Matrix? SS still have pads for my brakes in stock so thinking of grabbing some"
I'd have the kevlars. I really liked the racematrixes when they worked, better than the kevlars, but then I had them go all weird and inconsistent out in the alps so they ended up in the bin. kevlars went in and no issues for the rest of the week. But the racematrixes were damn good at first.
I'm reasonably sure the uberbike kevlars are the same pad, and probably the same pad elsewhere too. Uberbike haven't exactly covered themselves in glory either, I'd sooner go with SS personally.
Hello sorry that you have been impacted by a mis pack twice. Due to the offers we have been inundated by crazy demand, so a couple of mispacks went out last week. As you have said we have rectified the problem in a fair and efficient way.
As you have an anonymous profile I can’t tell who you are to look into your problem.
I appreciate the feedback from everyone commenting, I can see the sentiment but I’ll explain why we have this process for rectifying issues. Firstly from past experience where we have gone out of our way to help by shipping an item before a return, in the majority of cases people just don’t bother holding their side of the deal. This just means all of our honest customers end up footing the bill with higher prices.
Second as we aren’t making a huge margin (or any on the clearance stuff) we don’t have money to burn in extravagant public marketing gestures. The people who are doing this are already charging you 2-3 times more for the exact same product than we do. so you have already paid in advance for your spares and service which you probably aren’t going to need...
So I’ll apologise again. Dave is on it sorting your return. Over 250 pairs of wheels built and shipped this week with only a couple of mistakes. We aim for zero but we aren’t Amazon with robotic warehousing we are just humans.
Neil Superstar
That’s totally unrealistic for an online business – I guarantee you’d end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.
I disagree. I run an online business (much smaller than Superstar mind and the average sale is ~£50) and if I bugger up I'll send the right part out or correct my mistake FOC and wait for the wrong part to arrive back. The majority or people, when treated with a bit of respect and trust, will do the right thing in my experience, but your mileage obviously varies. If I was SS I'd have just sent the right part out and waited for the wrong one to arrive back. If it didn't, I'd chalk it up to experience and move on. I get that buying stock in and not making much on it can cause problems though.
edit- I availed myself of the clearance wheel offer last night- decent rims on decent hubs that'll fit anything for £100 per pair? Really? Go on then.
I don't understand why more companies don't offer to send out replacements before receiving the old one back on the condition that the customer provides billing details and agrees to be billed if the first one is not received back in a defined time period. I'm happy to agree to that when offered and it's always gone smoothly.
We do in a way offer this, but you can’t just keep people’s data and bill them, infact we never know what the customers payment details are. So Just order the item online and send the other back for a refund. It’s usually suggested by customer service as an option in most contacts but depends on what the problem is and if we need to look at it first.
The reason we usually want the item back to inspect first in some cases is to double check that the solution solves the customers problem.
Really genuinely we want to help people as quickly as possible. Hence why we have standard contact and return processes.
Neil Superstar
The freehub is on it's way back, thankfully I'm not in a huge rush so it not much of a problem. The most annoying thing is the DPD issue, they don't state on their website that only depots accept larger parcels, might be worth adding to your email if you send customers a return label via DPD. Two wasted trips to the two nearest collection shops was pretty annoying!
My refund landed on my card yesterday.
17 days since I ordered the wheels originally I can now afford to order some from elsewhere.
I use superstar a lot along with friends and have always had fantastic service even when it's been a warranty claim.
Imo they make the best pedals and I actually admire Neil and what he's achieved .
Things break people make mistakes sometimes he tells people how it is under pressure but he's human and selling bike parts .
He's invested in what he believes in UK made .
Yes he probably likes trump and his favourite meal is a frey bentos and probably has a series link for naked attraction set up but Jesus last time I checked he hadn't killed anyone .
Pretty sure not killing someone is low down on the list of the main tick list of running a successful business that people rate. In fact I doubt its even on the list.
Not annoying your customers to the point they talk about it together on the internet affecting future sales should be pretty high though.
It was a tonque in cheek comment .
This forum is mainly full of negativity so I'm just balancing it out with my experience.
Good luck getting sorted but I think ss explanation is perfectly understandable imo .
Bought stuff from Surperstar. Said stuff turned up. It was what I ordered. It did what I wanted it to.
Oh, wait - I did have issues with their pads squealing no matter what I did. Bit before that a different type of SS pad were absolutely fine, so no odifferent to a lot of pad suppliers then.
So, yeah, happy.
As for the retunr policy, I get people's frustration. You've got the wrong thing. You really needed or wanted the thing you ordered and now you are having to return the wrong thing, maybe playing silly beggars with DPD or whoever. It's bloody annoying.
Using your LBS would probably prevent all that - but your LBS can't match SS prices. SO you didn't.
But contrary to Kayla1's ecperience, I find that a LOT of people are forgetful / lazy or (actually) just downright dishonest. They see Superstar as a company and everyonen knows it's ok to defraud a Company - they're not people. If you disgaree take a look at the threads here from people saying they'd keep goods that they had already been refunded for, not paid for or recevied in error. SO I can see why SS don't give them the opportunity to do so.
Si
No, I (first page) tried buying a SS chainring specifically because I wanted to buy a product made in the UK by a British company - but after a couple of runs at it they couldn't send me the right item. So I bought a UK made chainring from another British company in a swift, painless transaction.
LOL, the replacement wheels have arrived and guess what, wrong again! This set has black nipples now, but still has 2-1.8-2 mm Sapim Race spokes rather than the 2-1.5-2 mm Sapim Lasers they were advertised with.
DPD were on fine form as usual. I redirected the parcel to my work address on Friday. Email this morning saying we've left them on your front porch (open to the main road and in clear view).
Just to provide a bit of balance.....noticed one of my Nano pedals had lost its seal so I ordered a pair of seals last night. I'm pleased to see they were dispatched 1st class today but really impressed they support their products by making the replacement parts available.
And now, for yet more incompetence, they have sent me another shimano freehub as a replacement!
My basic rule of thumb is:
Don't use companies that made their initial entrance to the market selling high-volume low-cost bits to buy high ticket items.
It happens time and time again that the business expands into higher-ticket items, but the infrastructure (and cost base) doesn't catch up. It improves, but it is hardly ever as good as a business that set out to sell high-ticket items with good aftersales.
You can get perfectly good high-ticket items like wheelsets from Superstar, and at a good price, but you are gambling that you aren't going to have a problem in the future.
From experience I now only buy consumables like brake pads and chainrings from Superstar. Anything that is likely to involve more than 'order goods -> pay for goods -> receive goods', I try to use someone else. Or if the value of the order is low enough that I won't feel the need to get mired into dealing with customer service.
Hello this seems to a bit of a mountain/molehill. To give our side of the story there was a typo on the description for one set of wheels which has been corrected -it said they came with race spokes in two places (and the photos) and laser in another. I think the builders misunderstood what the issue your return the wheels for as that wheel should come with the spokes you have received, but you were after the “incorrect” spokes which weren’t mentioned in error on the website anymore.
I apologise it’s been a faff but we will sort it for you, as we always do. It seems trouble comes in threes. But we will honour the typo on this occasion as discussed already, or just return them for a refund.
The other couple of hundred wheelsets have gone out fine, it’s just a human mistake/ misunderstanding which we are sorting.
Neil Superstar