Am I being unreasonable? – Sonder Bikes

No, but they would be quite in order not to offer sale deals on it though. This is common practice with many bike shops I understand.

I bought mine in sale. No c2w charge. Great to deal with. Customisable and very happy with it. Not contesting the experience of the OP was bad, just providing a bit of good old balance based on my experience.

I spent weeks with Alpkit arguing about a broken zip on a jacket. They seemed to be implying that my wife didn’t know how a zip worked. To be fair, they replaced the entire zip in the end but it wasn’t easy and would certainly make me think twice about using them for anything in the future (around the same time, one of my own Alpkit jackets developed a fault but I’ve just ignored it as I could do without the aggro of dealing with them again…).

This is why it’s vitally important to never work in customer service,  sales or any role directly dealing with customers.

@aidy

I think you’re probably over simplifying it – most bike companies will bulk order in the components well in  advance and in bulk. To then potentially customise a large number of them it’s going to need loads of additional parts and time to deal with getting the different bits in and fitting them as a different spec. This will have £££ to it both in terms of parts and labour time.

In this case they are also likely taking a C2W hit to the bottom line as well.

I’ve had a couple of custom C2W builds with Sonder and have found it easy and no unexpected cost implications.

Have you tried picking up the phone and talking to some one?  I’ve always found their customer service to be really helpful.

I’ve had several bikes from Sonder and have had good experiences iincluding my latest being delivered a few days after ordering (Camino Ti).

That said. I upgraded seatpost on order to Ti and got charged full retail – no reduction for the alloy one I didn’t get. Small beans so not a worry.

On the downside, the BB died within a month and also the gear shifting was very stiff from the start (GRX 1×12) and having done some research I came to the conclusion it needs a specific cable (not the Fibrax one fitted).

I raised a query on both and despite multiple chases on my part have had no response beyond their chief mechanic being too busy to answer.

I’ve fitted a Hope BB and the proper cable and all is now good, but I am probably down best part of £200  and not getting a proper response is a bit of a disappointment on a top of their range purchase.

BTW – their 10% dividend concept doesn’t work out quite as I expected either…

They’re cheap. Something has to give.

daverhp – fitting non-original cables and casings is a mortal sin that many major brands partake in. It often leads to utterly crap shifting. But it is an issue I have seen in sooo many different brand bikes – like the “big S” too – not to mention that bike brands put on “Sram” or “Shimano” drivetrain, but instead of a good original manufacturer chain, they put some KMC cheapo chain, or in some cases, the cheapest possible brand chain – like SX from Sram that will rust the first time it sees use. You can find substitutions like this in even very major brand e-bikes costing 6000+ e. Its nuts, but you got to get every penny possible to shareholders, I guess.

And casings and cables are almost always something like Jagwire, even when everything in the drivetrain is Sram or Shimano. Works much worse.

Sometimes I have had to replace all internally routed cables and casings when doing a first maintenance to expensive road bikes, when the gears work like utter crap because of this, and customer was not happy at all with what they had done at the factory.

There’s an issue with GRX 12 speed and acute cable bends with internal routing. I pointed it out to Sonder more as a bit of info they might not be aware of as its quite specific conditions to cause it.

That and the premature BB failure have cost me a chunk though, so no reply is a bit of a letdown as I generally have a high opion of Sonder. Never mind, great bike 😀

Am I being unreasonable?  I ordered a Colibri on the 30th March, in the sale, with 105, the upgraded wheels and tubeless conversion.
The tag line read “Buy now.  Be riding in 10 days”.

My order had a build date starting on 22/04/2024 (more than 10 days!), which has now been pushed back to 29/04/2024 (almost a month!).
Everything appears to be in stock, so I’m not sure what the delay is.

I’ve emailed them, of course, but is this normal for Alpkit / Sonder?

Yes, it’s normal for them. I ordered a Camino when it was ‘riding in 5 days’. When I got a third email postponing to the fourth week after order, I was in a bit of a bind cos I really wanted it for a certain date. So I phoned them to explain. They said it was limited by the time to build the wheels, but offered to do their best and get back to me. They never got back to me, but I chased them every day like a looser, and they got the bike built on time.

Overall I was happy, but original estimate and communication could be better.

Propain are another company who offer customisations of their stock builds, who offer a fast delivery, and they have a considerable delay. Their communication was even worse though, taking many days to respond to an email. I love the bike, but it was a sour taste to start the experience.

It’s a build to order company, build dates are an estimate and with the huge number of options available and a recent sale it’s bound to take longer than you might want.

Should they be answering emails all day or getting on building your bike? Or hiring more staff solely to answer emails and significantly raising their prices to pay for them.

It’s a build to order company, build dates are an estimate

Sure. But prominently stating ready to ride in 10 days and then taking over 3 times that isn’t cool.

No estimate is better than a very bad estimate, especially in the days of most purchases arriving within a day or two.

I ordered Easter weekend when the wait was 5 to 10 days. Not had a single email yet but I’m aware the date has been pushed out to the start of May.

Maybe I’ve been riding bikes too long, but unless you can go into a shop and wheel the bike out there and then, isn’t this pretty much always the case?

Certainly was when I worked in a bike shop in the 90s boom.

Cycle to work costs the shop 15% of the value to process. At that point all good will has to end and you need to pick-up the tab for every penny or the shop starts losing money. It’s nothing personal of course, just the reality of cycle to work means with someone else’s hand in the till, in your case in a big way they cannot spare you a single penny on the bike.

I don’t know how they worked it out, maybe there’s a mistake, but you are still losing them a bunch of money Vs someone paying on a card say, so go easy!

But pay on a debit card as I did, and you don’t get any more.

I’m just subsidising the C2W hit.

My preordered built to order Cotic arrived on time, fwiw.

A positive slant; not bikes but clothing repairs.

Last Wednesday, we sent a pair of Montane Featherlight trousers to them for the repair of two rips.

That’s them back today, fixed.  The repairs are very neat and barely visible.  Happy days..

Regarding shops not offering sale bikes on c2w scheme purchases – I had this experience in a specialized concept store. I was told that the 60% off the bike wasn’t applicable as I wanted to use a c2w voucher

I went elsewhere that did offer c2w on end of season discounts

It depends on the shop and the brand/distributor.

A smaller shop is having to either buy bike upfront and is then discounting from their own margin at the end of the year to sell off any that didn’t sell at RRP.  At this point it’s possible they’re making no margin or even a loss to clear the shop floor or maintain cashflow over the winter if things aren’t going well.

Somewhere like Paul’s is buying up stock from brands/distributors cheaply at the end of the year. So they’re still making their margin even selling at 60% off because they bought the bike from the brand at 60% off the trade price.