Anyone interested in a large black and white Helius CC, due to arrive in the UK soon? Complete with a 4 yr warranty?!?

I am, if that’s a serious question.

I struggle to see how you bent it without knowing as the rear triangle on the CC is built out of extruded box section!

It sounds like the type of damage most likely to occur at the hands of a courier stacking heavy stuff on top of the frame box when it was enroute from Germany to Nicolai UK or from them to you. Sadly that’s almost impossible to determine now and it would seem strange that it didn’t exhibit the problems from new if that was the case.

Don’t cut of your nose to spite your face though by selling it. Too good a bike to sell just because you’re angry with the distributor/manufacturer.

How did you pay for it? cash or cc?

The first port of call for any queries about a frame is our dealer network. They have experience of servicing and adjustment of the frames and, in most cases, can solve any problems an owner is having. For most people this is far easier, and cheaper, than shipping a bike to us.

The frame was sold direct as it was end-of-line but, given Phil was Sheffield based, it made more sense for him to visit 18Bikes than ship it to us in London, especially if it might have been a simple fix.

The warranty on the frame is with the manufacturer not with the distributor. They are the only one who can make a decision on whether a frame is warranty or not – it makes no difference who you purchase from.

I don’t know why the Phil paid so much to ship the frame – checking again today £1000 insurance cover is available for <£50 today using the carrier we suggested in the box size in which we ship frames.

Delays were not all due to us. Germany did take 3 weeks to examine the frame but the owner took 3 weeks to ship the frame to Germany. Phil’s emails to me were, I believe, always responded to within 48 hours but then sometimes met with > 2 weeks of silence.

The factory assessment was that this was NOT a warranty issue and that this damage could not have occurred in normal use.

Phil demanded “evidence that clearly shows that the deformation of the strut could realistically be caused by the owner in normal everyday applications. I would expect that this would take the form of information providing answers to the following questions. 1) What measurable load would the strut have to be subjected to in order to cause that deformation? 2) How could that kind of load/stress have to be applied to that strut so as not to leave a visible impact mark?”. We could no more ‘prove’ this than he could prove that nothing had ever happened to the frame.

We had discussed this with Germany and Phil, and offered him a choice of a) realignment b) replacement of the struts or c) a discount against a new frame. After a number of emails we were at stalemate. Nicolai had told us that they did not consider this a warranty issue and the owner was not prepared to accept their decision. We had done as much as we could do, short of taking the hit ourselves, so passed him on to Germany.

Great response Simon.
Loving the CC.
Richard

Re bikebag/stacking- not possible. The OP would have noticed a warped bent wheel as well? if box-section triangle could be crushed no? I.e forces involved.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member

The first port of call for any customer wanting a decent bike with top notch customer service is to purchase an Orange.

Shortened that one for you mate.

I hope I never deal with zulu eleven, being in the trade.

3 weeks to examine the frame?

Another STW’er came to check my Turner for size/fit tonight as Turner had offered him a new front triangle for $400 as he wanted/felt like really needed the size up.

Plus why did silverfish give me a warranty answer in the same afternoon?

I understand and can see your point to a degree. If I bought such a premium-priced frame though I’d expect frame pickup as the minimum immediate offer if there were no signs of user abuse (crash damage).

Even reduced I bet the frame was over a grand excluding shock?

Worse is the manufacturers 3week lag to examine. These should be immediate/urgent situations.

Anyway, moving along.

nmdbase – Member
I hope I never deal with zulu eleven, being in the trade.

I’m baffled. What has he said that’s wrong? Just because he’s disagreed with OP? Because he’s offered an alternative viewpoint grounded in experience?

Re zulu-elevens comment. So why do manufacturers offer 2, 5 or lifetime warranties then?

I’m baffled. What has he said that’s wrong? Just because he’s disagreed with OP? Because he’s offered an alternative viewpoint grounded in experience?

Just that I would hope in real life he comes across better than on here.

Well, as soon as I have the beans I’ll be buying another Nic, (a crap powder coater killed the first one). When the numbers come up I’ll have a fleet! I’m rather taken with the carbon belt driven Argon.

pppuuuurrrdddyyy

The warranty on the frame is with the manufacturer not with the distributor

But you are the seller in this case as well as the distributor. So I would have thought that the seller(Nicolai UK) would have to deal with the warranty claim and the customer direct.

If I buy a honda car I deal with the dealer where I bought the car from not the factory in Swindon.

All my experiences with Nicolai UK have been positive, even if they are sometimes slower to respond than I would like.

Shortened that one for you mate.

jeez ok we get it 🙄

I would love to know what a single strut actually costs (if that’s all they needed to replace). Having taken a bike or two apart, there is not much to them.

I bet Turner would have replaced it FOC.

What would it really have cost Nicolai to replace it as a goodwill gesture?

This seems to be one of those genuinely unproveable situations which shows how a manufacturer treats a customer – IMO Nicolai UK comes across well (given Simon’s post) but Germany less so. A new part would have cost them **** all and done some great pr, they’ve ended us with the same cost but a bad rep. instead. D’oh!

How do the latter respond in run of the mill situations?

Just out of interest how do the big firms like Trek, Spesh, Giant etc perform with warranty claims?

It would seem there is a certain superficial kudos in the MTB world when it comes to owning something niche, exclusive or made from unobtanium etc etc….and then lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth when things go wrong and said small company don’t deal with the issue as the purchaser would like.

In 20 years of riding I have owned a GT, a Saracen, a Trek and a Kona….terribly boring I know but all have been faultless and never been off the road for warranty work.

That said, I wouldn’t mind a Cotic Soul.

+1 for cynic-al !

had some “issues” with nic some years back (directly!)..
so I´m not really surprised ..

Just out of interest how do the big firms like Trek, Spesh, Giant etc perform with warranty claims?

I have had experience with the latter two. Put simply – Brilliant.

Ive been dealing with nicolai for a good number of years. They’re not perfect, it can be mildly frustrating sometimes getting info out of them for example. However, those that love nicolai, do so because theyre not a huge corporate monster. They’re engineers not salesmen and they make arguably the best frames on the planet. All hand built with amazing attention to detail. It’s a small company with a small number of staff. I suspect the main reason the warranty dept is not as good as the big boys is because they very rarely get warranty returns! I’ve been a dealer for maybe 5 years now and I can’t think of a single frame I’ve sold that has had to go back under warranty.

I agree that there are certainly improvements they could make to some aspects of their dealings with customers but when buying into a brand like nicolai you have to expect they’re going to be a bit different. You need a bit of patience and some tolarance as youre dealing with people(and engineering people at that!), not a huge pr machine. Same goes for pretty much any exotic item worth having. Ducati, aprilia, lotus, ferrari, mv etc. very few of the truly desirable, iconic brands are perfect. If you can’t accept this you need to buy a specialized, trek, Toyota, Honda etc. all make great products and no doubt have far better pr departments.

As a dealer this probably isn’t something that should be said out loud but believe me, the customer isn’t always right! My business is a bit different from most and I’m fortunate to have a lot of tolerant, patient customers but you’ll always get the odd totally unreasonable types that are never happy and as someone said above, they tend to make the most noise!

I don’t see why the OP had to post his frame to Germany himself or have ANY dealings with Germany at all.

Nicolai UK in name only it seems.

You need a bit of patience and some tolarance as youre dealing with people(and engineering people at that!), not a huge pr machine. Same goes for pretty much any exotic item worth having. Ducati, aprilia, lotus, ferrari, mv etc. very few of the truly desirable, iconic brands are perfect. If you can’t accept this you need to buy a specialized, trek, Toyota, Honda etc. all make great products and no doubt have far better pr departments.

I can kind of see where you’re coming from, but the pr department doesn’t deal with warranty!
There’s a fair few small bike companies where the customer service is pretty exemplary, companies which value the name of the brand, and go out of their way to protect it from damage- Turner and Ibis spring to mind.
In the same way good retailers as well don’t have large pr departments, and still go out of their way to develop and retain their customer base- you’re a good example of this yourself!

Surely your experience with warranty returns (i.e. none) might give rise to the thought that with Nicolai’s rep for bulletproof frames, the rarity of warranty issues and the brand’s quite obvious customer loyalty, that in this case giving the customer the benefit of the doubt might have been worth a ton of goodwill? It’s not like the problem is endemic, is it?

The seller asking the customer to deal with the manufacturer is a bit off, imo.

especially small companies with a small number of stuff should have a generous and excellent handling for their few warranty issues…
the best,cheapest and most efficient pr they can get..

Sorry for the absence guys, had to go and work my unsociable hours job 🙁
Some interesting comments on here, especially Nicolai UK being unwilling to “take the hit” in regards to my “warranty claim” I guess this is my major disappointment, that after my supposedly bombproof overbuilt engineers wet dream of a bike breaking in less than a year.

There are several bike models out there that are like the car equivalent of Aston Martins, 911’s etc, they turn your head, if they are parked up you go and look at them, touch them and go “wow”. I considered the Nicolai to be one of those, its a prestige frame.

I found myself having the advantage of a one off bonus payment from work (and seeing how the economy is screwed I figured it would be the last for a good while) and decided to go for the Helius after much research on t’internet.

When I was told that it was faulty, this was after weeks and weeks of trying to establish what was wrong with the bike. I changed wheels and brakes in an effort to eliminate all possible causes. When I took the bike to 18 bikes I was a defeated man, broken and fed up. When I was told the rear end was bent, I felt physically sick inside. This was my one off payment prestige frame. My Aston Martin had a knackered chassis.
I had bought two Aston Martins, I was that happy with them. Did that make any difference to my cause with Nicolai UK? Nope.

The reason for my 2 week silence with Nicolai was because I was on holiday. I was told to send the bike to Germany 1 week before I went to North Wales, I was hoping to take my Helius. I frantically sourced a 2nd hand Soul (I had sold my original as I was convinced the Helius was “the” bike) and built it up to take on holiday.

I don’t consider my questions to Nicolai UK to be unreasonable seeing as I was told I “must have” hit something, something that would bend the strut and not leave a mark. The bike has not been transported in a horizontal fashion while I have owned it. I have been mtb’ing for the last 22yrs, and I have owned many bikes, trashed many bikes and been involved in the business of frame building. I consider myself to have a reasonable idea of how a frame while in my possession could be damaged. It was at this point that Simon directed me to question Nicolai in Germany, who never answered the questions. Karl Nicolai told me that his sales manager would sort the matter out. After a month of waiting for a reply I contacted the sales guy and that when he made the offer.

Either Nicolai UK were being treated badly by Nicolai in Germany and just passed it on, or I just got unlucky. Either way both Nicolai’s are going to be sold, one has never been ridden.

Look at it from the point of Nicholai. They manufacture in house unlike the big brands so are pretty sure of the quality of the product leaving the factory. Being German engineers, you can be sure that the QC is pretty rigorous and I bet they are convinced that a deformed frame would never slip through.

Some one buys a frame and rides it with no issues for the best part of a year and only then starts making complaints about a misalignment. The fact that he claims not to have ridden it much is not exactly easy to prove (he might even have taken it abroad and had it chucked around by cargo handlers etc). All they know is that is has taken a VERY long time for the customer to complain about something that should have been apparent very quickly if it had been a manufacturing issue.

Replacing for free might have been the best in terms of PR but its one of those commercial decisions. You believe the bike left the factory in good shape so why lose money (that a small company can ill afford to do) to placate one customer who in your view is probably chancing his arm. Nicolai UK is unfortunately just caught in the middle so you cant really blame him.

I guess the brands that subcontract their manufacturing are more inclined to replace stuff as they just pass on the loss to their manufacturers and it costs them nothing.

I fully understand the issues of proving my case and that of the manufacturer, my job consists of dealing with people who lie all day long. I just feel extremely let down by a German QC frame, considered overbuilt, that didn’t last as long as a £500 steel HT. Although I would say that just because you are a small firm, that it is more important to consider customer service than a large firm. I also don’t agree with the view that a fault must show itself within the first week or so of riding, metal fatigue takes time to fail does it not?

Just for the record this is the first time I have *ever* had cause to complain to a bike manufacturer over such an issue. First time in 22yrs of biking <shakes head>

But you’re not claiming that its metal fatigue, you’re claiming that either it was out of alignment from new (in which case it took over a year to notice) or that it somehow deformed on its own whilst sat in the garage, something that nobody seemingly has ever seen happen before.

It seems like I’ve come in for some stick above for, in my opinion, telling it like I see it – if somebody doesn’t think I’ve been gentle enough in doing so, well, sorry, I’m a straight speaking Northerner, welcome to the world of cultural diversity.

Reading things like the customer demanding:

“evidence that clearly shows that the deformation of the strut could realistically be caused by the owner in normal everyday applications. I would expect that this would take the form of information providing answers to the following questions. 1) What measurable load would the strut have to be subjected to in order to cause that deformation? 2) How could that kind of load/stress have to be applied to that strut so as not to leave a visible impact mark?”

Only reinforces my opinion, that in this case, Nicolai UK, and probably Germany could have done nothing to placate this customer short of rolling over on something they are 100% confident is not a warranty issue.

I think that there’s possibly some fair argument on the shipping charges back to the factory for inspection, you could argue that it should have been charges back to the UK importer, I suppose that it depends if reasonable shipping charges would have been refunded if it was shown to be a valid warranty claim (?) certainly thats a fairly common warranty condition.

As I said before, inevitably sometimes you have to draw a line somewhere between reasonable, and not reasonable, and as an impartial bystander I think that the offer made by Nicolai, in the circumstances, is reasonable.

Replacing for free might have been the best in terms of PR but its one of those commercial decisions.

it sure is. Nicolai’s cost would have been a couple of hundred euros at best. For that they would have had a loyal customer who was likely to extol the virtues of their brand and may well have bought more frames, or at least recommended the brand to others. What do they have now?

I know there are probably scores of people who chance their arm with things on warranty, but if both sides of the story are correct then a simple gesture by Nicolai could have resolved this without a thread bemoaning their warranty process.

edit – re-read the OP and their 130 quid replacement could have been offered as a goodwill gesture at the outset, which imo would have probably gone a long way to avoiding this thread in the first place.

On that principle, a company would have to roll over on every warranty claim for fear of a gun of bad PR being held against their head.

The impression I’ve got from this is that they’re 100% sure its not a warranty (a decision that in my own experience you think over very carefully before making), and have tried to come to a reasonable compromise. They could have taken a hard line, but have offered to replace the whole rear end for a reduced fee.

At the end of the day the most important thing here is that *I know* that I have not subjected the frame to any horizontal loading while the rear dropouts were braced. That being the only explanation offered by Simon at Nicolai UK. That I am 100% sure of. So if standing by what you know is true, even though you know that you cannot prove this makes you an awkward customer, someone who shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt then thats my fate.

“sorry, I’m a straight speaking Northerner, welcome to the world of cultural diversity” <face palm>

z-11 i agree its a difficult call, but it looks like it took a months worth or wrangling to get that reduced settlement.

the bad PR gun can only be used though if the warranty claim has reasonable grounds. If you came on here for example and complained that a bike hucked off a cliff hadn’t been accepted as a warranty you’d get flamed.

Nicolai’s cost would have been a couple of hundred euros at best.

And a tacit admission that their manufacturing and QC is not as good as they believe it to be. Which for a German would be very difficult to do and would probably compromise the brand more than this discussion on here.

i dont think that a goodwill gesture such as we’re talking about compromises their position? They obviously couldn’t find a manufacturing defect, which means it was like that when the customer bought it but after it left the factory, or it was done in his posession. Either way, the frame isn’t right and with nobody accepting liability i think a compensated offer is a good outcome. Just because they make the offer isn’t an admission of liability, in the same way that if the customer accepts it its not an admission of their liability either.

I can kind of see where you’re coming from, but the pr department doesn’t deal with warranty!
There’s a fair few small bike companies where the customer service is pretty exemplary, companies which value the name of the brand, and go out of their way to protect it from damage- Turner and Ibis spring to mind.
In the same way good retailers as well don’t have large pr departments, and still go out of their way to develop and retain their customer base- you’re a good example of this yourself!

Surely your experience with warranty returns (i.e. none) might give rise to the thought that with Nicolai’s rep for bulletproof frames, the rarity of warranty issues and the brand’s quite obvious customer loyalty, that in this case giving the customer the benefit of the doubt might have been worth a ton of goodwill? It’s not like the problem is endemic, is it?

The seller asking the customer to deal with the manufacturer is a bit off, imo.

I totally agree vinny. Like I said, they’re not perfect. The frames are great and the peoplenive had dealings with at nicolai come across as decent and passionate about what they do. However I totally accept there is room for improvement on the customer relations front. On saying that, I had a customer order a custom fr a while back. when it turned up the customer realized that it was slightly restricted in travel compared to a stock frame(this was down to the custom size and geo requested). As nicolai hadn’t informed him this would happen they replaced his frame free of charge with a new afr! I bought the old frame off nicolai and it’s new owner loves it!

Goodwill does go a long way. However, without commenting on the op’s specific issue, I can see why they’d not want to give a goodwill gesture if they think the customer is taking the p***. This may or may not be how they felt here. I’ve no idea but no company should feel they have to give a goodwill gesture for fear of recriminations on forums.

Interesting. Bloody expensive frames where the customer can be questioned/questionable?

Wow.

Nice isn’t it Hora? I have worked retail before my current job, and that retail was in various bike shops. I have seen people with £300 bikes receive better and swifter customer service than I did.

If I ever find myself with the funds to buy another FS, it will be something from a large brand or maybe something that Silverfish bring into the UK!