61–70 of 224 posts
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Waiting 6 weeks for any kind of repair was also their unique selling point?
That’s a common waiting time at my local bike shops to be honest. The difference is that you can do most stuff on a normal bike yourself with off the shelf parts (supply chain woes permitting).
Don’t buy products made by VC funded firms! Especially not if it’s a real product and you value repairability and service. VanMoof made losses the size of their revenue. They made bikes… where’s the natural monopoly to be chased there?
Here's my personal story (they sure didn't make profit on me):
I got my S3 in 2020. It went dead a few weeks later. We didn’t have service hubs close, but I told the support I could do the repairs myself. The sent me a new main unit, that didn’t help so I had to send it in (they wouldn’t ship the battery to me because of some regulatory issues). Took a while but I got a working bike back. A few weeks later the e-shifter broke. Again I fixed that myself and for a few months everything was fine. Then the battery (or main unit) died again in late 2021. I insisted on getting a replacement bike and could convince them to swap my S3 for the second gen one (that with Apple Find-my).
On that bike I had to replace the left button and later the e-shifter (again). The rest of 2022 went fine but the eshifter broke again this spring and it got stuck in the 4th gear.
As the bike is now out of warranty, I did not contact support and went with just riding it this way until yesterday, when I finally got around to fix the (mechanically defective) eshifter using parts from the old (electronically defective) eshifter that I replaced last year. Now it is running fine again. Wouldn’t get another VanMoof as my next bike though.
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What about it makes it so satisfying? If you're not into bikes, try a few of them. I find any properly tuned bike to be an absolute joy to use, although I never tried a Van Moof.
For me, it's just nice/satisfying using a aesthetically designed piece of kit, even if not top of the line performance. Which is issue for bikes, since a well tuned bike makes a huge difference. I don't like looking at all the bits of gear drive system, I like aesthetics of single speed, but riding one PIA. Ended up with a slick belt drive + internal hub setup. Van Moof (which I was considering buying) was basically…
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What did Van Moof make, exactly? Do you think they were normal bikes? They made expensive e-bikes with theft recovery features. They have features that make it possible to trace and locate them, and Van Moof would actually do this. For people who spend €3-4k on an easily stolen object that the police won't care about, that's a unique selling point.
I am not sure why everyone thinks they are expensive. Just the bike is about 2000 euro. There are eBikes costing 4000 euro. My van moof was about 2800 because I bought the 2 packages taking care of theft and repairs. Because of their image I never have to lock the bike besides their amazing kick lock bike, so getting on and off the bike with locking and unlocking it is a matter of seconds. This is not expensive at al…
I mean, you can get a regular bike for €300, €700 if you want to splurge. But of course, the downside of that would be that you'd get more exercise.
Don’t buy products made by VC funded firms! Especially not if it’s a real product and you value repairability and service. VanMoof made losses the size of their revenue. They made bikes… where’s the natural monopoly to be chased there?
What did Van Moof make, exactly? Do you think they were normal bikes? They made expensive e-bikes with theft recovery features. They have features that make it possible to trace and locate them, and Van Moof would actually do this. For people who spend €3-4k on an easily stolen object that the police won't care about, that's a unique selling point.
My husband's VanMoof bike got stolen in Ghent, they couldn't do shit about it.
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That’s a common waiting time at my local bike shops to be honest. The difference is that you can do most stuff on a normal bike yourself with off the shelf parts (supply chain woes permitting).
What is local for you? In Amsterdam a 6 minute waiting time is more common if you have a regular bike.
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> This is not expensive at all. > If they can’t find it you get a new one. Can't figure out why they weren't profitable.
Seriously: They bought a lot of expensive machinery to build things, rented and furnished a lot of shops, and hired a lot of people to staff those, and sales didn't grow to to use their production capacity, sales area and staff time. Their prices for that trace-or-replace service were quite a bit higher than what my insurance agency charges me for my theft insurance. That operation may have lost money, but that's not…
I share your worries about the trace-or-replace service. Specifically about the "trace" part of trace-or-replace. Ok, the program is excellent promotion, and did put them on the map. But, tracing stops making economic sense very quickly: Bills rack-up very rapidly when you send a couple of your people in a multi-day hunt in an unknown location.
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> Honest question: what’s the appeal of a bike that needs an internet connection & app to unlock? I struggle to understand those who think something like that could be a good idea. Isn't it obvious that an app will not be around for as long as a bike can last? I have a bike from the early 90s, that's over 30 years. Does anyone think an app will be around even for 10 years, let alone 30+?
A buddy of mine is a hardcore rider. He goes through a $5k bike every 5 years or so. Could he refurb the titanium frames for newer parts? Maybe. At some point racing tech moves on and you need a newer frame for the latest and greatest stuff to fit.