Agreed.
And it's the usual 'we'd like to help but...' response from FLI.
Hi Rob,
We came on here to offer an input to the forum from a brands perspective and all brands have slightly different perspectives... so I'll try to give ours so you have some insight into some of your comments.
Firstly, our response is always "we'll do our best to help" and of course in some cases there is a 'but'... however in the vast majority there isn't.
I can give you an example today of a customer (who bought their KTM from LEBC) that has cracked the lowers on their Suntour forks. The dealer, us and Suntour all agreed this was caused by the qr not being used properly by the customer, so it wasn't a manufacturing fault. However Tom from here negotiated with Suntour to get a new set of lowers and a new QR sent to the dealer by Suntour and LEBC are swapping them over as a good will gesture. All this sorted within a few days, by the customer / dealer and us going though the correct channels. No issues and we hope everyone is happy.
I know asking this is tantamount to blasphemy, but why does the importer not have any spares?
A couple of Panasonic wheels would seem a sensible move.
Not to mention forks, as mentioned in another thread.
So what if it ties up a few hundred quid?
Cost of being in business, I'm afraid.
Its a fair question, but some quick points to help you understand.
The forks, you're talking about were in Ireland, so not something we know about, but as far as we can see the customer should have just gone back to the shop and they would have been sorted.
With regard to the points that are more directly aimed at us.
We're not an importer, all the bikes are shipped by KTM direct to the dealers.
In the whole time we've worked with KTM, we've not had a single hub fail, so holding spare wheels isn't a sensible business move I'm afraid.
We do hold some spares... Bosch batteries and head units for instance, because we do know these occasionally get error codes and it helps our dealers for us to have stock, just in case they, or Bosch don't.
However across the range of 240 bikes that we sell, there isn't really any other part that has failed more than once that I can think off of the top of my head. Even if it had, us holding stock in the UK wouldn;t really help, because in 99% of cases its the dealers role to fix or provide a spare whilst we / KTM sort the replacement or credit note.
So if we decided to hold spare parts for all 240 different bikes in the range in all sizes and colours the cost wouldn't be a couple of hundred quid, it would be hundreds of thousands and 99% of it would be a total waste of time.
We normally have at least 5 KTM Pananoic eBikes in stock for demo purposes, and even my fiance and our northern rep's wife both had Panasonic eBikes, so in normal circumstances we'd just send one of these bikes to this customer whilst he waits for his hub to be fixed. However demand from our dealers has been so high over the past 3 months because we haven't got the 2015 panasonic bikes yet, that these have all been sold.
The demo bikes we hold are a massive investment from us, and if there is ever a case that a dealer can't help a customer and the spare parts from KTM are a while off there is normally something we can do.
As an example, the Oxygen importer keeps a handful of spare motor wheels at their premises in Yorkshire.
They also keep other spares such as controllers, spokes, looms, etc.
Again you appear to be slightly comparing apples and pears.
Oxygen in the UK, dont appear to be distributors... they are the brand, so can be compared to KTM in Austria not to us really.
KTMs cost more, break, and you can't get spares.
Oxygens cost less, break, and the importer will put a spare in the post same day.
Which brand is offering the best customer experience?
KTM's and indeed any brand can break of course... we provide many spares within 48 hours from the huge warehouse in Austria, and dealers get them very quickly. There are a couple of examples on here that have taken longer, but I'm afraid if you look on any cycling forum any major brand of bikes with 100+ models struggles to hold stock or all spares in all sizes for all bikes, and we can't be any different, so sometimes it takes time. Which is why we only work with quality components that have their own service centres in the UK, and equally why we try to work with the best dealers who have their own stock of spares and even demo bikes they can lend out.
We're not trying to make excuses, and we're always trying to improve, but we hope we can go way to explaining things on here from time to time.
Col
