buck_shot11 wrote:
You are putting to much on the manufacturer. Their primary interest is selling new bikes and I get that. You can ask any primary Dimond owner and they will ALL say that the customer service is second to none!Well it has been. Because they're new. And boutique. But at some point they're going to have to transition to a more mature business model that takes into account secondary owners. Supporting secondary owners is also essentially supporting the primary owner. Because if a secondary owner can't reasonably maintain a bike, the primary's sale value will plummet. And because secondary owners are just as much unpaid Dimond marketing personnel as the primary owner. And I have noticed used Dimonds for sale popping up pretty frequently, so this transition may take place sooner rather than later.
I'm not going to pile on because Dimond is new at this. And it's tough to say if a 100% surcharge for "full retail price" over "replacement price" is reasonable or not. Typical "crash replacement" cost is about a 50% discount. Tough to say if $600 is indicative of a "wholesale" price, and it's just really expensive to manufacture. Or if $600 is already fairly well padded with a retail margin, and $1200 is just a dis-incentive because Dimond is selling all the forks they can on new bikes.