One month ago while racing in Kona after 30 min into the ride my rear derailleur started shifting on its own going all the way down to the 11th cog, when trying to bring it up then the front derailleur will shift, it was all over the place! I fist stopped and swap the batteries and seemed the problem was fixed, 10 min later did it again. Stopped again and disconnected the cables from the blip box tried to clean the plugs and plugged them again, again that seemed to work. 10-15min later happend again! Long story short I ended up getting off the bike 17 times in total loosing over 20min on the bike and completely messing up my race in Kona.

After the race I tried contacting SRAM directy, to my surprise there was no way of contacting them, had to be through a distributor /mechanic. I went see my local mechanic and explained him everything with all details, I even send him my garmin file so he or the guys from sram could see the 17 times I had stopped. Few days later they came back saying that the problem was on the rear derailleur which didn't make sense to me, it clearly looked like a short in the blip box connection but when the mechanic asked sram they replied saying they were the experts and they knew what they're doing so I trusted them, they sent a new rear derailleur and seemed to work fine.

After my bad experience in kona I decided to get "back on the horse" and race ironman los cabos yesterday. I was having a really good race, I was riding in second place and suddenly after 120k out no where the same issue from kona came back but this time it got stuck in the 54/11,i tried everything to fix it, I even replaced the battery from the blip box (I always carry a spare 2032 battery) and nothing worked. I lost 40min and had to finish my ride riding in a single speed (IM Los Cabos is not particularly flat!).

I still managed to finish 7th in my AG but far from a Kona slot which was the objective. It's hard to explain how frustrated I am, and all because of SRAM negligence!

If you are considering changing to Etap think it twice, and if you already race with it just be aware this could happen to you any time.

I hoping I can send back all my etap back and at least I want a clear explanation of what's happening and not just replacing a part thinking that would solve the problem which it clearly didn't work the first time!