I faced the issue of what to do when my brand new Canyon Ultimate arrived DOA. I didn't take it in to a bike shop because I didn't feel comfortable. If anything goes wrong with a repair it's a bad situation. Since the parts are propritary it's hard for a shop to know much about the brand and it's hard to get upset if a mistake is made.

All said and done, the Canyon is a nice bike and on the same level as Trek in terms of build quality and design. However and I mean HOWEVER, the customer service is horrendous. Unless you are head over heels in love with the bike I would highly recommend getting something else. You can always get support for you Cervelo, Trek or Cannondale. If not from one shop or another. Canyon, not so much.

Which parts are proprietary?

On my Speedmax (previous model):

The brakes, both front and rear, are proprietary and have a minor design flaw (metal fatigue) that required replacement parts to fix.

The bars and entire front end is proprietary, from the spacers to the pads to the foam, etc.

The seat post, of course.

The rear derailleur hanger.

I love it, but it arrived with a chip in the paint, which I didn’t bother contacting them about because it had taken a while to arrive and it is covered by the frame bottle in use.

I have never taken it to a shop for servicing, but I have friendly support and have been lucky.

My Specialized bikes on the other hand are all good. Shops are fine with them.

I kind of don’t blame the shops. I mean, we are basically killing our own high-street. I am as guilty as anyone else. Amazon is the worst of it, and always chasing a deal.

My spelling sucks! Frame, fork and handlebars on the Ultimate I bought. Battery change wasn't the easiest as I had to really dig in the website to find a drawing.

I've had a Canyon Aeroad for a couple of months, love the bike, and have had good luck with Canyon thus far. I do wrench my own bikes, so I haven't needed to take it into the LBS for service. The main shop I go to thinks it's a very nice bike and understands the economics of why people buy their bikes through Canyon (the bike I got was still a couple of grand cheaper than the Specialized equivalent I could have gotten through our team deal for a similar build). They also recognize that a bike is a bike when it comes to service, and they need to keep the doors open and lights on.

Canyon did put me on the wrong size (XS) despite their online calculator saying I should be a S (which also matched the geometry of my Cannondale). Sure enough, got the XS and it was too small. Sent it back and got a S. No problems with customer service, and they covered shipping both ways. I had no trouble getting extra parts (eg, seat post clamp, derailleur hander) either. I think we are a bit spoiled in SoCal with Canyon, since their showroom and warehouse are here.

For someone who really needs the service (eg, fit and maintenance), then I would point them towards a LBS. When you start getting into certain bikes (eg, aero, tri), you're going to find lots of proprietary parts. The one advantage to getting your bike through a LBS is that they can help you procure parts if needed. Again, Canyon isn't for everyone, but I'm glad they have a US presence now.

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"Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps"
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Sounds like if you're going to buy a Canyon, hold onto your old bike--you may need it in case you return the Canyon for some work on something chipped or wrong with the frame when it arrived. You need a back up bike.

I can say after riding Cannondale, Softride, Litespeed, Quintanna Roo and now Cervelo (for the last 10 years), I would not have ANY problems with going back to Cervelo for a new model I like it that much. With the dig on Canyon in this thread (unless it's fake media by foreign posts to erode consumer confidence in the German brand...) I must admit it makes me weary of the lag time for part delays, and my shop would likely have immediate resolution on anything with a Cervelo.

FWIW, I have never ridden a Canyon so can't comment on how it feels from a ride standpoint. It would have to be pretty amazing to not go Cervelo at this point. Although Treks are pretty nice as well.

I look at the Canyon Website and don't see any real savings compared to say ARGON which is supported by my LBS.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I am dealing with a warranty issue on a bike I just bought through a LBS, can't say its been easy or I feel that highly supported (and I consider them a pretty good shop). So I'm not sure how much warranty support is worth through a lot of shops these days even

Maybe all the star riders are leaving Movistar because nobody will work on their Canyons.

I think any business that doesn't have a set, published price list for services should expect to be challenged on price regularly and there's nothing wrong with that. I've had my car serviced by guys who do, and who do not publish prices. If they're not published, and they seem at all high, I WILL challenge them on their quote. It was their choice to do business this way, not mine. On the other hand, I will not try to haggle with a garage that says "we charge X for Y type of service". They choose to do business by setting out their stall and sticking to it and I respect that. It may be slightly trickier to pre-define prices for more unique jobs, but in those cases I think a (polite) discussion on price is fair. Unfortunately there are many businesses that DO try to screw unwary customers. People hate to feel like they've been screwed. I think negotiation is often about satisfying oneself that's not happening, rather than looking for a special deal or being unwilling to pay a fair price for the work or product.

I think you picked poor examples, since the worst offenders in my experience are the car industry and plumbers! They're the two industries I'm most likely to challenge on price.
A domestic plumber around here is liable to tell you your toilet repair will cost €100, and then once the job is done tell you how it was a particularly difficult issue which he couldn't have predicted and he'll have to charge you €600. Funnily, if you know a bit about plumbing and ask them to explain what the issue was and what they had to do to fix it they tend to get rather vague!

I've challenged plumbers and car dealers/maintenance many times. I've rarely challenged a price in the LBS.

People bargain, or try to, at car dealerships and with plumbers all the time.

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My current experience is this is kind of true but its not always the shops fault. My Garmin Vector 3's are currently going through the warranty process at my LBS and its proving to be a pain. While Garmin appears to have a great forward facing policy it turns out to be a complex mess in reality which is making things a pain (at least in Europe for the authorised distribution network). In this case all parties can agree the battery door is broken and needs to be replaced. Garmin's preferred solution is for me to avoid the shop and pay them £25 for the new part and then install it myself. They make this easy enough BUT if anything goes wrong during the install or if it turns out not to be a battery door issue I have invalidated my warrantee. Similarly my LBS is an authorised Garmin dealer but isn't authorised to make the warrantee repairs so if they do the work the warrantee is invalid. So we are having to go through a long process of shipping the pedals off, having them evaluated, potentially fixed and shipped back which Garmin will charge at least £25 while wasting a lot more time. The LBS aren't thrilled with this whole procedure especially because the underlaying issue is an inherent design flaw in the pedals which Garmin fully acknowledges but there is no easy way around it. Customers want Garmin products and Garmin wants to transfer after purchase responsibility to the consumer putting shops and consumers in a rough spot. Its no surprise to me you see statements on here and elsewhere that people have dropped Garmin due to the way they handled the Vector 3 issue.

I have Canyon Speedmax CF SLX.
My bike mechanic says it's really made well and smart. He likes german attitude to construction of their bikes.

Brake system is easy to deal with, no problems with assemble/disassamble it (he made a full dissasemble of the bike to repair a scratch on the frame).
For example, Felt's tri bike brake system is such a pain in the ass.

I crashed my Canyon Aeroad in 2018. My friend took the bike to a local LBS/tri shop after dropping me off at the hospital. There was over $2,000 damage to it. Most of it was stuff easily replaced... like the RD, both brifters, seat... but the derailleur hanger was broken and that’s a proprietary part. The shop had zero relationship with Canyon but they were able to get the part from Canyon in just a couple of days. The guy at the LBS was actually impressed with Canyon because all he had heard up to that point was how difficult Canyon could be with getting parts.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

I mean anything ordering online is a risk - if I order a new pair of shoes I order 2 and return the wrong size one. Not as easy with bikes, but that's the one reason why D2C is so different for bikes. So yeah I'd hold onto the old bike until the new one is there, which isn't optimal for tight cash flow.

That said, I love my Canyon bikes - have an Inflite, Ultimate & Speedmax. And for sizing, their fit calculator got me spot on, although I did get fit before my Speedmax to confirm that one. I do have the convenience that I live in NL, so customer service wise I get everything in 3 days or less (even the bike!).

If I were ordering in the US, I would definitely just order a spare derailleur hanger with the bike, it's cheap enough for your peace of mind. Most my friends regardless of brand have a spare sitting in their parts box, I only recently followed trend after a friend's hanger broke twice in two months on his Stevens

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I'm a big fan of Canyon. I love my speedmax and I've been thinking about one of their road bikes. My LBS knew I was buying it, fitted me for it ahead of time and helped me adjust it afterwards. They do any major work it needs (including a rush job to replace a rear D that I broke when I dropped it out of my repair stand one morning). They know I spend many of my bike related $ there, and will continue to do so. Would they prefer I buy one of their bikes, sure, but not enough to prevent us from being on a very friendly first-name basis.

As for Canyon, I was recently in Lake Taupo NZ with a bent rear D hanger a few days out from IMNZ. I posted here about the problem, and got a direct reply from the Canyon rep who hangs around these forums. He bent over backwards to try and get me the part in time. He also reached out to the Canyon AUS team and to see if they could help. I had been reaching out to them as well. They went out of their way to get me the part I needed (and a spare) in time for the race. (Critical readers will note that had I owned a Cervelo or something similar, I would have had an easier time sourcing the part, but I don't think that's unique to Canyon, while a bit more pointed with them, I think it's sort of a "superbike" problem.)

I can't say enough good things about Canyon as a designer of bikes, but also as a customer service enterprise.