Yes....when you take the steps to pull together a group that is statistically representative of the larger population. Again, ST is NOT statistically representative of the larger high-end bike market, or even the high-end tri market. This is the tiniest point of the spear....people who eat, breathe and live tri.

Again, see the example re: Kiwami. If you based your assumptions of their market share from what you read on ST, they would be the market leaders. The reality is that they are a small niche player in the market (no slam against them, btw. Just the realities....I am looking forward to trying some of their stuff soon).

See what I am saying?

Past that, I agree with your post, although it does seem to me that Felt is doing what they can to make things right. The sad reality is that there are now certain limitations on what they actually CAN do. Within those constraints, I think they are doing a pretty good job of giving options (not to mention the fact that SD is having direct conversations with the customer).

The more this unfolds, the more it sounds like the LBS dropped the ball more than Felt. But we also don't know that for sure.....but that is what it sounds like to me.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

yeah, I can certainly understand that ST is probably not the best representation of the FULL bike marketplace (and not even close actually).

And yes, I would also very much agree that from what I can see, the LBS is the more responsible party. Having personal knowleadge of the LBS, I can say that this does not surprise me one bit. They order my new tri shoes two weeks ago..they were supposed to call me in a week and I haven't heard a word.

I hate to agree with you considering that you tend to go out of your way to be a Felt-bashing douchebag. BUT this is the only proper way for Felt to make this situation right with the customer IMO. Give him a B10 for the price of the B12, eat the difference (probably just the margin) and be a decent, upstanding company in the end. Why? They shouldn't have accepted the order if they couldn't deliver the product. Now they are in the position of looking bad because this guy got jerked around for several months. If they want to do the right thing, give him the B10, eat the profit on one bike and look good in the eyes of a very large group of key demographic customers (ST triathletes) as well as the OP... or just let this guy go buy some other brand and be pissed off at Felt for life. Word of mouth works in both directions. Is it worth a couple thousand bucks to prop up their reputation and keep from alienating a lot of potential customers? I would think so.

That assumes their is a B10 frame to be found someplace, and that it was Felt that dropped the ball. Both of those things are not known.....

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

You make a lot of assumptions with your post. We're made several options available for the customer to choose from.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Except for the correct option. The one that makes the customer happy.

This!

Obviously as the actual customer has chimed in.....he isn't satisfied with said "options" thus far. They didn't even appear to be options in his opinion.

Ans as another member pointed out, offering a B14 frame with B12 components will kill his trade in or resale value. We are talking close to 1,000.00 differenve in price on the Felt website. Either way, the customer loses with this option.

When WE as people make mistakes, WE have to suffer the consequences. Not the people we made mistakes with. From everything we have made available to us about this situation, it looks like the guilty are trying to make the innocent pay for this mistake. Regardless of what has or has not been said the obvious thing here that is black and white is the fact that the customer is the one wronged here by someone.

1) If it was Felt, they need to make it right and not by finding the cheapest way out for them either.

2) If it was the lbs's fault, then Felt needs to step in and say "hey, you guys did this and are making Felt look bad. Either fix it, or we will pull our association from your shop.

3) If it were both parties fault, then both should have to eat the cost and upgrade this guy to a B10. Anything less, would make both parties look extremely poor and that they obviously do not care about the customer or repeat business.

Perhaps I misunderstood the conversation I've had with the consumer. I am not satisfied until the customer is happy.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Wow - I can't believe I am agreeing with the Felt-basher! Dude, your motivations are twisted but the trade-in/resale point is a good one. Also, the OP should get what he ordered OR MORE at this point.

With that being said, I believe that the OP escalated this in the ST forum too quickly. He did not give Felt or the LBS the opportunity to make good before lambasting them here. I would have used the forum as leverage against Felt (likely not as effective against the LBS although it appears it is a volume dealer) before actually posting my concerns. Honestly, to a certain extent the damage has been done. Even if Felt comes back and offers the B10 there is still a sour taste in reader's mouth on this topic. They have less motivation to make things right now that the OP/Friend have taken them to task.

Finally, I don't agree that the OP should be stating on this forum what his ask is. I negotiate for a living and I am not going to go on a forum and publicize what I want from my customer or my vendor ... especially if I know that my customer/vendor frequents the forum (sorry SuperDave).

Just so we are clear.......I have no motivation here whatsoever. I am not a Felt basher. I had narrowed down my bike choices down to the SHIV, Speed Concept, and the B2 or DA. Ultimately I felt best on the SC. The DA is an amazing machine, BUT I liked the SC better and I wanted my bike as close to the time I ordered it as possible. Waiting until March or April to get my bike was absurd. My first race is May 15th. One month to get used to a bike, get a fit, and mileage in that close to race time was not my idea of smart or interesting. I would think Felt would start production on new year models earlier so that delivery dates could be in the Jan/Feb time frame so athletes/customers have time to dial in Machines. Who wants to be doing that in the middle of season? I understand if it is a new bike from the ground up, but on a model that did t have a ton of upgrades or redesigns, they should be available sooner.

Good luck to everyone this year! Hope you all have a stellar season.

Again, they make a fantastic machine, but I am not so sure about
their customer service and logistics.

I can absolutely say my reply or reaction to this situaion wouldn't have been any different if the consumer, dealer or ST jury brought it to my attention. I think it would be well within the guidelines of this forum or website to have this entire thread pulled, but I don't want that. I want anyone who clicks on this thread to see how the situation is resolved. I regret having the customer be put in this situation but I am eager to make things right for him and for anyone who cares to "click" to see the outcome.

Being as transparent as possible would be the best course for all parties here.

-SD

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Super Dave,

I first want to say thank you! You are the only reason that I still thinking about staying on a Felt bicycle. Your attempts to contact me through my friend and our phone call are the only contact I have had with a Felt employee. How you have handled the situation since becoming aware of my problem was all that I expected when I ordered my bike through the LBS. As I told you on the phone, I reached out to my local Felt representative and I heard nothing. That is the only reason why I posted the letter to ST. My intent was not to bash you or your company, it was to present my issue and get a fair resolution (since I did not feel I was getting that from the local Felt representative or the LBS). Again, thank you for the information that you provided and I look forward to hearing from you, my local representative or the LBS with the final options for me to remain a Felt customer.

Other followers,

I appreciate everyone's responses to the situation I am in. Some of you have made valuable points that I will consider once I get to my LBS tomorrow afternoon. I feel that others of you have taken this forum as an opportunity to bash and criticize all the parties that are involved (Felt, LBS and me). I guess I should have expected that if I put this issue on ST for a forum to read and comment. For all the negative followers, I don't have to justify my thoughts, concerns and thinking process to any of you (why I put so much money down, why I should settle for something less than I ordered, what I want to make the situation right).

The purpose of this post was threefold, (1) to make other member's of the Triathlon Community aware of a bad situation (2) hopefully ensure that it does not happen to anyone else and (3) get a fair and acceptable resolution from Felt and the LBS.

***remember a fair and acceptable resolution applies to Felt, the LBS and I...not the other member's of ST***

I plead that if there is anyone out there that has placed an order for a 2011 bicycle (with any manufacturer) and has been waiting for awhile...call your LBS or Representative to make sure that this does not happen to you.

Finally, I will update everyone on the final outcome.

The way this thread has progressed is absurd. That being said, I am going to post my opinion:

This guy should be offered a B10 at the price he paid for the bike that he can't get. Simple as that. The guy gets more than he paid for as a reward for having to deal with a situation that was not of his making. It doesn't matter if blame lies with Felt or LBS. SuperDave, if you want transparency, then tell us yes or no, has this offer been made. If so, then Felt has done all it can. If not, then, athletes can decide if they should consider Felt for their next purchase. I personally would not.

Just so you know, I have owned and sold businesses and currently own a business that has been in operation for 53 years. The right decision is often the simple one. Taking a small financial hit now will pay off greatly in the future.

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Seriously...stop. You have no idea what you are talking about. Scheduling bike production is not as easy as "Oh, they should just start sooner." There are SO many moving parts to scheduling production, not the least of which is availibility of components. When you are dependent on other companies such as SHimano, SRAM, etc. you can't simply just move production schedules around.

You post above also assumes that this delivery was the first of the year for that model. We have no evidence of this...it may simply have been the next available shipment. Further, it assumes that the LBS palced the order as claimed and Felt accepted the order. Again, we have not seen evidence of this.

What we HAVE seen is Felt reaching out directly to the consumer and try and resolve the problem. Everyone posting things like "Oh, just given him a B10" really don't understand the situation. Of course, it is easy to sit behind a keyboard and make demands......

Huge props to Sd for not only getting personally involved, but for also not ducking the issue by having the thread removed.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

I've been following this thread here and there as I live in Dallas and find it pretty interesting...here we are 6 days and 5 pages later...and no final resolution.

I've tried so hard not to mention the Felt advertising slogan...but can't wait any longer:

Obsess much? Apparently not enough.

Now, I'm sure SuperDave will get this worked out...but where the heck is the Felt rep for the LBS in all of this?

6 days later....but exArmytri has also been out of the country. Can make it difficult to resolve the situation, especially when he needs to go through the LBS for some of the options that were presented to him.

As for the Felt rep, who knows? But it is irrelevant. He would only add another layer of communication. SD is communicating directly with the consumer and has been for a few days.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Mocking an entire company via their own slogan is a pretty cheap shot.

Considering the OP / friend involved have stated their satisfaction with communication thus far with SuperDave, the bashing comments should probably stop until we find out what the resolution ends up being. It's clear there were mistakes made either with Felt, the LBS or both...let's let this get resolved then weigh in our thoughts.

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< Quitting Isn't An Option >

Did you miss the red font? There's no cheap shot...if it had been the second post on page 1, perhaps. Getting sick of all the apologists...

Also, I did give SD kudos as well as the benefit of the doubt...

I'm color blind :)

Actually I'm not haha but it would be the most appropriate excuse...I just want to see this get ironed out and everyone end up happy in one way or another.

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< Quitting Isn't An Option >

It may be irrelevant now...but it sure wasn't 6 days ago when the OP's friend was trying to reach out to him and received no return correspondence. That's a really big deal when the loacal rep won't communicate. The (hinsighted) fact that it would have added another layer of communication...now that's irrelevant.

I have an idea, why don't you stop?? Your a hypocrite anyway. Love how you totally avoided me calling you on that yesterday in the thread you bashed a company based on heresay. How ironic!!

Every other bike company uses the same parts that Felt uses and manage to get their bikes out before 1/4 of the year is gone. Just saying.......

AND, I clearly stated above my thoughts were based on "info that was available" to us here. Quit suggesting other people need reading comprehension until you yourself figure it out smartguy!!

That rep should be canned. If you are a "representative" of a company, and you can't even bother getting back to a customer with a serious problem, what's the point of even having your position in the company? The rep could have saved face and worked with the customer, but instead made the customer feel like he was talking to a wall, had to post on an internet forum to get any attention to his problem, and caused a small PR problem for Felt. Again, why does this person even work for Felt if they aren't "representing?"

Agreed that having the rep involved at the beginning may have helped, but also note that SD replied to this thread on day 1. The rep may have been told that the situation would be handled through the office. We just don't know....

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Every other? Not so much. As I stated earlier, I originally ordered the Caad10 aluminum with Ultegra in December as part of a team buy. Mid Feb, found out it wouldn't be in until April or May. So, got swapped to the Supersix 5 (carbon fiber) with 105 components. And I've heard some delays in receiving orders (Locally) with two other brands as well.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Okay...THIS...is hilarious.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/...ource=www.google.com

SpeedRacer1 getting called out in this Pearl Drums forum about being a Fanboy as well....CLASSIC! I think he has a case of OCD with products or other interests...after his first triathlon he'll realize that he wasted a ton of money on his bike and cower to something else that he thinks he will be good at.

*Note his signature in that forum as well.

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< Quitting Isn't An Option >