Before I get into the below I want to outline how happy I’ve been with these things - even though I’ve ridden them very lightly. I’ve seen the complaints on the forum around dropouts and battery caps, etc - but just never had any problems myself. I’d been a happy customer and even convinced two other friends to snag a set as well.
Thats changed rather quickly over the last 3-4 weeks and it centers around what I’d call an anti-consumer warranty policy and pretty terrible customer service.
To get started, here are some facts surrounding their warranty policy on these pedals:
For new pedals its stated as 2 years. What that covers is not easy to discern though. I assume against complete failure?Because the bearings and axle only have a 6 month warranty. 6 MONTHS
More details here.
Keep in mind Garmin offers 2 years for their pedals with no costs incurred by the customer during that period for any work needed. I don’t have experience with the Garmin pedals - but do have experience with Garmins CS and its always been top notch. Can read more about their policy here.
My pedals are 18-20 months old and have seen little use. I don’t know the exact mileage and I’d be embarrassed to outline it even if I did. It’s safely under 2k miles though (so sad, I know).
Last fall I noticed the right pedal had developed a ton of friction when attempting to spin it freely. Enough that it was quite noticeable even while pedaling.
1/23/18
Flash forward to a few weeks ago - I decided to reach out to Powertap to get them serviced. Grabbed the 800 number from the site and spoke to who I believe is the manager of their customer service team. Until I spoke to her, I had no idea the bearings within these pedals were only under warranty for 6 months. So you can imagine my shock when told that not only were they out of warranty but also that it would cost $250 for them to be serviced. And I had to pay for shipping back to Powertap. I balked and after some back and forth she agreed to service for $200. Which, frankly, is still ridiculous. I’ve owned a second hand quarq that was serviced free of charge. Thats of course the exception and not the rule - but with the powertap policy I could be looking at a $250 charge every year for a set of $1200 pedals. It seems incredibly absurd.
Regardless, I dropped them in the mail to the address given and they were received by Powertap on 1/26/18.
In the email received from the CS manager the day I sent the pedals in for repair I was told the following:
“On the outside of the box you can put your return authorization. That will allow our receiving department to know who the unit belongs to and what we are doing with it. Your return authorization number is RA92826. Once in house, we are usually able to repair the unit and ship it back out within 3-5 business day.”
2/1/18
Three to five days seems acceptable to me but had no further communication with CS since 1/23. So last Thursday I sent a follow up email to check in on status. I received a response within two hours that stated that they were in the queue for repair and that she “would expect them to be done before the weekend” followed by “I will let you know when I get an update from the service team.” Great news!
Also note, my card was charged for the work either on 1/1 or the day prior.
2/6/18
Since I’d received no update again, I followed up early yesterday morning. No response. So followed up again just before leaving the office yesterday.
2/7/18
Woke up again today to no response. So sent another email, while at the same time hit up their chat on the website. While there, I spoke to someone other than who I’d been dealing with previously. This gentleman informed me that my previous contact was indeed the manager and that essentially I needed to talk to her to get the updates I was looking for. Though did tell me that it looks like my pedals are “finishing up repair” and that they’ll “expedite them to me”. I asked if that meant they’d be shipped back to me today and he said that he’d expect that but cant guarantee. I questioned why I’d been charged prior to a shipping label being printed for delivery back to me and he again instructed me to reach out to the manager. Which is ironic because I’m on chat because the manager won’t respond to my emails.
Powertap has my pedals which means my bike has been unrideable for 2.5 weeks, charged my card, cant tell me when servicing them will be finished despite quoting 3-5 day turn around time and also can’t tell me when I can expect to have them back in my possession.
But beyond all that, I think my biggest issue is still this warranty policy. I can’t imagine I’m the only one whos had to have these things serviced. Especially considering the 1st SERP for the query “Powertap P1 bearings” has this as the 2nd organic listing. These things appear to be known for having terrible bearings. I read instances around the web of people needing service 3, 4 and 5 times before they finally just gave up and moved on to a different product. Thats a lot of money to eat and just move on. Powertap appears to have a real problem here with a few things:
Their product. Bearings that fail this quickly are indication of poor product design, IMO. Their warranty. An anti-consumer policy is in place to protect the company from what they appear to know is a faulty design. Six months? Or pay $250 outside of that 6 month warranty. Again, just ridiculous. And finally their customer service. You’ve got what appears to be a poorly designed product covered by an anti-consumer warranty policy - the least you could do is provide exceptional service around the policies in place. But I’m struggling to get answers or get these things back in a reasonable time frame.
Am I being unreasonable here? Anyone else had a similar experience? Specifically has anyone had a similar experience with Garmin? I’d like to know what that interaction looked like by comparison.
I remember when Powertap was sort of a gold standard. The hubs specifically. Even when needing service, the warranty and CS were always exceptional.