Manitou Travis Fixed…Hopefully…

So this morning, I dropped off my broken Manitou Travis TPC+ 180 back to the shop I got it from, BPS Bikes. Purchased on July 8th, and broken on July 17th. Anyway, I brought the fork in, expecting to meet with some sort of resistance to the “Just Riding Along” stories that I’m sure they hear all the time. Instead, the mechanic didn’t seem that surprised that I brought in a Manitou product. Just surprised that it was a new Manitou product. He hadn’t worked on the new Travis forks yet because they were so new, but I told him what happened, receipt in hand, and he seemed sympathetic and booked my bike in to have a look at after getting off the phone with the service center for a diagnosis.

Having worked in retail for so long and been a mangager, you can kind of figure out what brands or products are chronic problems because of how people react to you. In this case, because I met no resistance to my Manitou being brought in broken, it told me that there were problems with these products in the past, and that just taking care of it would be the easiest course of action because they knew that it probably wasn’t my fault, but the fault of the product. It’s just like when I used to sell no name brand DVD Players. Half of the ones I sold broke. If a customer came in, I’d just either give them their money back, or exchange it, or upgrade it, and I’d leave it up to the customer what they wanted to do. The scum bags would take the refund because they were done with the rental. Most decent people would exchange it, or do the upgrade, though I would always suggest NOT exchanging because they’d just be back madder.

I left the bike with them, and they said they’d get it looked at and see what needed to be done and if they could take care of it in shop. If not, they’d send it off to the depot for me, but they would gladly help me out with a loaner until it returned. Now I KNOW something is up with Manitou when they are this nice! But I appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

A couple hours later, the mechanic calls me back and tells me that he solved the issue. Apparently, a shim inside the fork wasn’t locked down, and came loose, letting the damping mechanism move around inside the fork. He assured me that it probably wouldn’t happen again as it seemed like it was just an assembly issue. Fork has new oil and a good cleaning, and it is good to go. So that’s cool and I appreciated the fast turnaround and the offer to take care of me with a loaner.

It appears that Manitou has some big issues with quality. Even if you provide the best service in the world, if the product is chronically unreliable, it’ll cost you customers in the long run. This is my…third…Manitou product that was flawed. I’ll return to the shop because of the service, but what Manitou is putting their dealer network, service centers, and ultimately customers through, is definitely not cool.

At the end of the day, the customer keeps a business in business. Without the customer, you can close up shop. I hope Manitou learns this lesson before it is too late.