[spovegas]

Originally Posted by bflemin

We're in for the long haul, and don't mind the the criticism. In the long run it's what will make us better. Several posts mentioned legitamate concerns, and we will address them. We've experienced a lot of growth this year, and along with that, we have experienced some growing pains. I apoligize if we missed the mark on your order. Give us a call, and we'll work it out.

First off, Bill, kudos for chiming in. I totally appreciate you stepping up and admitting some growing pains. In my many conversations with CRC, no one has been straightforward with me and that would have gone a long, long way. I do believe that you guys have been slammed and I'm pretty understanding in that sense. But my experience has been pretty over the top, and not in a good sense. I'm not the kind of person that makes a big fuss with people I buy stuff from - most of the time I prefer to just deal with it myself if I can and move on. But I feel a little bit of a responsibility to not just keep quiet about it and so I'm not asking you for anything, except to just listen to my story and try to fix what you can so that future customers don't have to go through what I did.

I ordered my bike over the phone with Jamey and he was super helpful and easy to deal with and I was jacked when I hung up the phone. I ordered a size L with the Susitna build kit. I substituted in an Alfine dynohub and a 100mm pugs fork to go with it. Other than that, pretty much the basic kit including regular larry front and endo rear. I wanted the bike built up and was told (twice) that it would be completely assembled and then disassembled for shipping. It was a Wednesday and I was told that everything was in stock and that the bike might ship the same week, but most likely first of the following week. He told me I would get an email with tracking number as soon as it shipped.

By Thursday of the following week, I hadn't received an email, so I made a call, talked again to Jamey. Friendly on my end, friendly on his. Told me the bike was built and boxed except for the fork, which was out of stock and had to be ordered. He said the UPS shipment (presumably the QBP one?) for the week was done and that it wouldn't be until next week but that when it got there, all they had to do was drop it in the box and ship. I was a little disappointed, but not a big deal.

Having not heard anything by the following Thurs, I called again and Will answered. He said the fork was due to arrive tomorrow and that the bike would probably ship Friday. He told me again that they would email a tracking number. Right on.

Having not heard anything by the following Tues, I called again and got Jamey. He told me the fork had just arrived that day, but that they had to get the front wheel built up and he wasn't sure if they could get it done this week, so it would probably ship next week. Wha??? I said okay and hung up the phone.

After about 45 mins of stewing, I called him backed and told him how unhappy I was with the answer he gave me considering what I had previously been told. He told me he was sorry, but didn't offer to do anything to expedite my order. He said they were sub-contracting out their wheel builds and didn't know exactly when my wheel would get built. Nice.

I let things lie and didn't call back for a week and a half - until Friday of the following week. Talked to Colin. At first he told me they had run out of rims and were waiting for the next shipment to complete my order. I was ready to go ballistic, but stayed calm and explained what I had been told on previous calls. After some more checking, he found out that my bike had actually shipped yesterday. At this point all I wanted was to get the thing headed my way and it finally was. Sweet. Since I never got an email with tracking numbers, I asked Colin and he looked them up and gave them to me over the phone. About a week later the bike arrived. It was exactly 5 weeks from the time I ordered to the day it landed on my porch. Don't get me wrong - I don't think that's an exceptionally long time, especially in peak snowbike ordering season. If I had been told it would take that long up front, I would have been cool with it. But I ended up feeling totally jerked around every time I called and not being able to count on anything I was told and it was extremely frustrating and totally took the fun out buying this bike that I had researched and lusted over for months. But anyway, the bike was finally here, everything else was water under the bridge, and my troubles were over. Or so I thought.

First thing I noticed was that during shipping, the top of the head tube had come through the front of the box that the frame was in and that one of the axles had come through the side of the box that the wheels were in. The end of the axle was buggered up pretty good, but still looked functional. The head tube was a different story, more about that in a minute.

I opened up the boxes and found that the bike wasn't built up like I was expecting. The headset, front der, bb and crankset were installed, though, so that was cool. It would just take me more time to put it together than I had planned.

Parts.jpg

Funny, how the rear rotor was installed, but not the front. The reason it wasn't, is that the hub is a centerlock and the rotor is 6-bolt. Maybe I should have known to ask for an adapter, but you would think that the fact that I was ordering a complete build kit would be a clue that I wanted all the parts I needed to put the bike together. Maybe CRC could have suggested an adapter when I ordered. Or maybe when they were putting the rotor on the back, and not putting it on the front might have emailed my to see if this got overlooked and did I want to add one to the order. But whatever, I ran around and found one at an LBS.

wheels.jpg

So back to the head tube. After it came through the box, the race got hammered pretty good, to the point that it wasn't round anymore and the bearing wouldn't fit in. I had to grind a radius on the end of a piece of flat bar and use it as a punch to put the race back into round to the point that it would accept the bearing.

Headset.jpg

The front derailleur obviously had bigtime issues with the big chainring. I pulled the part number off the der and checked on shimano's website and found that it was the compact version. I was pretty much very happy being done talking with CRC, but in this case, I just had to call. I got a different guy on the phone this time (didn't catch his name) and after I explained my problem, he said just a minute he needed to talk to Jamey. When he came back, he told me I definitely had the right der, but that I just needed to configure it differently. Even though I knew better, I said okay, hung up the phone and tried the fix. Fail. By this point I was 1000% sure that CRC had shipped me the wrong der, but I couldn't just let it go - I needed to hear them admit it, so I called them back. This time Jamey answered. I picked up where I'd left off and he accepted the fact that it was the wrong part. He offered to send me the right part, but the tone was one of "what do we have to do to get you off our back?" I was done dealing with him anyway and waiting however long for parts to get shipped down was not what I was after. I talked to him a little about converting it to a double and told him that's what I would do, since I'm newly fat and don't really know whether I want a double or triple without some saddle time. So from a cost and hassle standpoint, I let him off the hook. This would have been a perfect time, from a CS standpoint, to say he was sorry for the trouble that their screwup had caused me. Maybe I should have said why doesn't he ask his mechanics to at least stroke a derailleur over the rings after they install it. But after several conversations, I guess we'd had our fill of talking to each other.

Der.jpg

When CRC opened the box and pulled out the rotor to put on the rear wheel, they apparently tossed the package with the caliper bolts, because I didn't get em. Back to the LBS.

Brake bolts.jpg

Even though the Susitna build kit lists cable and housing, none was included. Well, except for the shifters, which came with cables. Back to the LBS.

You know the rear rotor that got shop installed? Here's the video of what it looked like, as I was just starting to set up the rear caliper. It was way beyond my straightening capabilities. Back to the LBS for a new rotor.

I finally got the bike on the road. But on the first ride, the chain kept ghost-shifting off the chainrings. Some inspection revealed that the middle chainring was bent to h*ll. The mangled aluminum teeth will eventually get smoothed out by the steel chain.

bent ring.jpg

But the bend wasn't gonna take care of itself and I had to persuade it back into true with a soft-face hammer. It's not perfect, but it's way better and doesn't shift on its own anymore.

bent ring 2.jpg

Some might argue that a lot of the damage was caused in transit and was not the fault of CRC. But when there are multiple instances of damage in the same shipment, you have to start looking at what the packaging had to do with it. And from what I witnessed about how the bike was packaged combined with the damage that was done, my opinion is that the packaging was very inadequate.

Misc other stuff: The frame had a couple of dings in the paint. One rim was scraped up pretty good, but I colored it with a sharpie. I don't care much, I buy my bikes to ride, not as artwork, so not that bigga deal. I didn't get any of the paperwork for the headset, bb, cranks or der that had been installed. Would actually like to have gotten this. Normally, whenever I've ordered a build from my LBS, they keep all the installation instructions together and give them to me.

Now I have to fix this chain rub problem. I guess I should probably try talking to CRC, but I don't have much hope for a straight answer at this point, so I'll probably rely more on the forums and my own judgement. Just seems really wrong to me that CRC sells a complete build kit for their 2012 frame that causes rub with a well-established tire. As of right now, the wheel is nicely centered in the stays and I suppose that the easy fix is to dish it, which IMO sucks, having to move the wheel off center to get chain clearance. That's not what I thought I purchased for in excess of $2K.

So I've gone on long enough. Bill, plenty of improvement to make in your guys' process from my point of view and like I said at the beginning of the post, I don't really want any more interaction with CRC, but I hope you really do give enough of a sh*t, as you say you do, to put some effort into making things better for your future customers. I wouldn't wish my experience on anyone.

For those of you who have nothing but good things to say about CRC, I'm truly happy for you. Maybe there has never been a better time in the history of forums to insert the acronym YMMV.