Why does everyone hate on Specialized?

PB Forum :: All Mountain, Enduro & Cross-Country
Why does everyone hate on Specialized?
Author Message
flag Tehuprising
Posted: Nov 12, 2015 at 10:41 Quote
I hate their shops, there is only one decent one around me, and there are tons of cannondale, trek, and giant shops that are amazing. The only good spesh shop is also a trek and Santa shop. So why would anyone ever go with spesh? No clue.
flag TheRaven
Posted: Nov 12, 2015 at 10:54 Quote
Tehuprising wrote:
I hate their shops, there is only one decent one around me, and there are tons of cannondale, trek, and giant shops that are amazing. The only good spesh shop is also a trek and Santa shop. So why would anyone ever go with spesh? No clue.

Anyone? Anyone anywhere? Because you have only one good shop that means it's crazy that anyone anywhere on the planet would buy their bikes?

Weird reasoning.

Note - my experience with Trek has been much like the negative Specialized experiences mentioned here. Thus I am not a Trek fan and don't recommend their bikes. Now i'm not going to say their bikes suck, I respect them very much so. But when a friend who is looking at bikes asks me if Trek is a good brand, I tell them that while they make a good bike, I wouldn't buy one. But I don't question why people buy Trek bikes in general.
flag Tehuprising
Posted: Nov 12, 2015 at 12:10 Quote
TheRaven wrote:
Tehuprising wrote:
I hate their shops, there is only one decent one around me, and there are tons of cannondale, trek, and giant shops that are amazing. The only good spesh shop is also a trek and Santa shop. So why would anyone ever go with spesh? No clue.

Anyone? Anyone anywhere? Because you have only one good shop that means it's crazy that anyone anywhere on the planet would buy their bikes?

Weird reasoning.

Note - my experience with Trek has been much like the negative Specialized experiences mentioned here. Thus I am not a Trek fan and don't recommend their bikes. Now i'm not going to say their bikes suck, I respect them very much so. But when a friend who is looking at bikes asks me if Trek is a good brand, I tell them that while they make a good bike, I wouldn't buy one. But I don't question why people buy Trek bikes in general.

You obviously have more energy to continue this silly debate than I do. This is a pretty pointless thread, who gives a good shit about what the paint on someone else's frame says? It's pretty and dumb. I feel stupid for ever being a part of it.
flag Tehuprising
Posted: Nov 12, 2015 at 12:11 Quote
*petty and dumb... Auto correct...
flag MX298
Posted: Nov 12, 2015 at 13:54 Quote
you said it best "local specialized shop is a pile of crap, all jerks. I hate the company, not the bikes." Enough said!
flag RunsWithScissors
Posted: Nov 13, 2015 at 16:13 Quote
Today at work I found another reason to hate Specialized: Internal cable routing for the dropper post on a new Enduro. Our customer decided to try to assemble his new bike himself and was in way over his head skill wise. He totally jacked up the cable to the dropper post and made a real mess out of it. There appeared to be a sleeve inside the frame made of some kind of foam that was supposed to act as a guide for the cable housing, but thanks to my customer it was all torn up to the point of being useless, so it was about an hour long fishing expedition to get cable housing down the seat tube and out of the port near the bottom bracket.

If they can't come up with a better idea than that for internal routing they should just leave well enough alone and route externally.
flag harperrider
O+
Posted: Nov 13, 2015 at 18:03 Quote
RunsWithScissors wrote:
Today at work I found another reason to hate Specialized: Internal cable routing for the dropper post on a new Enduro. Our customer decided to try to assemble his new bike himself and was in way over his head skill wise. He totally jacked up the cable to the dropper post and made a real mess out of it. There appeared to be a sleeve inside the frame made of some kind of foam that was supposed to act as a guide for the cable housing, but thanks to my customer it was all torn up to the point of being useless, so it was about an hour long fishing expedition to get cable housing down the seat tube and out of the port near the bottom bracket.

If they can't come up with a better idea than that for internal routing they should just leave well enough alone and route externally.

So you are whining about their routing, when it was the customer that f*cked it up? That makes total sense. It must have been Specialized fault.

Idiot.
flag RunsWithScissors
Posted: Nov 13, 2015 at 18:17 Quote
harperrider wrote:
RunsWithScissors wrote:
Today at work I found another reason to hate Specialized: Internal cable routing for the dropper post on a new Enduro. Our customer decided to try to assemble his new bike himself and was in way over his head skill wise. He totally jacked up the cable to the dropper post and made a real mess out of it. There appeared to be a sleeve inside the frame made of some kind of foam that was supposed to act as a guide for the cable housing, but thanks to my customer it was all torn up to the point of being useless, so it was about an hour long fishing expedition to get cable housing down the seat tube and out of the port near the bottom bracket.

If they can't come up with a better idea than that for internal routing they should just leave well enough alone and route externally.

So you are whining about their routing, when it was the customer that f*cked it up? That makes total sense. It must have been Specialized fault.

Idiot.

There's a lot of ways to route a cable that don't involve stupid crap like that. Granted, the customer messed it up, but it was a terrible design to begin with. Routing around a suspension pivot and the bottom bracket inside the frame was stupid. Using a liner made out of foam was stupid. It didn't have to be that way. Lots of great bikes do not have that kind of routing or dumb ass lining. Specialized makes a bike that rides nice, but wrenches terribly.
flag TheRaven
Posted: Nov 13, 2015 at 18:48 Quote
RunsWithScissors wrote:
There's a lot of ways to route a cable that don't involve stupid crap like that. Granted, the customer messed it up, but it was a terrible design to begin with. Routing around a suspension pivot and the bottom bracket inside the frame was stupid. Using a liner made out of foam was stupid. It didn't have to be that way. Lots of great bikes do not have that kind of routing or dumb ass lining. Specialized makes a bike that rides nice, but wrenches terribly.

Lots of bikes have worse routing too. Pivot is one. Notorious for terrible cable routing. Still fantastic bikes though.
flag RunsWithScissors
Posted: Nov 14, 2015 at 6:13 Quote
TheRaven wrote:
RunsWithScissors wrote:
There's a lot of ways to route a cable that don't involve stupid crap like that. Granted, the customer messed it up, but it was a terrible design to begin with. Routing around a suspension pivot and the bottom bracket inside the frame was stupid. Using a liner made out of foam was stupid. It didn't have to be that way. Lots of great bikes do not have that kind of routing or dumb ass lining. Specialized makes a bike that rides nice, but wrenches terribly.

Lots of bikes have worse routing too. Pivot is one. Notorious for terrible cable routing. Still fantastic bikes though.

Ahhhh...but this thread is about why some people hate SPECIALIZEDSmile I'm not saying that Specialized has a monopoly on "stupid", they just seem to lead the pack. For someone who has an endless supply of cash and doesn't work on their own bikes, Specialized is as good as any other reputable manufacturer. FWIW though, I think that part of great design and engineering is ease of service/repair/maintenance and in that area Specialized just sucks. My boss has an otherwise perfectly good frame of theirs that he can't use simply because the rear shock is trashed and nobody makes a replacement shock that fits into that stupid linkage or parts to refurb the existing shock. That is just stupid. I'm more than willing to ride their bikes or be paid to fix them, but I would never spend my own money on one. There are just too many good bikes out there that don't have the same problems.
flag TheRaven
Posted: Nov 14, 2015 at 7:32 Quote
RunsWithScissors wrote:
Ahhhh...but this thread is about why some people hate SPECIALIZEDSmile I'm not saying that Specialized has a monopoly on "stupid", they just seem to lead the pack. For someone who has an endless supply of cash and doesn't work on their own bikes, Specialized is as good as any other reputable manufacturer. FWIW though, I think that part of great design and engineering is ease of service/repair/maintenance and in that area Specialized just sucks. My boss has an otherwise perfectly good frame of theirs that he can't use simply because the rear shock is trashed and nobody makes a replacement shock that fits into that stupid linkage or parts to refurb the existing shock. That is just stupid. I'm more than willing to ride their bikes or be paid to fix them, but I would never spend my own money on one. There are just too many good bikes out there that don't have the same problems.

Too many bikes that don't have the same problems? Where are these bikes? I haven't ridden any thus far. All of the best bikes i've ridden have had either stupid proprietary designs or things that just don't work the way they should. Spec, Trek, Giant, Intense, Pivot, SC, Cannondale, Ibis, Yeti, Scott, Transition...I've ridden and/or wrenched on bikes from every one of those manufacturers and can name really stupid and confounding design "features" from each one. So the only way I can agree that Specialized "leads the pack" on stupid is because they sell more bikes than most of those brands, so perhaps you just see them more often. Even as a recreational mechanic, i've come to accept that stupid design is just par for the course on high-end bikes. I'd think a professional mechanic would be even more accustomed.

What is the frame that you can't find a shock for? I only ask because i've handled a bunch of these for friends and friends of friends with similar issues. Pretty much all the Stumpjumpers use custom setups, but can be modified to work with off-the-shelf shocks. My wife's bike is one such example. It came with a shock size that doesn't exist, but I made it work.
flag chickendog
Posted: Nov 14, 2015 at 7:55 Quote
I own a specialized bike so I will say I like the bike. Propietary setups make it so I must look elsewhere for trail bikes and AM .It keeps me from buying another one, shame really
flag Tehuprising
Posted: Nov 14, 2015 at 9:03 Quote
TheRaven wrote:
RunsWithScissors wrote:
Ahhhh...but this thread is about why some people hate SPECIALIZEDSmile I'm not saying that Specialized has a monopoly on "stupid", they just seem to lead the pack. For someone who has an endless supply of cash and doesn't work on their own bikes, Specialized is as good as any other reputable manufacturer. FWIW though, I think that part of great design and engineering is ease of service/repair/maintenance and in that area Specialized just sucks. My boss has an otherwise perfectly good frame of theirs that he can't use simply because the rear shock is trashed and nobody makes a replacement shock that fits into that stupid linkage or parts to refurb the existing shock. That is just stupid. I'm more than willing to ride their bikes or be paid to fix them, but I would never spend my own money on one. There are just too many good bikes out there that don't have the same problems.

Too many bikes that don't have the same problems? Where are these bikes? I haven't ridden any thus far. All of the best bikes i've ridden have had either stupid proprietary designs or things that just don't work the way they should. Spec, Trek, Giant, Intense, Pivot, SC, Cannondale, Ibis, Yeti, Scott, Transition...I've ridden and/or wrenched on bikes from every one of those manufacturers and can name really stupid and confounding design "features" from each one. So the only way I can agree that Specialized "leads the pack" on stupid is because they sell more bikes than most of those brands, so perhaps you just see them more often. Even as a recreational mechanic, i've come to accept that stupid design is just par for the course on high-end bikes. I'd think a professional mechanic would be even more accustomed.

What is the frame that you can't find a shock for? I only ask because i've handled a bunch of these for friends and friends of friends with similar issues. Pretty much all the Stumpjumpers use custom setups, but can be modified to work with off-the-shelf shocks. My wife's bike is one such example. It came with a shock size that doesn't exist, but I made it work.

Maybe this sport isn't for you. Golf clubs always work as their "supposed to".
flag RunsWithScissors
Posted: Nov 14, 2015 at 16:36 Quote
Too many bikes that don't have the same problems? Where are these bikes? I haven't ridden any thus far.

[/Quote]

Without looking further than what has been in the shop in the last couple of weeks or so...

The Santa Cruz Bronson that my boss just sold had cable routing that didn't go around a suspension pivot or through the frame in some stupid way. It also had a threaded bottom bracket shell and a head tube that doesn't use an "integrated" headset.

The Nomad that is replacing his Bronson has internal routing, but it has a better design that is easier to feed cable through, and again, no integrated headset or press fit bottom bracket, and no stupid cable routing.

There's an older Ibis Mojo sitting in one of our racks that also doesn't have integrated headset or press fit bb, or shitty cable routing.

We just built up a new Mojo for one of our customers and while it DID have internal cable routing, it wasn't a pain in the ass to work with.

We also have an older Scott Spark sitting in the shop with cable routing that doesn't suck, a threaded bottom bracket and non-integrated headset.

...and that's just what I could see around the shop as I was working today. So, yeah, there ARE lots of bikes out there that don't have the same stupid problems that Specialized is so commited to perpetuating. Granted, the bikes mentioned above may have some other features that you, me, or other people don't particularly like, but they don't have the same problems that Specialized usually does when it comes to bottom brackets, headsets, cable routing, and poor support for their proprietary parts. Everyone makes mistakes, but Specialized seems determined to double down on those mistakes.

While I'm not really a fan of Cannondale's Lefty forks, I would have to say that they are doing the proprietary thing pretty well there. I see Leftys on the trail getting used far more often than I see them in the shop for repairs. Generally speaking, when I see a newer Specialized come into the shop it has a creaky bottom bracket or headset. Luckily, Enduro makes a bb conversion kit that allows you to ditch the press fit and put in a threaded bb. If they could find a way to do the same thing for integrated headsets that would solve a lot of our Specialized riders' most common complaints.

Like I said before, if you have a pile of money and you don't have to fix it yourself, Specialized makes a nice bike. The look and build quality is good, but the engineering leaves something to be desired.
flag ryan83
O+
Posted: Nov 14, 2015 at 18:45 Quote
People hate Specialized for the same reason they hate the Yankees...they are a highly successful and dominant brand in their industry. Mountain bikers in particular obsess over the underdog and the unique (even if they are inferior) so it's natural to hate the big dog. I bought my first Specialized (Enduro) last year because the shop I go to, Mojo Wheels in Denver is awesome. It doesn't hurt that they have a lifetime warranty on their frames.

Also, I spent 5 years wrenching and selling Specialized and disagree with the comments on customer service. Because of the volume they are are very liberal with warranties. If you get bad service from a shop that's not their fault. I've happily owned helmets, shoes and clothing by them and they have all been top notch. The lawyering is super douchey but I hope they've learned their PR lessons from that.

I've also found that people don't like Trek (for the same reason) but I'd buy a Remedy or Slash in a heartbeat.

 


Copyright © 2000 - 2024. Pinkbike.com. All rights reserved.
dv42 0.016514
Mobile Version of Website