Cracked Sender - Canyon's Response
Shortly after publishing my review of the Canyon Sender, in fact, a few days later and the next time I rode it, I cleaned up the battered bike and spotted a crack. I mentioned this in our weekly Skype meeting and Mike Levy mentioned the broken bike in his Good Month, Bad Month article which caused a stir in the comments.
Canyon collected the bike via courier, and within ten days I had a new frame, replaced under warranty in my hands. Now, warranty turnaround speeds made by somebody with an @pinkbike.com email address may get priority (and I hope this isn't the case), but my experience was a positive one. For years, I have believed that any frame will crack given enough abuse (I have broken plenty of bikes), the make or break for brand loyalty comes down to warranty speed and service, in this case, Canyon has come out on top.
![Canyon Sender crack now replaced under warranty.]()
Here's a copy of Canyon's email to me, explaining their analysis and testing procedures:
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MENTIONS: @Canyon-PureCycling
Canyon collected the bike via courier, and within ten days I had a new frame, replaced under warranty in my hands. Now, warranty turnaround speeds made by somebody with an @pinkbike.com email address may get priority (and I hope this isn't the case), but my experience was a positive one. For years, I have believed that any frame will crack given enough abuse (I have broken plenty of bikes), the make or break for brand loyalty comes down to warranty speed and service, in this case, Canyon has come out on top.
Here's my broken frame, before it was returned to Canyon for testing.
Here's a copy of Canyon's email to me, explaining their analysis and testing procedures:
 | Hi Paul, Since receiving the Sender CF test bike back to our Koblenz headquarters, we’ve taken it to pieces to gain a full understanding of what was going on with the frame. We wanted to work out what could have caused the crack around the fork bumper. For us, this mystery had to be solved once and for all… We started at our CT scanner. Canyon is still the only manufacturer worldwide to have a CT in-house and we use it throughout all our developments and quality checks. Analyzing the frame here showed us that the frame you tested met all our product quality requirements, so we can rule out the possibility that you received a frame that was structurally flawed from the start. We can also happily rule out the damage being caused by a fork impact. The force required to break through the integrated Fork Bumper would have caused a different kind of damage, plus evidence of the impact would be visible on other components, such as the forks themselves or the bars. Our analysis also confirms that the crack would not have led to a complete frame failure. Even after the damage was recognized, the Sender was still safe to be ridden. Our conclusion as to how the damage occurred is that the frame was subject to a major stress overload stemming from a direct impact to the frame just behind the fork bumper. Even considering the nature of downhill riding, this damage could not have occurred under “normal” circumstances, a crash or similar incident has to be the root cause. Unfortunately, we cannot accurately reconstruct how the damage occurred. This is the first case we know of like this from over 1000 frames and bikes sold. Had this happened to one of our customers who had bought the bike, we would send them a replacement frame at no cost. As riders, we always want our customers to have a bike they can actually ride. If a customer does suffer terminal frame damage due to a crash, we offer them our Crash Replacement Service to get them back on the bike ASAP. We believe wholeheartedly in the standards we set ourselves at Canyon that go above and beyond others in the industry. The Sender CF was developed to be one of the strongest bikes on the scene and so far, this is precisely what our customers are experiencing. All the best, Daniel. |
MENTIONS: @Canyon-PureCycling
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Member since Aug 23, 2009
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However in this case I can testify to canyons service being second to none. I had a canyon nerve 2.5 years old, cracked the frame, sent it back. They replaced foc no questions asked. While in for the rebuild they noticed the drive train worn and replaced with spares, chain ring, cassette and chain. Rebuilt the bike they were about to send back to me, they rode it in the carpark and thought the seat dropper was stiff. So they repoaced foc (after 2.5 years old).
I aslo had an issue where he xo shifter failed in the first 12 months, they sent a replacement, unfortunately they sent silver when mine was black, so i asked them to send a black cover and i would fit. They sent a complete shifter in black, and told me to keep the silver one.
I can only speak as i find, and i tend to mesasure businesses on not when things go wrong but how they react when they do, which speaks volumes. Fyi i no longer own a canyon, but have no hesitation in reccomending their bikes or service.
I current own a whyte t130 one and half years old. last week i cracked the carbon wheel they want £300 to replace the rim, which is cost price and i have no issue with this (although i have switched to a hope wheel to avoid future issues). However i do think canyons approach might have differed (Or maybe not)
hmm.
Positive: "they've measured everything they can measure, all they're trying to do is reassure people that this isn't something that is occurring from normal use, and in situations where it isn't 100% certain what's happening they'll give the customer the benefit of the doubt".
Negative: "they're replacing it under warranty to keep him happy and generate good PR because he's in the mtb media, but also saying it's not their fault and that it must be due to a crash with the implication that it's not a legit warranty case and anyone else would have to pay"
Whichever one seems more plausible to you I suppose. I'm inclined to think the former, but without knowing the facts on both sides of the story, I'm really just giving Canyon the benefit of the doubt regarding their response there. At least they admitted "we don't know for certain what caused this" which in my experience is the hallmark of someone who is honest enough to admit when they don't have all the information.
"Even considering the nature of downhill riding, this damage could not have occurred under “normal” circumstances, a crash or similar incident has to be the root cause."
The most interesting part was "somebody with an @pinkbike.com email address may get priority (and I hope this isn't the case)". I want to share the experience of someone with a different email address.
Last year i had a minor crash on the road with my Canyon Torque. Realy important, on a road. not a dh track, not a drop, nothing on what the bike is built for, i just sliped on a road. Not a really good rider here. My crank arm bent like a twig. I contacted Canyon on 1 july, asking if i can buy another crank arm form them since i cant find the 165mm arm that was on the bike anywhere else. Also i said buy just because i wanted to speed things up and have a bike ready mid season. On 5th of september they answered,saying they can provide the crank arm , that it will be 89.99 euro and some payment options. Then they changed their minds and there was some emails excchanged and on 16 oct they concluded they will not send the crank arm and the discussion is over.
I bought a new crank arm and hoped i never have to deal with them again. First mail was on 1 july and they "solved" it on 18 oct. Nothing more to say except i rode my old bike last year.
This bring us to the current year.
Remeber i barely rode the Torque. I had a play in the rear shock. Something to do with the rebound circuit. The more dampening , the bigger the noise it made.
I sent an email with a video describing the issue on 30 march. No reply on that one so i made another warranty claim wich was answered on 18 may. During that time i sent the shock to a bike shop hoping they will fix it. The bike shop sent it back , saying it needs more then a service and its a warranty issue. In the meantime the answer from Canyon came on that 18 may email and i sent the shock to them. From the previous experience i was allready not looking forward to this one.
They said the damper was opened and that the measure spring has been forgotten in the last service. The problem is the shock was never serviced since i didnt get to ride my bike last year
It was opened because i sent it to the bike shop. So if any problems were with the shock it came like this when i bought the bike.
Anyway the last mail came on 4 june saying they will send the shock back to me unprocessed.
This year again i`m riding my old bike. I bought a new bike last year wich i didnt ride and also i couldnt sell my previous bike. Thank you Canyon
in conclussion . this is how Canyon customer service deals with mere mortals.
Photo here www.pinkbike.com/photo/17225741
@Canyon-PureCycling are you sure it is a dh frame?
"Had this happened to one of our customers who had bought the bike, we would send them a replacement frame at no cost."
"It's impossible to tell what exactly happened... "
"this damage could not have occurred under “normal” circumstances, a crash or similar incident has to be the root cause."
I'm pretty confident that Paul would have owned up to a major crash during testing, or in the very least not drawn attention to the damage if he legitimately caused it, so if you bought this bike and you're not Pinkbike, pony up for a crash replacement like every other bike company.
As an example, two days ago I washed out at quite low speed in a tight berm and landed on my shoulder - no injury to me, nothing to the bike except the brake rotor had nailed a rock square on (without me noticing or hearing) and basically flared it massively without bending it. This is the kind of damage that takes a LOT of force to achieve but that impact was something I would never have predicted from that crash and never had any indication that it'd happened until I began rolling down the trail again and the brake rotor was quite obviously jamming fairly hard in the pads every rotation.
In this case, Canyon have made a pretty solid effort to forensically quantify the cause and extent of the damage, to the greatest degree that is realistically achievable in a laboratory. You can call them liars if that seems justified to you, but as someone who deals with problems like these from the other side of the fence, I think it's nothing short of awesome that they have gone to this level of detail in examining the frame and publicly discussing the results. Of course they are keen to inspect things like this in the case of a Pinkbike review when the entire world's eyes are on them because of it - imagine you'd built a frame, sold thousands of them, and someone crashing one (or inadvertently damaging it in some other way) meant that you got a completely undeserved reputation for failure. What would your response be?