Ordering a bike from Canyon

For the past few years I’ve had dreams of buying a new bicycle. I went back and forth on what to get, where to get it, etc. Last year when Canyon announced the Grizl, I knew what I was going to buy.

I was a little concerned about purchasing a direct to consumer brand, but after seeing Canyon’s support of the gravel scene last year, and getting some of their swag at Unbound, I decided I felt safe enough.

Ordered a Canyon Grizl

It was early/mid December when the bike finally came in stock in my size, so I placed the order. The first two rides were great, I was getting adjusted to the bike, the new shimano components (first time with Shimano components on a bike). On the third ride I noticed that the big ring up front seemed to have issues, like it was deformed/bent.

Originally I thought it was just a bent tooth on the ring, I’ve experienced that before, but upon further inspection I wasn’t able to find a single tooth that was off. I was able to see when hand pedalling that the chain looked to shift over when it got to a couple of teeth, causing the bike to feel like it wanted to shift to the smaller ring up front. I was able to ride, but if the rear cassette was in any of the 4 or 5 larger rings, pedalling was inconsitant as it wanted to continually downshift up front.

Canyon Grizl with a bent front chain ring

Upon getting home from the ride I inspected further and was able to determine that the main chain ring looks to be misshapen. I ended up calling Canyon’s support number, was told it would likely be under warranty as I hadn’t had the bike for long, and that I needed to go online and submit a support request with photos of the problem.

Canyon Customer Service

So I did that, I went through the process of putting together photos trying to document the problem for them. I uploaded those photos and submitted the form on February 2nd, 2022. I immediately received an email with a case number, and in the email it said something to the effect of “if you don’t hear from us in 12-15 business days, please give us a call”.

From a customer service perspective, this is NOT a great first introduction to direct to consumer customer service. Actually, my first experience was calling them and they told me to submit the form, so that was a pretty poor experience initially, followed by an even worse one.

So here we are, February 17th, 2022. I went for another ride the other day, the chain ring definiteyl still has problems, making riding in the big ring a chore unless I’m really up to speed, causing me to run the small ring more than I typically would. I called Canyon’s customer support line today, and after waiting on hold for 15 minutes (their call back option wouldn’t take my button press for some reason) I finally spoke with a rep.

Great News

He asked me for my case number, read the case, looked at the photos, then informed me that I had a 2 year warranty on components.

Bad News

I would have to go direct to Shimano for the warranty work for the chain ring. He provided a phone number I would need to call to open up a support request.

15 days, two weeks, and I had to call Canyon, to be told that I would need to call Shimano to get support instead? Why couldn’t someone at Canyon have told me that two weeks ago?

So now I have a call back request in with Shimano. I called them 30 minutes ago. I’ll update this post as I find out how big of an ordeal it is trying to actually get support from a direct to consumer bicycle brand….

Update after response from Shimano

Got a call back from Shimano today. They provided me two options to get the warranty work done.

1) I can go to a local bike shop (assuming they need to sell shimano, but he didn’t say that directly) and they can do the inspection and file the warranty request with Shimano.

2) I can fill out a form on Shimano’s website, then I can mail in the part and have them inspect it and determine if it is under warranty….

So I will lean towards option 1 and hope that Trailhead will help me out on this one.

Direct To Consumer Bicycles, is it good for you?

I am not sure….