NYC bikes are famous for inconsistent welding.
Meaning, on some bikes they simply forgot to weld one side of a joint. I have also seen ones where they remembered to finish the joint.
This is poor quality control. Which simply means that you have an inconsistent product attached to a consistent brand name. If you think brand is important you might as well take sides in the cola wars. NYC bikes is just a particularly crappy aluminum frame from one of the less good factories of the PRC.
Why is it worth your attention? Becasue you fell for the ads.
(digression for epic simile)
NYC bikes is the bike equivalent of cakelove. Cakelove is a bakery started by warren brown, a unsucessful lawyer and diletante baker who started a bakery in DC. He always introduces himself as "I'm waren brown I used to be a lawyer and I gave it all up to become a baker". Now, I appreciate the sentiment, but he also is hapy to accept the claim of being the best baker in DC. This is patently false. Anyone who charges enough money for their cakes can use real butter, chocolate and milk and anyone who uses htese ingrediants is going to make good stuff. But the fact that he was a lawyer does not make the cakes better than anyone else. It is just that he is a white collar worker rather than a blue collar worker. He know how to market and thus people are willing to pay forty dollars for a cake.
The same is true of NYC bikes.
The company is the brainchild of an out of work actor who got by by selling police auction bikes. Having someexperience with refurbishing bikes, I know this is not a money making enterprise unless you do some serious corner cutting. It don't think he has changed his ways. I was interested at first but then I realized that he is simply putting the same old parts one crap frames and selling them for more thana regular bike.
I don't know, maybe the stickers are really expensive.
With the customer service problems on top of them I would wonder why anyone would want to have anyhting to do with them. The only benefit I can see its that with local offices they ought to have great customer service.
Just buy a giant or a Fuji, you are gona get a much better bike for less.