Originally Posted by
Abneycat
Most of these bikes *are* like this, low quality, poorly designed componentry that isn't designed for longevity and sometimes isn't even designed with standard cycling compatibility in mind. I would imagine the company who decided to build this bike with that sort of fork did so *just* so that the buyer would have a hard time with it down the road, planned obsolescence.
I call them "bicycle-shaped pieces of scrap metal."
If you invest in a really good bike, with decent maintainance it will work for years. If you by a cheap one you replace every year (at best), over the same period you'll end up spending more on bikes than you would if you had bought a good one in the first place.
This is true of other products besides bicycles, by the way.