So please tell me why Surly has a 3 yr frame warranty. And Trek and Co-Motion have life-time warranties. Co-Motion said in the last 9 yrs there have been 2-3 frame repairs. One was dropped 200+ ft off a bridge. Fixed no questions asked.
Where's Surly on this???

Original "fat" Xbox 360s had a 3-year warranty, while later S and E models have just a 1-year warranty period. Does this imply that the later models are less reliable? Actually, quite the opposite; Microsoft instituted the 3-year warranty for early models specifically because they had cartoonishly high failure rates, and Microsoft didn't want to murder their brand. The S and E variants are many, many times more reliable.

Does this mean that Trek and Co-Motion are less reliable? Not really, but it shows how obfuscated the issue is.

There are decisions around philosophy and image with warranty policies. Surly's stance is that they're obligated to provide a defect-free frame, and if you screw it up, that's your problem. 3 years is usually enough to detect significant manufacturing issues. Trek thinks that a very forgiving policy should be part of the bicycle ownership experience, and they market that policy, and if their poor performance in bang-for-the-buck fights is any indication they also pass the cost for that policy on to the consumer.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You have to get the Whys from the companies
Co Motion is the frame maker themselves .. Soma, Surly, Salsa, and several others, Use Maxway in Taiwan..

Trek has always had a Lifetime frame materials and defects warranty, so even though they too contract out the Work to have the cost competitiveness
they stand behind what they sell .

One Word: margin

Frames: LHT = $500 vs. Co-Motion = $2,000

No matter what: Four LHT frames will last longer than one Co-Motion!

That said: If you've got $2,000 buy the Co-Motion

i suppose surly doesn't offer lifetime warranties because
they don't need to. steel frames don't break. they build
a quality product at a reasonable price. offering a
longer warranty would imply their frames break.

other bikes offer lifetime warranties maybe because they
have to. perhaps people consider the frame material or
the manufacturer substandard, and aren't willing to shell
out that much money because of higher potential failure
rates. but the warranty isn't free, it's just added into
the already too high price.

Not really.

You really *would* have to ask the manufacturer. Once upon a time I worked for one company, then I quit and went to another. And they both made similar products. It wasn't the engineers that determined what the warranty policy would be. It was the marketing department.

Then discuss, rather than argue. What are your thoughts on the matter? What do you object to? Why?

Here's the answer that is being looked for here.

Its actually really amazing that Surly offers a warranty at all, considering that their frames are made out of beaten out Maxwell house coffee cans and lead.

There.

My new surly LHT from the first year of production in 2004 had a deformed bottom bracket shell. Surly said it was normal to have to pay a bike mechanic to cut new threads in a shell, they refused to do anything about it - but they mailed me a flask and a pair of socks as their attempt to convince me that they were a great company. <Insert chuckle here.> The bike mechanic had to take a break half way through the work because it was such hard work to cut that much metal by hand. He said he had never seen such a big pile of metal shavings left after working on a bottom bracket shell before. Fortunately the mechanic did not charge too much, I do not remember how much the bill was but I do remember that Surly refused to reimburse me for it because it was "normal" according to them.

I used the LHT on my Pacific Coast tour because it was 700c, my previous tours involved some gravel so I used a 26 inch touring bike before that trip. I went less than 20 miles on the Pacific tour before I decided that I really should not have used that bike on that tour. It had an intermitent shimmy. I am sure that there was some out of specification tubing in the frame, it handled like a wet noodle. After one of the bad shimmy episodes on that trip a friend of mine that was behind me said he was surprised I did not crash it, he works as a bike mechanic and knows something about bike frames. When I got home I put my Surly frame in the recycle bin. Several people told me I should have tried to sell it. The bike handled ok unladen but I was afraid someone would try to tour on it and did not want to sell a frame that could cause an injury, thus it went in the recycle bin.

I know there are a lot of people that love Surlys. I did a group tour several years ago with Adventure Cycling. Of the 16 bikes, 4 were LHT and all 4 of the owners loved them. I rode one of my Thorns on that tour, not the LHT.

Needless to say, Surly is not getting another penny from me. As far as I am concerned it does not matter what their warranty is, when they refused to honor the warranty before it was even built up into a complete bike, that in my opinion is the same thing as having no warranty at all.

Last year a friend of mine brought a very old cracked Trek 520 steel frame into a Trek store, got a brand new frame, no questions asked.

The only bike I've bought new is my Hardrock. Being an old and inexpensive MTB, I've got little worry of it breaking, and should it, little worry about recouping it. I've long since lost any proof of purchase anyhow.

I've read something on this forum about new Burley inc honoring old Burley co-op's warranty. They had set up a trust or something for the purpose.

So far the 520 and LHT we have have performed beautifully. One of the main things I truly like about the lht is that even though fully and relatively heavily loaded with a heavy rider, it handles almost like unloaded. Steering takes no effort at all and the load can only really be noticed at low speeds and accelerations. Max speed I've done so far was 50km/h and there wasn't a single wobble even though I purposefully tried to induce a shimmy.

Mind you I have an after 2011 model so it's stiffer than the 2007. I can also understand your attitude towards surly after the warranty thing. Luckily in the EU I deal with the retailer (and a very good one at that) and not surly directly so I won't face such issues if there ever is a problem

I wanted to get a bicycle for over the road touring and that was back in 2011. I was considering getting a Surly LHT because they come highly recommended. The reason I didn't get a LHT was because Surly told me in an email that putting a kickstand on it would void the warranty.

Cheers

Surly redesigned the rear triangle at some point in time, I am not sure when. Mine had the tapered seatstays that had two bends. The version that had the straight seatstays that were untapered look much more robust. And the only ones that I have actually seen others use on a bike tour were those later ones with those straight untapered seatstays.

I am pretty sure you need to ask Surly why it offers the warranty it does. Report your findings if you do.

You can drop a Co-Motion 200 feet of a bridge and it's still covered. But bolt a kickstand on a Surly and they void the warranty. ?? Where's that.????
Co-Motion has had 3 frame repairs in 9 yrs. Surly?? Maybe I'll guess not much more?
But it shows a really, really bad attitude on Surly's part.

Surly made the decision to not fit a KS Plate for You, SOMA went the other way a KS mounting Plate works as a chainstay brace ,even if you dont fit the KS.

Maxway builds to the customers specifications as directed.

The left chainstay mount near the rear dropout works nicely on my around town. Trek 920 has the same mount. I think better than the BB mount.

Because, as I found out when I went to adjust the girlfriend's kickstand that came with the bike halfway through a tour, removing it for the first time, people can overtighten the bolt, crinkle the chainstay, and weaken the frame. That is user error, not something that should be covered under warranty.

I want a warranty period that will cover manufacturing defects, not my abuse. Three years is generally plenty of time for what is going to fail from manufacturing defects to fail. If Comotion chooses to fix a bike I dropped 200 feet for me for free, that is great, but it is not something I expect any manufacturer to do.

I'd wager that the people abusing Surlys is far greater than the number of people abusing Comotions, too.

O.k. We get it. Surly sucks. You have drilled that into our heads at least a dozen times. At this point, you are doing nothing more than trying to stir people up.

My Surly is on its way to Missoula for a tour starting on June 14th. I will share some pictures when I get back. You do the same when you take your next tour. Deal?

It shows a bad attitude or does it show a decision made due to odds, marketplace desire, and meeting a pricepoint?

- Surly, like any company, could have chose to warranty their frame forever. Logically, the cost of said frame would be higher than it currently is. They chose to deliver a product at a pricepoint and offer a warranty that allows such delivery. A Trek adventure bike has questionable components for the price, but those are used to meet a pricepoint. It happens with products everywhere.
- The marketplace(demand) has spoken and is clearly OK with the warranty offered by Surly. You can claim Surly has a bad attitude(their name sorta suggests as much, but I digress) when it comes to warranties, but if consumers felt the risks werent worth the cost, they wouldnt buy Surly bikes so much. Basically, like so much on this site, your opinion places you alone in a field on this one.
- Lifetime warranties are worthless if they cant be honored. Schwinn bikes were sold with a lifetime warranty. Lotta good that does anyone now.


I ride frames that are between 20 and 40 years old and can say with confidence that I would be much more concerned about components breaking after 3 years than the frame. 3 years of riding should expose any sort of frame issue that I would expect to be covered by a warranty. If I bought a new frame, I wouldnt expect the company to warranty it for more than a few years when it costs $400-700 for a complete frameset.

This is Co-Motion's warranty per their website- Warranty Information
Co-Motion frames, forks and stems carry a limited lifetime warranty for the original owner of the bike. Any failure resulting from faulty material or manufacture will be repaired or replaced at our discretion.

If they fixed a frame that fell 200' with no questions asked, then they went well beyond what their warranty covers.
Got a link to the 200' fall story?

I am surprised that Co-motion would cover frame repair under warranty if it fell off a bridge. But that's just me.

Almost all warranties are for the original purchaser through an authorized dealer for the terms set by the manufacturer. The manufacturer always puts the "at their discretion" clause in there. If you go to the manufacturer with a catastrophic damage to a frame, of course they are going to ask what happened, what caused it, how long ago, etc... It just helps the manufacturer understand the situation. Then they will decide if it was their responsibility or the owner's for the damage.

I am confused about the LHT story above [MENTION=203914]Tourist in MSN[/MENTION]. Did you buy the frame through an authorized dealer?

+1

A free 2 minute telephone call could have resolved the OP's questions regarding warranty (but then getting a simple answer is not really why OP starts all his contentious, provocative threads).

Phone: 877.743.3191

https://surlybikes.com/contact

Unlike Trek and CoMo, Surly sells most of it's products as framesets, which are then built into bicycles largely by amateurs with little or no prior bicycle building experience. Some of these customers undoubtedly damage or ruin framesets/forks in the process and then possibly attempt to fix their error with a "warranty" claim.

https://surlybikes.com//uploads/downl...e_Warranty.pdf

https://www.trekbikes.com/trek_bikes_warranty/

https://co-motion.com/faq/faq_entry/w...ycles-warranty

Contrary to the OP's contention that Trek and Co-Mo have unlimited lifetime warranties that even cover jackassery (dropping your bike off a bridge), the warranties in fact are limited in general to defects in material and manufacturing. If you read links above you'll see all three bike manufacturers' warranties are very much alike with similar wording. None suggest damage from a 200 foot drop are covered "no questions asked", and no reasonable person would believe such a circumstance is warrantied.

Most people buy bikes based on their needs and budget and the bike's capabilities - not the bike's warranty terms. I think this thread is yet another troll by the OP and simply a half-cocked attempt to disparage a manufacturer and product which he imagines to be inferior, or perhaps to reinforce his decision to buy something different.

I bet the OP hasn't ridden that fancy bike of his even 100 miles yet, after several weeks of ownership. That 920 is probably just a garage queen by now.

The USA made touring cannondales had a lifetime warranty. Mine cracked at the classic spot, dropout drive side chain stay interfac while on tour. Had it happened at home i probably would not have bothered to ask about warranty on a 10yo bike. Because it happened 3000 mi into a tour and caused some serious annoyance I gave it a whirl.
Replaced with a NOS USA frame.

Thanks, Cannondale

Had it been steel someone could have repaired it with a torch right :-)

Surly: Good to the last drop ; )