🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi all,

I own a bike shop in California and recently one of my best customers
brought his 2003 Mercier Serpens into my shop for service. In the
process I noticed that where one of the seat stays was brazed into the
rear dropout the brazing was not done properly. I advised the customer
to let me contact Mercier about warrantying the defective frame. The
reply I got back from Mercier really made me wonder how this company is
even still in business. Here's what happened:

1) I was told that the entire bike needed to be shipped back to Florida
to be examined so they could determine what was wrong and why it
happened.
2) I advised Mercier that the brazing had not beed performed correctly
during manufacturing, that the seat stay tube was brazed only half way
around the tube.
3) I wrote in my reply: "What is wrong is that the brazing was not done
properly at the factory. I've done lots of brazing myself, so I know
something about this. What caused it? DEFECTIVE WORKMANSHIP! You don't
need the whole bike to see that the brazing was done poorly."
4) I was told that Mercier needed the name and phone number of the
customer and a copy of the original sales receipt.
5) I was told: "There has not even been a failure of the product"
6) I replied: "So what do you consider a failure? Is it when the rider
hits the ground and breaks a few bones, maybe gets killed in the
process? Can you blame us for not wanting that to happen?
7) I was told: "Please have the customer ship the bike to us"
8) I replied: "I don't want the owner to have to deal with boxing and
shipping a bike, then having to reassemble it when it comes back"
9) I also stated: "The frame is defective. I'll ship the entire bike to
you, but the owner will not be happy when he finds out he has to pay
for shipping the entire bike to Florida"
10) I also stated: "I'm not impressed with Mercier, it's products,
people, or it's policies"
11) I was then told: "We will not deal with you".

Of course there was more to the communications than just this, but the
above snipetts should give you an idea of the way that Mercier operates
(like I thought it was ridiculous to make the customer ship the entire
bike to Florida at their own expense, that I did not consider this to
be "excellent customer service", etc). The vast majority of my concerns
were never even acknowledged. I was not given the information I asked
for (like a phone number, address, the name of the person I was dealing
with, who was in charge there, etc) so I could contact them directly. I
finally got "Mike" as the person I was dealing with and a shipping
address (no last name, no phone number, no name or email address of the
person in charge).
My impression is that Mercier never wanted to warranty this frame in
the first place, so by making us jump through enough hoops, they hoped
we would eventually give up. During the entire ordeal, I was treated
like I knew nothing and that they have it all right (yeh, like that's
why they're so huge and successful). My intelligence was insulted while
the people at Mercier acted with arrogance and showed no concern and no
willingness to accomodate our wishes.
I promised Mercier that to make this up to them I would post my
experiences on all bicycle related newsgroups, that I would make sure
that every rider I know gets a chance to see the defective frame, and
that I would also let them all know how I was treated. I think Mercier
could have handled this issue better. YMMV

Perry