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If you go back to 2018/2019 you might start seeing some, but hopefully things have gotten better.
Full disclosure; I haven't laid hands on one in about two years, but I built maybe 18-20 GSDs myself during the first two production years and they were rife with QC issues .
The most common issues were:
- Crooked post mounts on the frame and/or fork that were bad enough that facing did little to nothing to fix them half the time.
- Rear brake hose and shift housing being crushed during the factory installation of the drive unit
- The dust cap of the rear hub slowly unthreading itself during riding, throwing off the indexing of the shifting and eventually seizing the freehub body altogether.
- The alignment of the rear end being so bad that the largest cassette cog had to be locked out because the derailleur cage would contact the tire and eventually rub through the sidewall.
- The rubber tensioner pulley for the chain deforming enough that the cartridge bearings just fall out.
- A laughable number of spontaneous kickstand failures.
- The taper of the frame and rear thru axle insert not matching up perfectly resulting in the thru axle entering the threaded side at an angle instead of straight-on.
My shop at the time was very cargo-focused and there was so much hype leading up the release of the GSD that it made the horribleness of those QC issues sting that much more and given that we'd presold dozens, it really fucked our service queue. Add to this that for the better part of the first year, Tern denied that these issues were even real despite us submitting photographic evidence and getting replacement parts like forks was like pulling teeth. They also told us and other dealers things like "it's normal for disc brakes to rub for the first couple hundred miles) and tried to gaslight us by saying they hadn't heard of any other dealers having the problems we were seeing (which turned out to be complete BS.)
I was eventually put in charge of tracking, cataloging and managing the QC warranty complaints for the shop. By the time I left Christmas of 2019, it showed that just over half the GSDs we built (80+ total) had one or more of the above QC issues.
The whole ordeal just really soured the company for me forever.
- Crooked post mounts on the frame and/or fork that were bad enough that facing did little to nothing to fix them half the time.
JVBulman-
This is exactly why we didn’t get one when we test rode it a few years back.
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interesting, okay
my Tern buying trajectory was when kid is out of nursery anyway so another couple of years with Bullitt so by then the R&M Tern killer would be out and about
For us as a family it has to be either a step through design or smaller than 26" wheels. At the moment I am the only person who can use the Bullitt where as the other eBike I have is used by me, my partner and my dad. Kind of enrages me that bike companies only look at tall white demographic while designing bikes.
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I second all of this.
Had numerous mates who run shops around UK and Europe, many have ditched Tern has a brand permanently over their behaviour. Its not just the GSD, but quite a lot of their bikes.
If you get a good one, or your dealer is decent and sorted out the issues before it was handed over to you, great, they are well designed and people really like them.
If you just got drop shipped one in a box and put it together yourself, your experience was probably different.Main reason I see that Tern/babboe /insert names of others like this, don't get a bashing online is... Most of their customers don't know any better, they expect its normal to ride around on a bike which rattles, clangs, rubs and only works in one gear, they don't have the knowledge to diagnose or fix an issue and are quite happy just rattling along at 8mph for years. With these (these are the ones that I see!) it becomes the poor bastard bike mechanic who you dropped the bike in with for a "quick service of a new bike", that has to find all these issues one after another and phone you multiple times, each call worse than the last.
I have had two with cracked frames, many with holes in the frame from lack of weld penetration (looked like weld was a boggle on top of the tube and fell off), many with bent drop outs so then the bolt through axle gets stripped (by me trying to remove the damn wheel), bb cluster welded in wonky so the entire drive unit sits or constantly comes loose from the frame. Headsets made of gravel, from new. Etc. Could go on for ages,you get the picture. Some of these things ate normal with mass production mid quality bikes, some of these things are very not normal and Terns response to them has been "never heard of that, must be something you've done to it" instead of "shit, can't believe a bike with a bent frame and naff welds made it out of the factory, through a dealer and to an end customer in that state , give us the customers details so we can fix this situation fast". Which is what R+M have just done they have an issue with the new Packster 70 which only came out 6 months ago, they've completed a very aggressive recall /buy back of all affected bikes, hats off to them, very brave and well executed.Hell that was a rant. Basically I and many others are just a bit fed up of total shite permeating our industry, then leaving customers sore and being wary of buying actual good stuff or ever trusting anyone in a bike shop again.
Remember being accused of sabotage of one particular gsd that came in with brake pads worn through the backing plate (rotor trashed too) due to seemingly the rear wheel being run totally loose from the hub bearing cap/freehub nut being loose. Was a nice chunk missing from frame on one side from tyre wear. Bike had 300 miles on it
sbbohr
amey
BrickMan
genuine question; how are they getting away with selling a bike thats £4/5k with bad quality and getting away with it? I am on Tern GSD Facebook group and people hardly ever complain there. I have never heard complaints from actual users.