My Exercise Bike Journey

I understand this post is of limited interest, being basically another mundane "I ordered it from Amazon but it didn't work" saga, but I've written it up for my records, and as a basis for an Amazon review once the journey has ended.

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I bought the Ultrasport F-Bike 200B Exercise Bike from Amazon on September 30th 2016. It arrived about a week later and with some effort I assembled it. At first all went well - it was the ideal warm-up and warm-down machine, bookending weight training. And then it developed an annoying, intermittent jerkiness and thudding noise which, while not preventing use, made it uncomfortable.

I ignored this for a while hoping - idiotically - that it would go away. But yesterday, after reading the Amazon one-star reviews (I was not the only one), I wrote to the German manufacturer (email address: service.uk@ultrasport.net) as follows.

"Dear Sir/Madam,

I bought your exercise bike via Amazon.co.uk. My order was placed on 30th September 2016 and it was dispatched on October 3rd.

However, it has a fault. In use there is an intermittent clunking sound from the cycling assembly - and as it clunks there is a momentary stiffness/resistance, almost as if a bearing is defective. This makes cycling both noisy and uncomfortable.

This is a great disappointment to me - I chose your product as I believed it was of high quality and would 'just work'.

I notice that on the Amazon site there are a number of 1-star reviews which complain of a similar problem.

Is there anything I can do here at home to fix this problem, or can we discuss arrangements to replace the item?

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Seel."

I received this (my emphasis) in reply:

"We’re sorry to learn that your F-Bike seems to have arrived in faulty condition. From what you describe it sounds as if one of the drive belts has slipped out of position. This is not a fault that can easily be repaired. We’ll therefore be glad to replace the bike for you under warranty. In order to arrange this we’ll only need to see your proof of purchase.

Unfortunately, since you bought the product directly from Amazon UK, we don’t have access to any of your purchase details. Would you please come back to us with a copy of your delivery note  or the order confirmation mail you received from Amazon? Also, your telephone number would be great, since UPS likes to have those with the shipping documents.

As soon as we have all the background details complete, we can ship the replacement bike.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us again, should you have any further questions.

For future correspondence please use the Reply button to ensure smooth communication. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Ultrasport Service Team"

After a further email to share Amazon's order confirmation email details, this:

"Hello Nigel,

Thank you for your message with the purchase details.

Now we have everything we need to ship your replacement bike.

It will be handed to UPS and should arrive within a week.

As regards the faulty bike, it doesn’t really make sense to have it shipped back to Germany – the freight costs are simply too high. Would you mind very much disposing of it locally, perhaps in your local recycling yard? That would be very kind.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us again, should you have any further questions.

For future correspondence please use the Reply button to ensure smooth communication. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Ultrasport Service Team"

So good service. Hopefully it will arrive in a week and then it will work properly.

More later.

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Update; Tuesday, November 22nd 2016

The new bike arrived this morning, and after an hour's work it's assembled and working OK - on a brief trial. We shall see.