Good bike but customer service missing in action
UPDATED 2.1.24 after 3 months use:
EvoBike's Classic7 (2023) is a very good bicycle design, but my experience of ordering was a mixed bag. I write this review as somebody who’s lived in Holland, and is a total fan of Gazelle heavy duty NL, bicycles, on which this seems to be based.
The saddle and handlebars feel good; I've fallen off 3 times at speed on ice and the design somehow just protects you (each time only the side of my helmet hit the road with any force). I like the metallic blue colour of the male bicycle. I would have preferred a step through model as it would be more stable to mount when you've luggage on the rear, but the frame size, at 51 cm only, was likely to be too small. This is 54 cm and feels comfortable for me at 183 cm.
Assembling the bicycle was fairly straightforward, though it’s a real shame that they don’t spend a few extra crowns to include some basic tools! Anyway, once you find the right hex keys, adjustable wrench and Dunlop valve attachment it’s reasonably easy.
The components are mostly good quality although the bell was a bit underwhelming and sticks. No lock included, so if you want to fit a ring lock, you have to work out what size/depth the hole threads are on the bike frame, as they don’t tell you the size, nor put any bolts on the bicycle (nor with most ring locks!) That’s a real annoyance and has so far consumed several hours of my time for the sake of 2 tiny screws.
Another nuisance is not having little rubber flaps at the ends of the mudguard; you can buy them at Biltema for 45NOK, but they might need holes drilled to put on. They seem to be absolutely necessary, as my back was splattered with mud riding this bike. Note also that the location of the battery key makes some pannier designs impossible to fit. Check before buying one. And buy a neoprene sleeve for the battery (eg. MWave, which is a little short) that you can leave in place: it's absolutely essential weather protection.
I seem to have a bad battery; the indicator doesn’t work, so checking how full it is, requires taking it all the way down to the bicycle, plugging it in, turning the bicycle on, and reading it from there. And you have, therefore no idea how long it’s going to take to charge or how close it is to being ready.
It can be hard to remove the battery, as there’s nothing to grip onto, and this gets painful in winter. While it’s a heavy bicycle to pedal without the motor, the motor does a pretty good job and is not too noisy. The control panel is fine, though the battery seems to lack a management system, and therefore you can’t get any information about how many times it’s been charged, nor the range it’s supposed to give you.
The lights are good; the pedals look a bit plasticky, and are obviously not the ones in the assembly video, as they are black and just say A and B, rather than left and right, so you just have to take a guess when installing and risk cross-threading them. The kickstand is okay, though a double sided one would’ve been more stable. And it gets in the way of pedals if you push the bike backwards.
Riding on a dirt road during roadworks gave me a flat within four days after I hit a nasty bump; I’m not convinced that the tyres and tubes are very thick or resilient. Taking the rear wheel off was a very slow job; it got a bit faster the next time I had to do it to put spike tyres on. The front wheel took a LOT of force to get off as the paint on the forks had stuck it in place. More annoyingly, the power cable is not detachable outside of the frame; so you can barely remove the wheel 10cm from the forks; a total pain in the bum. And worst of all: no manual to explain any of this! Good luck finding a bike shop that wants to touch a motor brand they don't know. A simple manual for this specific bike (not the generic one they have) would have saved me HOURS of annoyance, grief, and literally weeks of customer helpdesk interactions.
But overall, I’m happy with it: love the Dutch design for its flexibility, aesthetics and strength, but dealing with their helpdesk is nigh impossible. Questions go for days or even a week without reply. They even cancelled my first order without telling me; I only found out a bit later from Klarna. So I also had to chase them for the 200.- change in price when I re-placed the second order! A bicycle ordered Monday 4SEP 7am arrived here, near Harstad, midday on 21SEP via PostNord Oslo, partly because it fell out of the box en route.
I've lifted the review from 3 to 4 stars because it seems resilient in an Arctic winter. They would have to seriously rejig customer support and publish a comprehensive manual for this exact model for me to give 5.
September 28, 2023
Unprompted review
