Yakima Racks Reviews 29

Bought the MOD base system with some extra drawers and storage for the back of my 2026 Honda CR-V. High quality product, fast shipping, easy install. Couldn’t be happier. Kinda weird how other reviews are so negative. Give them a go if you’re looking for solid, quality product. If you’re unhappy about anything you buy like these ppl, maybe don’t buy from them? Oh, be sure to check fitment. Their website makes it easy, just a friendly reminder.

What a rubbish product.
I bought a swing away bike rack thinking it was a good product.
The rack and tube bars failed within the first month.
Support from Yakima non existent.
This rack failed carrying 2e bikes totalling 34kg

Terrible service for such an expensive
Product one simple cry for help and you don’t hear anything it’s been about 4 weeks now 👎

I bought a Yakima HoldUp 2" bike rack and trailer hitch from Rack Attack in Toronto in 2016. It's been great. I bought a new car recently and installed a new 2" hitch. When I went to install my HoldUp it wouldn't fit. The tongue was too high. I tried several other tongues and they all fit. I went to Rack Attack to have it checked out. They suggested that it didn't fit because I had used touch-up paint on it. As I had only applied a dusting of paint to cover some cosmetic scratches, and had done that about 5 years ago, I told them there was no way that that could stop the tongue from fitting into the new hitch. They sent a warranty request to Yakima with the notation that I had painted the tongue. Unsurprisingly it was denied. I then contacted Yakima directly and spoke with James. He said it shouldn't be a problem sending me a new tongue but he would just have to co-ordinate with Rack Attack. I then got an email saying "I cannot help you at this point as we have had two different entities determine that your tongue fit other hitches by testing it. I have provided a link to the tongue that you can purchase, but we won't be moving forward with a replacement."

The only hitch that my original tongue fit into was my original hitch provided by Rack Attack. This leads me to conclude that that hitch was oversized to accommodate variations in Yakima racks. My new hitch is well within specs for a 2" x 2" tongue.

Below is my final attempt to have James at Yakima fairly address my situation:

James,

Since my last correspondence I have done some further investigation. First, I see that my situation is not an exception, but the rule. I found these reviews on Trust Pilot. It seems Yakima is well known for finding any excuse to avoid making good on warranty claims.

Yakima Racks is rated "Poor" with 1.9 / 5 on Trustpilot
Do you agree with Yakima Racks's TrustScore? Voice your opinion today and hear what 25 customers have already said.

Next, I managed to find a new Yakima HoldUp 2" Hitch Bike Rack at a Canadian Tire store near me. The manager in the store was very helpful. He helped me pull the box down from the shelf, open it up and measure its tongue, both horizontally and vertically. I took pictures of the digital caliper readings. They were 2.010" and 2.007" respectively. I then used the same digital calipers to measure my original tongue. Those measurements were 1.989" and 2.048". I also measured the horizontal and vertical measurements of the opening on my new hitch. (See pictures)

The excuse Rack Attack came up with doesn't hold water. A dusting of paint 5 years ago does not account for a difference of 0.041", not that any of that paint is still there. As well, why would it only add thickness to the vertical dimension?

If you still refuse to send me a replacement tongue (2" x 2") I will simply be posting a detailed summary of all of my interactions with Rack Attack and you at Yakima, on Trustpilot and others. I won't have to embellish anything. The facts and the pictures will be sufficient to get the point across. Yakima will do whatever it takes to avoid making good on their (Very) Limited Lifetime Warranty.

Either way, please reply.

Barry

As James did not reply, and as he closed my "ticket" immediately, I can only assume that I am yet another dissatisfied Yakima customer left to fend for himself!

The products may be well made but my first experience with their customer support or support Bot was a waste of time.
I provided a part number and my personal contact information in the AM. I want to buy an available part. The response was an auto generated e/m with a ticket number to reference if I decide to call. Towards the end of the day, frustrated that I didn't get a reply to a simple question, I called. The auto answer greeting stated Customer Support was in a meeting, no voice mail pretense of courtesy, just try again later.

Ordered a product, $750+ Yakima roof rack. Used for one trip and complete failure. All assembly and installation correct, Yakima refused to cover even a replacement or issue refund. Yakima will find any loophole they can to exclude warranty coverage. Do not give them your business. Yakima will abandon customers at the first sign of cost to them. Find a well reviewed rack on Amazon, they take returns and do not fight for faulty construction. Products are made outside the US and are the very same quality. Should have used amazon to start with. If your product fails, do not provide them with any info except a basic photo, they will use anything they can to avoid a costing them $$. Yakima products have terned to complete garbage along with many other brands who are trying to lower the costs of manufacturing. The 2 stars average makes sense, get a thule. Yak is right.

Do not buy the Holdup bike rack. Bought one, loaded two bikes on it and drove 20 miles. When I got home, and after unloading them, my wife noticed one of the cups was cracked as well as the hold down cable was broken. They are pretty simple to use/load so the bikes weren't loaded incorrectly.

... ok no biggie.... they have a warranty. I contacted their support channel and after a little bit of back and forth they did send me the parts to fix the cable but I was told the cup was on back order.

Here I am now nearly 4 months with no cup. The thing has sat in my side lot collecting dust
I did email them back in June and got the same response.

What good is a warranty if you can't get parts for it? They must have a bigger issue if they can't get parts.

What a bunch of b. s.

Don't buy from them! I never will again. Probably cheap Chinese parts anyhow (and maybe this is the problem).

We have a Justclick2 tow bar mounted bike rack. While travelling at about 60mph along a motorway we were alerted by a passing motorist that there was a problem with the bike rack. The fold down mechanism had opened and the bikes, nearly horizontal to the ground, had ground down the handle bar, brake lever and saddle. The fold down mechanism failed. It should only operate when the car is stationary as a means of accessing the boot space by pressing down the rear lever with a foot. We only use the bike rack now by securing all of the bikes and the rack with strong straps to the roof rack.

Added a new Yakima Base Line rack to my 2022 Toyota Camry. I followed all required dimensions and triple checked all fasteners. When I first installed it, the rubber facing on the clips tore loose and the rack came off the car. I epoxied the rubber material back on. This flaw on the other clips caused me to loose the rack with bike on it on the highway. Damaged my car, the rack and tore up the bike. I have owned several Yakima racks over the years and never had one come off. Called Yakima right away, so far not much has been resolved. I now have an expensive damaged rack that should not be used.

Crappy quality control! One tower comes with a bolt head too big to allow the outer clip to install. Same tower and one other have flanges to narrow to allow the clips to sit properly. Seating the clips properly in the flange is something the instructions expressly require users to do! What an expensive piece of crap!!

Have had my Yakima Front Loader for some weeks now and the first thing to note is that it came fully assembled and it was mounted on my car within minutes of opening the packing with no reference to the instructions required. Yakima have developed this product so well, every thing has been considered including the locking capability. The rack is designed to be on the left hand side of the vehicle for obvious reasons. Because I have a kayak rack permanently on the left had side of the vehicle I had to put the Yakima on the right hand side which could have been awkward to use the rear wheel tie down except that there is a little lock release and the tie down can be easily reversed to suit either hand. The double front wheel supports mean that the bike can be supported while you continue with the final tie down. A very simple and convenient product to use that appears to be good quality so far.

While I love the EXO system's flexibility, there is a significant design flaw in using the SnowBank on the TopShelf. With the SnowBank on the TopShelf, adult ski bindings will NOT both fit inside the arms of the rack. One of them has to be outside of the arms/rack, which puts the end of the ski dangerously close to being too far past the width of the truck. Except for this one big design flaw, I would've given it 5 stars.

Skyline roof rack tower failed. The cast part of one of my towers broke while half way to my destination, delaying my trip two days while locating a new replacement tower. I provided pictures I had taken prior to my trip of my vehicle with my canoe loaded on Yakima’s system. I provided pictures of the broken tower and receipts of my purchase for the part that broke and for the replacement part. (I was required to purchase a full set of 4 skyline towers for $289.00). My request was that they provide a replacement for the one tower that broke.
I suspected I was in trouble when their 1st response was to ask for the make, model and year of my of my vehicle, although I already provided them with a picture that showed my 2021 Honda Pilot with my 50 lb. canoe mounted on the the center of the rack on gunwale brackets and tied securely to to the two round bars and two lines tied to the front of my vehicle, one on the drivers side and one on the passenger side.
After supplying them with the information requested, they requested that I give them the number located on the inside of the broken skyline towers even though I already supplied them with a receipt. I sent them the number along with a picture of the bar code above the number.
Next, they asked how I secured the back of the canoe which extended a couple feet beyond the tailgate. I told them there was no need to tie down the back, the canoe was immovable. Explaining that the back tie would have only put more pressure/weight on the towers. I was then sent a picture of the “correct”, (and required), way to tie my canoe to the vehicle, showing the additional rear tie down pulling the boat down downward toward the rear bumper. The customer service lady asking me if that made sense?
I responded that it did not make sense. The boat was already fastened tightly to the cross bars and pulling tighter would have only increased the pressure on the towers, as it turned out could not withstand the load already put on the from tying the boat to the snugly against the crossbars.
Then James, (Yakima’s Warranty Service Specialist), came into the conversation, notifying me that it is “absolutely crucial” that the rear of the boat be tied down. Claim denied!!
I’m leaving off my response to James as would likely violate the rules I had agreed to abide by.

We purchased a fold click 2 bike rack (in itself a very practical product) however it failed on multiple occasions therefore does not perform per the product statements.
When Yakima warranty was contacted every problem was made to be ours, the story goes:

We originally purchased the product in May 2022 for a long trip in the Australian outback in our campervan/small motorhome, we had 2 x Leitner foldable eBikes and loaded them (without the batteries) as per instructions, weight was well under specs, we also had a cover over them.
We traveled from Sydney heading for Queensland and when we reached Roma some 1000klm into our trip noticed the bikes were moving on the rack, inspection revealed that both the "Grabs were missing and the bikes had been moving around and caused considerable damage to the bikes and the attachment bar had begun to crack around the base.

Skip to the warranty issues, of course apparently we hadn't tightened the grabs sufficiently or had overtightened them, as they were gone we couldn't prove one way or the other what happened so that turned out to be a Yakima way out, had to be our fault, there were numerous accusations made about the loss, including that the vehicle was not suitable for the product and that we should have noted that restriction on their web site (could not locate the alleged notation anywhere on the web site).
Ultimately after some months Yakima, as a 'good will' gesture gave us the replacement parts to repair the rack but would not approve the damage to the bikes (which was substantial).

It goes on, we had not used the rack since replacing the parts and planed another trip this time with different eBikes, loaded (without batteries) and as per instructions, well under weight.
Given the issues we had had on the previous trip we made sure that everything was as per instructions.
We traveled from Sydney to outback NSW, covered approximately 800klms and at one of our stops for coffee noted a familiar part on the road just behind the car, so picked it up and checked the Rack to see if it belonged, affirmative, it was the rack side of the grab, the grab had gone, so (with the original failure firmly still in mind) we retraced the last 5 kilometers of our travels and got lucky, we found the other parts of the grab on the roadway.

The parts retrieved proved the problem was a broken grab shaft which then allowed the rest of the Grab to fall onto the roadway, De'ja'vu, it happened again but this time we could prove the problem was Yakima's.

When we returned home we made the warranty claim and again the same blame game, same warranty manager with all the accusations that the problem was caused by us.
Ultimately after some 2 months we were able to get replacement parts for the missing Grab and compensation for the subsequent damage to the bikes.

We travelled exclusively on sealed roads on these trips.

Both Warranty experiences were appalling, it was only that we had retrieved the faulty part that they had approved the claim, but they fort hard to prove it was something we did that caused it to break, the previous time we had no proof so were at the mercy of the Warranty manager.

Yakima Australia should be ashamed of their customer warranty treatment, its like we are criminals trying on a scam.

We will never buy another Yakima product nor would we recommend the company as their customer experience values are non existent.

Ordered sweet roll kit. Yakima sent me the wrong parts…Yakima couldn’t load a bag of groceries let alone a Yakima customer order…..how much pot do you folks smoke before clocking in?

I just purchased my first set of Yakima roofbars, always bought Thule previously. The rubber feet do not stay on the footkit, they keep falling off. So I raised a ticket asking for advice. Their auto-reply states they are very busy and should get back to me in 14-21 business days. Great customer service, NOT. Maybe I should have bought Thule instead.

UPDATE. Well, their timescale has just expired and ZERO contact from Yakima. How do they stay in business?

I have purchased many Yakima products in the past and I just purchased their HD rack for my truck. I have called 11 times in 10 days and after 30 minutes listening to hold music, hung up. Their chat bot is the worse that i have ever used. What happened, they had the best customer service years ago, know they are the worse!

After decades of owning Yakima racks,I don't think I'll ever buy another Yakima product again. In June of 2023 I bought a specific-fit roof rack for my 2020 Chevy Bolt directly from Yakima.com for $741. A few months into the summer, I decided to go a different route. All of the items are in the original packaging, boxes, etc, and most of the items have never been touched. I believe that if I had purchased this item through, say, REI, I could have easily returned this item. However, Yakima's policy is 30-day returns. So now I have this $741 worth of Yakima stuff that I'm trying to sell online, and I'll be lucky to get 1/2 of what I paid.

My box i paid over $800 shattered in the interstate and could’ve killed others and the company couldn’t care less. I am so disgusted.

I had my yakima box break down in the middle of Wind River reservation in WY after heading home on a trip i took my little sister and dogs on to celebrate her birthday.

The box came apart and all of our things flew all over the highway. We are so lucky because it was in a desolate area where no one was behind me but if that would’ve happened on an interstate, it would’ve caused an accident and I guarantee a very serious one. I had a shovel in there that could’ve flowed out and literally killed someone.

I reached out to Yakima to tell them what happened. That my little sister and I were on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere taking everything out of my car to repack it. Then we had to drive 40 minutes out of the way to a small town to buy rope and tie it down to make it home safely, but the entire three hours home I was an Through my sunroof to make sure it didn’t fall apart further and harm anyone. I work for a personal injury law firm for the last eight years and this has been an eye-opening experience because I don’t know if it’s worth it at all to have a product that’s made this cheap on your car making you a liability to really harm another family.

I reached out and talked with James and they only take responsibility if it’s contractual. They cannot locate my serial number or register of product so I am left with nothing. No help no empathy. Nothing I will never purchase another product from this company and the lack of responsibility of what could’ve happened and what did happened to me and my family is alarming and disgusting. I have pictures but can’t attach.

I have found Yakima to have good quality components, tons of options for any vehicle size and configuration (SUV, sedan, wagon etc). Replacement parts are available for almost everything they sell.