Great Service

These days, when you get good customer service you feel compelled to shout it out. It's funny how the simple things in life that people used to take for granted have now become things that we covet and extol. Be it friendly, helpful people at the grocery store checkout, in some sort of support role over the phone or in dealing with a product you purchased and have some concern or issue with.

I've had two such cases with cycling related components recently, both of which have work out perfectly and the individuals involved have been super helpful and friendly. The first case was with my 29er single-speed MTB frame. We have had frames from the folks at Soul Cycles entrenched in our fleet for a number of years now. We first learned of them from their sponsorship of and advertisement in the NEMBA Singletracks magazine. This past summer I decided to switch from a 26er version of the Soul Hooligan to a 29er Soul Dillinger. It was my first experience with 29ers and I was smitten. The frame fit perfect and worked really well. I even decided to race it once and it performed flawlessly, setting the fastest overall Cat1 time of the day.

This fall while adjusting the EBB the weld on the insert on the BB shell that accepts one of the set screws cracked. I was bummed but contacted Chad at Soul and had said that they would warranty it no problem. Unfortunately, the new run of frames wasn't in yet. No problem though as I purchased a Niner Bio-Centric EBB and with a little facing, got it working and was able to ride the rest of the fall and into the winter, until the snow started in earnest. Last week Chad notified me that the frames were in and mine was on the way. It arrived and is flawless. Now I just need to swap it over and I'll be back up and running, as soon as the snow stabilizes that is.

The second case of excellent service was from Niterider. I've used Niterider lights since exclusively 1993. They are in my opinion, the best lights out there. Last year we starting using the Minewt X2 Dual LED lights for some instances due to their ease of use and attachment as well as their light and compact designs. For dedicated offroad though, we still rely on our Niterider HID systems as they are really hard to beat in terms of performance.

This fall one of the LED systems failed. I contacted Niterider and Rich took my details and hooked me up with an RMA number. A quick trip to sunny CA and a couple weeks later the folks at Niterider had fixed her up and shipped her back to me, gratis. They were friendly and helpful in all of the communications and were a pleasure to deal with.

There are still good people and good companies out there. Make a point of supporting them when you find them.