Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Ever Heard of a CEO Doing This?

How's this for amazing customer service?

I just ordered a Kuberg Cross a few weeks ago for the wife to ride around on.  Took a few weeks to make it over on the boat and clear customs (most of these bikes are sold before they even make it on the boat).  Anyway it arrived so I assembled, charged, and did a quick test with it on the stand to see that the tire spun when throttle was applied.  I loaded it up and we went on a 4 day trip to the desert.  2 minutes into her 1st ride on it my wife says its acting funny and keeps limiting her speed to about 5mph.  I check it out and reset the speed to the maximum and she gets back on.  Few minutes later she comes pushing it back to camp.  Won't run and some brief diagnostics tell me its either a faulty throttle or bad speed controller - neither of which I can do anything about out there.  So we park it the rest of the trip.

I went ahead and shot off an email to Kelly Knipe, the US distributor explaining the problem.  He replies back within the hour and says that I may have gotten one of the old relays by mistake and he's sending me the upgraded one today.  We got home a few days later and the new relay still wouldn't work.  I had a few emails with Kelly and we confirmed that it was the speed controller.  He told me he was working with Kuberg in Czech to figure out the fastest way to get me a replacement.  A few days later I got an email asking if I could meet him at a local hotel that weekend to swap controllers - apparently they have had a few controllers over the last several months that went dead and wanted to get some back to the shop for examination. 

A few days later I met with Kelly and surprise, surprise:  CEO Michal Kubanek.  Apparently he'd decided it would be easiest to just fly over to California with replacements and swap them out there.  So for the next 30 minutes Kelly and Michal pulled the entire electrical assembly out of my wife's bike and replaced it with a new one.  Despite knowing it was a faulty speed controller causing the issue, they wanted to ensure there wasn't a contributing factor from some other part of the system - plus have the full assembly for testing back at the shop.  Apparently at least one other customer in the area was getting a new electrical system as well so that explained the trip.

Anyway just wanted to post because I've never seen customer service like this.  Bike is working great and is a whole heap of fun!

Apologies for the awful and backlit cell phone pic (especially to Michal and Kelly).