Hi,
Just go through your post and the process of your communication with Grace generally.
You only buy the frame from us, and we always told customer who would like to buy frame only that we will not be responsible for the bike and related after-sale service and there are too much things out of our control and perform. only customer who confirm the situation and can make sure it is no problem to make up bike self, then we can accept the frame order.
And we offer a chain keeper by free to you!
All these describtion and commends only from your side. So Just tell some information from our side for others' reference and then we will not response on this case.
After you got the frame, you told the frame is defective and you can't make up the bike, after several communication, you still told the frame is unusable to you, we do not have good solution, ask you to return the frame and all parts to us. we accept return and we can also afford the shipping cost. But you do not accept this suggestion.
you asked for another rear frame from us even you are willing to pay for it. you told if we agree to do this, you will agree to accept as-is with no further claims regardless and you will also make sure to indicate on social media that we have then provided good service. we thought because the frame should match front and rear end, if only rear frame, it may not match well with your front frame and it is possible that you still can't make up the bike in your side. so we have never accepted your solution. and we give our solution: you pay for half cost for the rear frame, we give you a complete frame and you also afford the shipping cost and we afford part of shipping cost. you do not accept the cost.
Later you told the front frame is also defetive, so you need another complete frame from us.
and you told us to consider our reputation - we have more to gain from providing great customer service and fixing quality issues than worrying about the cost of this one small order.
Following we conclude another solution: we give another complete frame for you, but require you to pay the shipping cost about 370USD for the frame set. We concluded at that time and you confirm Grey color for another frame.
Following, you ask some other parts from us include some motor and battery parts, if we can't offer the parts, you still work out the bike. then it stopped again. (
This is what we memtioned in our annoucement that customer will meet some difficulty when they build up bike by themselves if all the required parts are not completely available in your side or even you do not realize what will need in your side, it is complicated.) if we support in this kind of way, it is also very difficulty to us if there are many unexpected cases we will meet.
So still have not concluded solution till then. I think the most easy way is only the return the frame and the parts you purchased from us no matter what work you have done on the frame.
About you mentioned adapter(
To be honest,I even don't know what it is, it seems there is no this parts name in motor set)
It seems build the bikes by parts is really much more complicated than complete bike from us.
That's why, we issue the annoucement earlier. above info just for all your reference.
cscscs said:
Just completed a conversion of my FLX Blade (hardtail) - swapped all the parts (G510 motor, of course, reention battery, Magura mt5e brakes, Pike RCT 160mm front end, EX1 drive train.
The good: I am very pleased with the handling - of course I expected improved comfort with the addition of rear suspension, but I wasn't sure what to expect in handling since the Frey frame has slightly higher CG and longer chain-stays, but I am happy to say that it handles great. I only ride singletrack, typical trails in my area are tight with lots of undulating ups and downs and lots of roots and the bike handles it all better than before and no sacrifice in stability so I am super pleased.
The bad: the frame arrived from Frey with a couple of pretty severe defects. 1) The head tube is out of round with the results that I could not insert the fork steerer. I thought this was a show stopper with no work-around. but I wanted to assemble as much as possible to see if there were any other issues I had not considered. For this revealed that the stock chainring spider from the Blade would not clear the heads of the fasteners for the new Bafang chain guard. The Blade has non-boost spacing whereas Frey's AM1000 is boost so in theory I need the chainring to be (148-142)/2 = 3mm more offset. Frey refuses to supply the adapter as they say it is part of the motor assembly and they don't want to break the kit and also they cannot get an extra adapter from Bafang.
2) The second defect was the drive side rear dropout is out of alignment with the results that the rear axle will not thread into the derailleur hanger. The only way I could make this work is to loosed the hanger, thread and tighten the axle and then retighten the hanger screws. I attached a pic showing the hanger at an angle to the dropout with the axle installed (that is with no wheel - with the wheel on, the dropout is force into near alignment). Also attached two pics showing the head tube diameter measurements (1.54 min, 1.59 max)
Frey refused to admit these were defects - my contact has been Grace Wang - and Grace's response was "It is not a problem, you can chamfer the inner and outer sides of rear axle right and left holes.Then it can be used as normal."
How messed up is that? Finally Frey agreed to provide a replacement frame at a discount (so I would have to pay them more to fix the issue). I did have the option to return everything but not sure who would pay for shipping ($370). But since I had assembled the frame, it looked like returning the frame might not be an option.
Then Grace stopped answering my messages (using the Alibaba message portal) - I could see she was reading my messages and it has been 5 days now that she has been ignoring my messages. I made sure to keep my messages professional and not be insulting, but I guess she just got tired of managing my order and it appears I have been tossed into the "not worth our time" category. Ironically, just after I paid for the original order, she replied thanking my for my trust.
So what is the status of the project now and how did I get it to work?
I put the head tube of the frame into my bench vice and cranked it down as hard as I could (probably around 100nm) until the fork steerer could be inserted. I assumed the steering action would be horrible and that the headset will suffer premature failure. To my surprise, the steering action seems smooth with no noticeable resistance of other anomalies.
Regarding the rear-dropout, it seems to have relaxed over time so that now I am able to thread the rear axle into the mech hanger without having to loosed the hanger first. I did have to purchase a hanger alignment tool and as expected the hanger was about 2.5 cm out of alignment.
So despite those issues, I was able to complete the assembly and test the bike. Give that I was able to work around the defects and given that Frey is offering zero support, I guess I am stuck with this frame.
During the discussion with Frey about getting a replacement frame, Grace made this comment "And this time ,we will take this frame to assemble the entire bike for QA testing. Then we will send it to you." and this confirms my suspicion that they did not perform any QA inspection of the frame they sent me. I ordered a size Large AM1000 v5.0 frame, and according to Frey's ads, the L and XL have an extra gusset where the top tube meets the seat tube, and mine did not have that, so I am not even sure they sent me a v5.0 - maybe it was a surplus v4.x?
To be fair, it seems like they support the sales of complete bikes much better than the treatment I got, and I saw a post by Frey that they will no longer offer to sell frame only, probably directly related to my experience. It's disappointing that I had to suffer for their mistakes and I think one lesson learned is that for something as expensive and complicated as an eMTB, it pays to do business with a local (or at least USA) company who is less likely to ignore me if there is a problem, or at least make sure they have a proven track record of providing good support, and also probably the language and cultural barriers may be a factor.
So in the end, the bike works and at least for now I can live with the work-arounds to the defects. The question now is, will the frame last? I was going to sell my hardtail frame but may hold on to it just in case the Frey frame cracks or develops new problems.
Caveat emptor!