Trainer Woes
So I bought a new trainer just before Christmas. Found a good deal on a Tacx Flux, and figured the quality problems people have been having with it would be sorted by now as it was a late production unit. And or a few weeks, all was good. It was nice and quiet and worked really well in Zwift and TR alike. Well, turns out I was wrong, because on stage 2 of Tour de Zwift it started sounding kind of like a car with a loose belt, which turned out to be exactly what had happened. On a trainer not even a month old.
I took a short video, and sent it to the Tacx helpdesk, which were very fast in replying that they needed me to return the trainer to the dealer for repair. Shit. I can’t be without trainer potentially for weeks on end, and didn’t exactly have high hopes considering where I’d bought it (Decathlon). My aim was for a full refund so I could go get something else, as it does seem like people have had their Fluxes replaced two or even three times.
After having reserved what might have been Stockholm’s last Elite Direto at one of Cykloteket’s stores, I called Decathlon and spoke to a really nice and helpful guy in their bike department. After having forwarded the video and email conversation I had had with Tacx, he said that getting a full refund would be absolutely no problem if I wanted it. Woot! I took a couple of hours off that afternoon and raced to Decathlon to return the Flux before they changed their mind.
I’m really impressed with the way they treated me and that they offered a refund without any kind of commitment. I was, after all, open with the fact that I would buy a different trainer somewhere else and that my confidence in Tacx to produce a trainer that would actually work was used up. “No problem”, he said, and “we’d lose more if you’d left unhappy”. Now that is of course true. This would have been an entirely different post had I been unhappy. Instead, I’ll summarize it by:
A big 👍 to Decathlon! I was surprised by their service as I’d viewed them as kind of a budget chain. If they have something I need in the future I know where I’ll go.
I’ll have to commend Tacx for replying almost instantaneously, but still can’t recommend them. The woman at Cykloteket actually told me a horror story of her own about Tacx’s most expensive trainer, the Neo, having quality problems as well. So no, Tacx is not a brand I can recommend and the bad rep they’ve been getting turned out to be true.