Steerer Tube Threading/Compression Bolt Size and Fork Failure

[G]

also they have a great warrenty, and always have. thats the real clincher

their forks break, ive broken some, ive seen plenty of other people break them too, but theyre still deffos one of the stronger forks out there and yeah if you break em you should be able to get the replaced for free

The lifetime warranty in BMX is one of the worst marketing ploys in history. Do you honestly think a piece of steel should last a lifetime? More than a year?

Not only does it make people assume a fork should last forever, it kills shops.

Think about it like this... to complete with Odysseys marketing, every brand now has to slap on a lifetime warranty whether the company is doing it because they believe they will last that long or not . Now instead of shops getting a resale on forks a few years down the line, they will be handling warranty claims for little Timmy.

If you've ever worked at or supported a core or small shop, you know that every bit of income matters. BMX retail is based of consumable products, shit breaks or wears out.... buy a new one.

Imagine if you said "lifetime warranty on PC pedals." While you know that product surely wont last that long, imagine how many you can sell using that claim.

41 thermal stuff has always had a lifetime replacement warranty (for 15 years or so). The idea that this has had any significant effect on small shops compared to say, the internet, is crazy.

For the first few years, other brands tried to say that it was bogus and wouldn't be honoured etc, and waited for it to disappear... When that obviously wasn't the case they started trying their own versions and offered a similar warranty... but the warranty rates for these inferior forks, cranks, bars was way too high for them to be able to sustain it, so they quietly dropped them or added so many terms and conditions that it was effectively gone.

If the 41 thermal warranty was an issue for shops then they would have stopped selling it years ago, but the truth is that good shops know that the best way for them to survive and thrive is to keep people riding, to have them on reliable bikes that last, so they actually tend to give good advice and favour the Odyssey stuff to customers.

Riders buy new parts for more reasons than just because their old ones broke, they want to try a different rake, or cut their steerer too short or want brake bosses or whatever, and knowing that they can get a good resale value one their old Odyssey ones encourages this.

When we had truly crap parts as the only option in BMX (back in the 90's when I started) you needed a new set of forks every month, or even week, this wasn't good for bike shops, it was terrible, because nobody could afford to ride, BMX very nearly died simply because the bikes weren't up to the way people rode. Now we have strong parts and the sport is super healthy.

TL;DR Bollocks.


G.

[dude...]

laylow you are a dumbass

i know plenty of people who buy odyssey forks then when they break they dont bother chasing up the warranty and just buy a new set of forks. then theres the people who change parts a lot and sell their odyssey forks on to someone else which automatically voids the warranty. so no, bike shops arent going out of business because of odyssey. thats a dumb shit stirring troll argument

the fact that there is a warranty reflects positively on odyssey and their product, in that they can be confident enough in it to offer such a comprehensive warranty. they honour it too, ive had a new set of forks off them like 6-7 years ago, which was great cos i didnt have money to buy a new set of odysseys at that time and id have had to settle for inferior forks otherwise. since then i bought another set of their forks brand new because i was so pleased with the other ones i bought

but by all means, go waste your money on some other shitty forks, noone is making you buy odyssey parts. you are free to spend your money on whatever you like

[LeonLikesToRock]

also they have a great warrenty, and always have. thats the real clincher

their forks break, ive broken some, ive seen plenty of other people break them too, but theyre still deffos one of the stronger forks out there and yeah if you break em you should be able to get the replaced for free

Not only does it make people assume a fork should last forever, it kills shops.

Not true. Not even a shred of truth. Do you even work at a shop?

The cost of sending a set of forks back to a distributor is negligible and some distros will have a rep come pick them up, so that's not really a stress on the shop. The only stress would be the customer's experience in the shop. If the company doesn't take care of the customer it puts the shop in a bad place and gives the customer a bad experience. If the customer is well taken care of by the company and shop it is about as positive as the situation can be. Whatever the case, in terms of customer experience it comes down to the service.
I have seen some odyssey forks sent back but they've been very old and usually developed a small crack rather than actually failing - so no one gets hurt. I can't say that of all forks.
Director forks weren't in the same basket as other Odyssey forks, plenty of them came back but they're not available anymore. Still, everyone that bought them back was taken care of.
I haven't seen any of the recent R series forks come back but plenty have left the shop.

Now, if you're saying that products that actually last kills a shop because riders don't replace their parts you're also way off. If a rider keeps having to fix and replace shit the hobby gets mighty pricey and people burn out on it, start ghetto-fixing shit or just stick to the used market as it more affordable. That could change a shop.

If you think a company's warranty somehow killed your shop, you probably ran a shit fucking shop.

[ediotism]

Notice how you never see the face of the person? It's so you don't see the tiny little Asian factory worker.

if you're implying child/underage workers, its already been pointed out several times on this forum (or the earlier versions, of which all content has sadly disappeared about 2 years ago) that the human rights record and manufacturing conditions are on par with most western manufacturing hub. taiwan is NOT like vietnam, cambodia, china, thailand, the phillippines, tahiti, etc in that regard at all.

one of the reasons you see everyone going to taiwan for manufacturing is due to the range of capabilities to produce at a reasonable cost, existing machineries and amount of competition. of course, with that, comes low cost manufacturers that focus on cost savings. but that does not mean taiwan isn't capable of producing goods that are on par/superior to those produced in the US or europe, at a similar/cheaper cost.

it is, in fact, a little too generalizing in this day and age to assume the quality of a product basing largely on geographical factors; it is also surprisingly common for producers to take advantage of this, by exploiting this notion that people still have about certain regions = quality products. for example, Prada "made in italy", bruts produced in Champagne, textiles/clothings "produced" in europe. i could go into more details but that'd be too far off tangent to write in this thread.