Bare Composites

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Ruliana
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:44 am

by Ruliana

Nice reply Zack. This is really quite pathetic, at least admit who you are.

Believe what you want. You want to buy those wheels, go ahead. I never sent emails demanding I get my wheels sooner. It was winter, why would I need them? I never said I “left them in the garage for months”. They were in the garage attached to my bike where most normal people store their bikes after a ride and before loading your car for a race. If you consider 115psi overinflating your tires, I’m not sure what planet you are on. I told me story do what you want with it.

Here is the first and only “threatening” email I sent to Bare “demanding” my wheels sooner. Note the date stamps. After Bare said they’d be shipping soon in November, I simply inquired about an update in January. Keep twisting your story to fit your narrative, I’ve got proof.
447927E8-7618-4034-B81F-83F8F7DE9022.png
EE2559DD-AE8F-43B6-91EC-D9AEED61CEDD.jpeg

by Weenie


Visit starbike.com Online Retailer for HighEnd cycling components
Great Prices ✓    Broad Selection ✓    Worldwide Delivery ✓

www.starbike.com



ZackM
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:41 am

by ZackM

Hi Everyone,

My name is Zack, and I'm the founder of Bare Composites.

I'm despondent to find this thread, but I would like to thank our Bare Composites customer for sending me that message and letting me know that this discussion was taking place here.

My goal with this post is to provide some clarity here on some areas that seem to be shadowing our brand, why we had some initial manufacturing delays and pertaining to this most recent post I plan to shed more light on how our warranty process works, and why this particular claim took longer than our average timeline. My intention is not to amplify the situation, point fingers, or make accusations. Going forward with this discussion, I ask you to keep this in mind.

When I launched Bare Composites, I had been testing the wheels privately for over a year with different riders around the globe. We even had unmarked wheels in world u23 nations cups over in Europe. I spent a reasonable amount of time, and much money finding the perfect mold for our wheel. The CNC wind technology was a new way of manufacturing Carbon rims, and I thought that it was a great product and a great place to start a new brand. Moving forward to pre-sale, we initially thought that we would kick the brand off with a discounted sale and place our initial order all at once so that we could get the best bulk price on raw materials and floor space our partnering factory.

We thought that we might sell a few sets during the pre-sale, but we'rent quite prepared for the amount of volume that we hit straight out of the gates. As many might say, "these are good problems to have for a new business" it did cause us some significant delays in manufacturing. The initial manufacturing timeline that was promised to me was 45 days, and it ended up being more than 90 days by the time the order was complete. This delay put our young brand in a tough situation as we had not only to put our company on hold for nearly 2 months, we also had the backlash of customers unhappy with the delays. It was quite a horrible experience as a business owner dealing with people accusing us of running a "fraud ring," along with many other horrible things that I will leave unmentioned.

Once the rims manufacturing process finally came to an end, we had to ship them to the U.S and deal with the next wave of complications. While I do have experience importing other products from Asia into the U.S, this case was different for several reasons, and we had our shipment held for two weeks at the border. At the time I was living in Colombia and was managing everything from overseas, which made things that much more difficult. When it came time to finally build the wheels we learned that the ceramic bearings that we ordered didn't fit our hubs. We had to order different sizes, then those didn't fit, and we had to order more sizes. This process took time and was a very stressful situation because as qualified as our employees are in the U.S they were volunteers chipping in the time that they had to help start the new brand in exchange for a small hourly wage. All the while, the emails were coming in from customers, and the pressure was on, but we were moving as fast as we could.

Eventually, we got all the orders out, and we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. When I first started building the company structure behind bare composites, I knew that our model had a couple of weak points one is the warranty, the other being international shipping. My goal was to use my resources as wisely as possible, seeing as I didn't have the capital to open a carbon manufacturing plant here in the united states, I was going to have to hire the experts with the CNC wind technology in Asia to produce, and then employ my own people in the area oversee the operations. Things have been going really well for our new brand but we are still a company that has been selling goods for less than six months, and we are very much still working out our kinks.

Our warranty process is relatively straightforward and is implemented for the protection of our customers. When a customer needs to make a claim, they need to take photos and a video of the failed part, and then submit it to us via email. We then forward this email to our engineers, who are qualified to assess the claim. We employ our engineers overseas so that they can handle our day to day oversights in manufacturing and warranty. This scenario means that sometimes there are gaps in communication, and I have to admit, sometimes I don't get to emails when they start rolling in at, and I had 5 hours of training on my schedule that day. However, this process is fundamental to the structure of our company, and not something that we can change at all right now. Once this process is finished we ship the replacement part directly to the customer at no cost.

In this particular case, the customer took advantage of our super limited edition decal color, Grey, that we only offered during our pre-sale. We didn't produce a single extra grey rim to sell and never had replacement inventory in this product. Because the Combat collection features our Hyrdodip logos for durability and lighter weight properties, we can't change the color of the decals on the rims that we have in inventory. This particular claim was submitted in the midst of North American and Asian holidays which ran one after the other for more than 10 consecutive days. While our engineers told me their thoughts on what happened to the rim, I overruled their decision to not offer a warranty on this claim and instantly issued a new rim into production with grey decals.

During the process, I had what seemed like daily emails from the customer pressuring to do things the way he wanted, calls on Sundays, and long weekends that I even answered! Knowing that the process was being taken care of and that the customer would be receiving a new rim at my expense, although I was advised otherwise by people that I employ to know more than me I didn't feel the urgent need to be in constant contact with the person. I grew tired of the endless emails, and criticism of my brand. The advice on how I should be handling warranty claims, and what I should be focusing on, grew tireless in my brain. I work 16 hours a day, and train 3-5 and sleep minimally, so my patience for someone that criticizes me or my work ethic is rather thin.

Then one day I opened an email to a threat that if I didn't refund him for the full amount of his original purchase that I would be surprised what a few bad posts can do to a brand like mine on the internet. Having worked for every penny in my life, I don't take people with an attitude like this very well, which is why I've also recently decided to hire somebody to take over customer service. I responded rather sternly saying that there was zero chance I would refund him a penny and that I was tired of his long drawn out emails, and that his rim was coming... hang tight.

The irony in all of this is rather rich, as at 8:15 pm est I opened an email from our production manager overseas letting me know that this rim was ready to ship. I've since requested a formal apology from the customer for all of the horrible things, he and his wife said about me and about my brand, the comments on my personal social media channels and the verbal lashing's have been excessive.

I'll conclude with this final piece. Bare Composites is a brand that was created to fill a gap in the marketplace. Bare is a brand that is content focused, and truly inspires people to get out and enjoy shredding. We keep our costs as low as possible while we still bring some of the best quality on the market. We do this so that people can feel good about riding a brand that is more affordable and take one less insecurity out of their minds when they show up to a start line in a sport that can be very critical.

If you have any questions about our brand you can email me directly and please connect with me on Instagram.

Savage@barecomposites.com

https://www.instagram.com/_zackmorris/


Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Zack Morris

supertemp
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2018 10:10 pm

by supertemp

Wow.

So you're demanding an apology from a guy who ordered some cool wheels last year, that you'll eventually send a new rim to so he can rebuild his brand new wheel, at his expense, after 12 miles of use?

All the best man but I can categorically say none of my bikes will ever be running your gear.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk


Ruliana
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:44 am

by Ruliana

supertemp wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:28 pm
Wow.

So you're demanding an apology from a guy who ordered some cool wheels last year, that you'll eventually send a new rim to so he can rebuild his brand new wheel, at his expense, after 12 miles of use?

All the best man but I can categorically say none of my bikes will ever be running your gear.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
That about sums up my argument to this guy.

mdeth1313
Posts: 2066
Joined: Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:38 am
Location: Dutchess County, NY

by mdeth1313

Why would anyone spend this kind of money on these wheels when you can get a set of FSE clinchers built w/ carbon-ti hubs for $1470.
Speedplay is the devil!

Ruliana
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:44 am

by Ruliana

A few points from my perspective:
-This is by far the most information that I’ve received from Zack regarding any of my experience with Bare
-If I was part of a special club receiving gray lettering, that’s news to me. I simply picked the color I wanted. Zack has never even offered to send me another color that would arrive any faster. As a matter of fact this post and his email to me yesterday are the first of any kind of timeline I’ve received.
-If Zack perceives overcommunication from an unhappy customer as too much for him to handle, he probably shouldn’t be in business.
-I’m not sure where Zach went to business school but he must of been sick the day they covered warranty law. No where on Bare’s website does it state that the customer must make apologies and remove posts from social media in order to have their warranty issue resolved.
-Zack claims I’m lying about my expeirence yet provides no proof or examples of what I’m not being truthful about. He simply says I’m telling lies and slandering him. He’s gone so far to tell me that I’ll be hearing from his attorney. On what grounds I have no idea
-If Bare had a “backlash” of unhappy customers complaining about the delay on the original shipment, I wasn’t one of them. I sent ONE email (posted above) simply asking for information. If thats what he’s referring to I’m seriously baffled.
-If there was ever a dispute from “the engineers” about the validity of my claim, this is the first I’m hearing about it.
-In my last email I told Zach he had three options to resolve this:
1. He could refund my total purchase price and I would send back BOTH wheels at my cost. We’d then simply go our separate ways
2. He could send me a COMPLETE new wheel and make things right
3. He could go forward with sending me a rim and I would tell my story to anyone who would listen.
I gave him options to resolve a conflict, I did not threaten him.

I’ve been in sales for over 20 years. Never in my career have I come close to treating a customer how I’ve been treated even if I thought they were wrong.


ZackM wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:59 am
Hi Everyone,

My name is Zack, and I'm the founder of Bare Composites.

I'm despondent to find this thread, but I would like to thank our Bare Composites customer for sending me that message and letting me know that this discussion was taking place here.

My goal with this post is to provide some clarity here on some areas that seem to be shadowing our brand, why we had some initial manufacturing delays and pertaining to this most recent post I plan to shed more light on how our warranty process works, and why this particular claim took longer than our average timeline. My intention is not to amplify the situation, point fingers, or make accusations. Going forward with this discussion, I ask you to keep this in mind.

When I launched Bare Composites, I had been testing the wheels privately for over a year with different riders around the globe. We even had unmarked wheels in world u23 nations cups over in Europe. I spent a reasonable amount of time, and much money finding the perfect mold for our wheel. The CNC wind technology was a new way of manufacturing Carbon rims, and I thought that it was a great product and a great place to start a new brand. Moving forward to pre-sale, we initially thought that we would kick the brand off with a discounted sale and place our initial order all at once so that we could get the best bulk price on raw materials and floor space our partnering factory.

We thought that we might sell a few sets during the pre-sale, but we'rent quite prepared for the amount of volume that we hit straight out of the gates. As many might say, "these are good problems to have for a new business" it did cause us some significant delays in manufacturing. The initial manufacturing timeline that was promised to me was 45 days, and it ended up being more than 90 days by the time the order was complete. This delay put our young brand in a tough situation as we had not only to put our company on hold for nearly 2 months, we also had the backlash of customers unhappy with the delays. It was quite a horrible experience as a business owner dealing with people accusing us of running a "fraud ring," along with many other horrible things that I will leave unmentioned.

Once the rims manufacturing process finally came to an end, we had to ship them to the U.S and deal with the next wave of complications. While I do have experience importing other products from Asia into the U.S, this case was different for several reasons, and we had our shipment held for two weeks at the border. At the time I was living in Colombia and was managing everything from overseas, which made things that much more difficult. When it came time to finally build the wheels we learned that the ceramic bearings that we ordered didn't fit our hubs. We had to order different sizes, then those didn't fit, and we had to order more sizes. This process took time and was a very stressful situation because as qualified as our employees are in the U.S they were volunteers chipping in the time that they had to help start the new brand in exchange for a small hourly wage. All the while, the emails were coming in from customers, and the pressure was on, but we were moving as fast as we could.

Eventually, we got all the orders out, and we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. When I first started building the company structure behind bare composites, I knew that our model had a couple of weak points one is the warranty, the other being international shipping. My goal was to use my resources as wisely as possible, seeing as I didn't have the capital to open a carbon manufacturing plant here in the united states, I was going to have to hire the experts with the CNC wind technology in Asia to produce, and then employ my own people in the area oversee the operations. Things have been going really well for our new brand but we are still a company that has been selling goods for less than six months, and we are very much still working out our kinks.

Our warranty process is relatively straightforward and is implemented for the protection of our customers. When a customer needs to make a claim, they need to take photos and a video of the failed part, and then submit it to us via email. We then forward this email to our engineers, who are qualified to assess the claim. We employ our engineers overseas so that they can handle our day to day oversights in manufacturing and warranty. This scenario means that sometimes there are gaps in communication, and I have to admit, sometimes I don't get to emails when they start rolling in at, and I had 5 hours of training on my schedule that day. However, this process is fundamental to the structure of our company, and not something that we can change at all right now. Once this process is finished we ship the replacement part directly to the customer at no cost.

In this particular case, the customer took advantage of our super limited edition decal color, Grey, that we only offered during our pre-sale. We didn't produce a single extra grey rim to sell and never had replacement inventory in this product. Because the Combat collection features our Hyrdodip logos for durability and lighter weight properties, we can't change the color of the decals on the rims that we have in inventory. This particular claim was submitted in the midst of North American and Asian holidays which ran one after the other for more than 10 consecutive days. While our engineers told me their thoughts on what happened to the rim, I overruled their decision to not offer a warranty on this claim and instantly issued a new rim into production with grey decals.

During the process, I had what seemed like daily emails from the customer pressuring to do things the way he wanted, calls on Sundays, and long weekends that I even answered! Knowing that the process was being taken care of and that the customer would be receiving a new rim at my expense, although I was advised otherwise by people that I employ to know more than me I didn't feel the urgent need to be in constant contact with the person. I grew tired of the endless emails, and criticism of my brand. The advice on how I should be handling warranty claims, and what I should be focusing on, grew tireless in my brain. I work 16 hours a day, and train 3-5 and sleep minimally, so my patience for someone that criticizes me or my work ethic is rather thin.

Then one day I opened an email to a threat that if I didn't refund him for the full amount of his original purchase that I would be surprised what a few bad posts can do to a brand like mine on the internet. Having worked for every penny in my life, I don't take people with an attitude like this very well, which is why I've also recently decided to hire somebody to take over customer service. I responded rather sternly saying that there was zero chance I would refund him a penny and that I was tired of his long drawn out emails, and that his rim was coming... hang tight.

The irony in all of this is rather rich, as at 8:15 pm est I opened an email from our production manager overseas letting me know that this rim was ready to ship. I've since requested a formal apology from the customer for all of the horrible things, he and his wife said about me and about my brand, the comments on my personal social media channels and the verbal lashing's have been excessive.

I'll conclude with this final piece. Bare Composites is a brand that was created to fill a gap in the marketplace. Bare is a brand that is content focused, and truly inspires people to get out and enjoy shredding. We keep our costs as low as possible while we still bring some of the best quality on the market. We do this so that people can feel good about riding a brand that is more affordable and take one less insecurity out of their minds when they show up to a start line in a sport that can be very critical.

If you have any questions about our brand you can email me directly and please connect with me on Instagram.

Savage@barecomposites.com

https://www.instagram.com/_zackmorris/


Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Zack Morris

Nefarious86
Moderator
Posts: 3669
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 4:57 am

by Nefarious86

How not to do customer service....

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

Using Tapatalk

ZackM
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:41 am

by ZackM

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback and I understand how you feel. Based on what you've read and the awareness that you have access to, I have to agree with your point. However, in the defense of my company, I have to state that this was never even an approved warranty claim. This was a Tubeless rim inflated to 115psi with a clincher tire when our rims tubeless rims have a max load of 110psi. Therefore warranty was void from the beginning and it doesn't matter if you have 1 mile or a million, if you over inflate the rim and blow the side wall out it's the consumer's decision to void their warranty. You can view our policy here https://barecomposites.com/pages/warranty-policy

Despite this, I still issued a new rim to this individual.

I feel very strongly that just because I am a small business owner it does not mean you can say horrible things to me, and about me, on social media, then expect me to try to help you because you are a customer. I'm a customer of a lot of businesses, I deal with warranty claims of my own regularly, and often times things don't go the way I like. I'm not sourcing out the company owners and blasting their name all over social media. My wife isn't telling the owner to "lick his *****", and then commenting on all of their social channels. I'm not screenshotting emails and blasting them on social media, begging my friends to share my story. I don't send threatening emails trying to bully small business owners into doing things my way OR ELSE. This is the consumer behavior of a very volatile person.

For this reason, Yes, I have requested a formal apology from the customer for his actions. I stand by this decision.

In the history of our company, we have had a minimal amount of warranty claims and have taken responsibility for 100% of the claims, issuing new parts, even if they have been outside our policy where we would not be liable.

I think where this stands is there are two ways a person can look at the situation. 1) The company is wrong no matter what or 2) This is real life, things happen, and there's more to a story than what one person has to say about it.

I wish everybody an awesome Friday, and ride on this weekend!







supertemp wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:28 pm
Wow.

So you're demanding an apology from a guy who ordered some cool wheels last year, that you'll eventually send a new rim to so he can rebuild his brand new wheel, at his expense, after 12 miles of use?

All the best man but I can categorically say none of my bikes will ever be running your gear.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Ruliana
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:44 am

by Ruliana

Screenshot taken last night after Zacks email to me about me somehow voiding my warranty. I thought he might do something like this so I took the screenshot just in case. He’s literally gone onto his warranty page and changed it. He’s now boardering on fraud and he better be damn careful.
0119DBE3-2BE5-417A-9132-6E15E71508D2.jpeg
0119DBE3-2BE5-417A-9132-6E15E71508D2.jpeg
ZackM wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:57 pm
Hi,

Thanks for the feedback and I understand how you feel. Based on what you've read and the awareness that you have access to, I have to agree with your point. However, in the defense of my company, I have to state that this was never even an approved warranty claim. This was a Tubeless rim inflated to 115psi with a clincher tire when our rims tubeless rims have a max load of 110psi. Therefore warranty was void from the beginning and it doesn't matter if you have 1 mile or a million, if you over inflate the rim and blow the side wall out it's the consumer's decision to void their warranty. You can view our policy here https://barecomposites.com/pages/warranty-policy

Despite this, I still issued a new rim to this individual.

I feel very strongly that just because I am a small business owner it does not mean you can say horrible things to me, and about me, on social media, then expect me to try to help you because you are a customer. I'm a customer of a lot of businesses, I deal with warranty claims of my own regularly, and often times things don't go the way I like. I'm not sourcing out the company owners and blasting their name all over social media. My wife isn't telling the owner to "lick his *****", and then commenting on all of their social channels. I'm not screenshotting emails and blasting them on social media, begging my friends to share my story. I don't send threatening emails trying to bully small business owners into doing things my way OR ELSE. This is the consumer behavior of a very volatile person.

For this reason, Yes, I have requested a formal apology from the customer for his actions. I stand by this decision.

In the history of our company, we have had a minimal amount of warranty claims and have taken responsibility for 100% of the claims, issuing new parts, even if they have been outside our policy where we would not be liable.

I think where this stands is there are two ways a person can look at the situation. 1) The company is wrong no matter what or 2) This is real life, things happen, and there's more to a story than what one person has to say about it.

I wish everybody an awesome Friday, and ride on this weekend!







supertemp wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:28 pm
Wow.

So you're demanding an apology from a guy who ordered some cool wheels last year, that you'll eventually send a new rim to so he can rebuild his brand new wheel, at his expense, after 12 miles of use?

All the best man but I can categorically say none of my bikes will ever be running your gear.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Nefarious86
Moderator
Posts: 3669
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 4:57 am

by Nefarious86

If you have a failure occur at 4% over recommended psi, something that can be the difference between 2 pumps on a given day or even the force resulting from a 25mm tyre at 110 compared to a 35mm tyre at 110psi being that you dont seem to specify a maximum tyre width then you may want to revise the safety factor you have built into the product...

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk


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User avatar
WinterRider
Posts: 564
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2013 2:46 pm

by WinterRider

Nefarious86 wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:09 pm
If you have a failure occur at 4% over recommended psi, something that can be the difference between 2 pumps on a given day or even the force resulting from a 25mm tyre at 110 compared to a 35mm tyre at 110psi being that you dont seem to specify a maximum tyre width then you may want to revise the safety factor you have built into the product...

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk
4% margin for error.. heck who can see that w $$ in their eyes. Smells like... another stateside type marketing small shop 'on the cheap' car-bone.
Litespeed 2000 Appalachian 61 cm
Litespeed 1998 Blue Ridge 61cm

Fitness rider.. 1 yr from seven decades age.

That is my story and I'm stick'n to it.

Orbital
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:52 am
Location: Pitt Meadows, BC

by Orbital

Nefarious86 wrote:If you have a failure occur at 4% over recommended psi, something that can be the difference between 2 pumps on a given day or even the force resulting from a 25mm tyre at 110 compared to a 35mm tyre at 110psi being that you dont seem to specify a maximum tyre width then you may want to revise the safety factor you have built into the product...

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk
So much this. I would expect the actual fail point to be at least double the expressed maximum limit for any sort of safety factor.

oldturd
Posts: 230
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:10 am

by oldturd

good job on the screen capture of the warranty page! that's disgusting how it was changed in light of his reply to you.

lostrainbow
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:54 pm

by lostrainbow

waooo... That is a hrad lesson learned.

I would say try talk to your credit card company. Sometimes they can help for purchase protection or extended warranty or even return. Another thing you can do is the small claim court.

by Weenie


Visit starbike.com Online Retailer for HighEnd cycling components
Great Prices ✓    Broad Selection ✓    Worldwide Delivery ✓

www.starbike.com



RyanH
Moderator
Posts: 3181
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:01 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Contact:

by RyanH


ZackM wrote:
During the process, I had what seemed like daily emails from the customer pressuring to do things the way he wanted, calls on Sundays, and long weekends that I even answered! Knowing that the process was being taken care of and that the customer would be receiving a new rim at my expense, although I was advised otherwise by people that I employ to know more than me I didn't feel the urgent need to be in constant contact with the person. I grew tired of the endless emails, and criticism of my brand.
Can you quantify how many emails he actually sent you and over what time period? How many of his emails did you respond to?

Is it standard practice to replace the entire wheel or just the defective part?

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