E-bike Warranties

In most cases, your e-bike will come with a 2 year warranty on the electric parts, a longer warranty on the frame and a nebulous statement of warranty on the moving parts. Warranties in almost all cases will be provided only to the first owner of the e-bike.

Your start date of warranty is the date of purchase of your e-bike as per your invoice. In cases where the invoice date and pick up date are materially different, it pays to keep a record of your final payment or pick up date to establish your warranty start date. 

In our experience the most common warranty claims relate to electrical components failures such as displays, chargers and batteries. 

What does your e-bike warranty cover?

Manufacturer's warranty

Most manufacturer's warranties are limited in scope and will not cover costs like transport of your e-bike to your place of purchase, freight costs of parts, use of a courtesy e-bike while yours is out of action or even labour costs of diagnosing and installing warranty parts. Some major international brands like Brompton and Riese & Muller do reimburse labour costs for warranty concerns to authorised dealers. 

Retailer's warranty

When you purchase an e-bike from a NZ based retailer like us, you will have protections well beyond the manufacturer's warranty. Warranty concerns are assessed free of charge, repaired in store with no labour charge and we even offer use of a courtesy e-bike while yours is with us. 

If you purchased an e-bike from us from outside Auckland, we will work with a local shop to see that your warranty entitlements are fulfilled. However, in these cases we cannot offer courtesy e-bikes. 

Consumer Guarantees Act

Fortunately, New Zealand has a strong Consumer Protection Laws. The CGA gives e-bike owners protections irrespective of what the manufacturer's warranty promises - (more info here). Of particular relevance to e-bikes is that spare parts and repair facilities must be made available for 'a reasonable time', which is to say well beyond its warranty period These spare parts and repairs don't have to be free of charge, they just have to be available. It doesn't matter if the bike is out of warranty, the retailer is 'online', calls itself a 'wholesaler', no longer deals with the brand they sold you or no longer sells e-bikes at all. What matters is they are be based in New Zealand, their company is still registered and they sold the e-bike to you. If your retailer is unable to repair with a 'reasonable' amount of time since purchase, you can ask for a refund instead. If they are still uninterested in finding a solution, you can make a claim at the disputes tribunal. 

The Electric Bike Team aims to set the bar high for the interpretation of the CGA as applicable to e-bikes by providing fit for purpose e-bikes, backing warranties and providing repairs and spare parts for beyond any legal definition of 'reasonable'. If you ever feel that we are not meeting these expectations, please do let us know.

"Goodwill" and marginal warranty calls

At times you will be offered a warranty solution without the manufacturer or retailer admitting liability or even calling the offered solution a 'warranty' but rather a 'goodwill replacement' or similar. Generally this means you are receiving the benefit of the doubt in this case but the provision of a solution doesn't imply that the case was accepted as a warranty. What's that all about? The manufacturer or the retailer doesn't want to create a precedent or be held responsible for other indirectly related losses. For example a car rack falls off a tow ball and no-one is able to demonstrate why it happened. The car rack manufacturer might offer to replace the car rack to demonstrate 'goodwill' but will not accept any liability for the damaged e-bikes that were on the car rack. Similarly a wheel becomes buckled and no-one knows why and the bike manufacturer offers a free replacement wheel as 'goodwill'. The same happens a year later and the manufacturer ( who now concludes that it's due to the way the bike is being ridden) will not be so sympathetic to an argument of 'you warrantied it last time and it happened again, so you have to warranty it again'. Of course, in either case they might be wrong and you may have a valid legal case against them. 

Corrosion of e-bikes and components in marine areas (Waiheke Island)

As per the CGA, the e-bikes we sell need to be of acceptable quality and fit for purpose for the use for which they are sold. In general, if a quality (not cheap) e-bike showed severe corrosion throughout the bike within a short period of time, that would fail the requirements. However, in marine environments such as travelling in a boat or on open ferries or commonly used in salty environments like Waiheke Island, we would not consider corrosion a warranty concern or evidence of a failure of the CGA. Bikes used in marine environments are simply expected to corrode, the same as a you would expect a petrol station's "swap n go" gas bottle to corrode on your boat. You can purchase a galvanised gas bottle (if you're lucky) that is better suited for marine use, but no-one makes e-bikes specifically for marine environments. That isn't to say you shouldn't buy an e-bike to use on Waiheke Island - you'd be crazy not to. You should just try your best to keep the salt at bay and accept that corrosion will happen and when it does - you can still keep using it!