Canyon is Here: First bikes shipping to customers in the U.S.

I just bought two Canyon kids bikes in June so I’ll share my experience. Brief summary – The order process was a PITA, payment fell through at their end multiple times, and communication was responsive but woefully uninformative due to language issues (I speak English, and was ordering bikes through the Spanish arm of a German company…). If you need delivery guaranteed by a certain date (as I did), ordering from Canyon may not be for you.
But in the end it all worked out and delivery actually took less than 2 weeks from when I placed the order (to Barcelona).
The bikes are AWESOME and the packaging is super slick.
How awesome? Think 20″ wheel kids bike with 12mm DT through axles front and rear, hydro disc brakes, quality tyres, even nifty lock-on grips that use the brake levers to secure them to the bar.
Sure the prices are well up there, but even though I’ve bought myself carbon bikes for over $5000, I’ve never had one come with tools, let alone a good quality pedal spanner and torque wrench. Or a box with a handy guide for measuring inseam, and re-usable foam pads that you can velcro to the frame. Nor a detailed manual with 952 pages (sure, it’s in a lot of languages). Assembly using the ‘quick-start’ guide is a no brainer – insert front wheel, torque axle to spec, torque pedals to spec, measure inseam using box, set seat height according to markings on post, go ride.

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The long-winded version:

It’s essentially impossible to work out from their website when your bikes are going to be delivered, even if you pick one of the bikes on their “express bike” link. I think most of this is due to inconsistent translations of ‘dispatch’ and ‘delivery’, and they have some real issues with how they handle payments.

The order process for me went as follows:

1) 22 June 10pm placed my order on the website. The website gives a message that “you will receive a confirmation email in the next few minutes”. By the following morning I still hadn’t received a confirmation email, so I contacted their support, only to be told the order hadn’t processed yet. Huh? I asked them if that was normal, and the response was “This is normal. It usually takes from 48 hours to be processed”

2) 26 June the order finally gets processed through their system. I don’t know what they did wrong here, but despite having done all the ‘verified by visa’ and confirmation SMS business at the time of order, payment got rejected by my bank. This was a particular PITA for me because I was in Morocco when that happened, and don’t have global roaming on the phone number my bank has linked to my account. They didn’t send me an email to tell me payment had failed, I found out when I contacted them to find out if the bikes had shipped yet.

3) 29 June I contact them again, only to find out payment has fallen over AGAIN – even though I can still see the latest pre-auth sitting on my account. So I pay them again.

4) 29 June Finally receive a confirmation email saying my bikes are ready to be shipped, with an “estimated dispatch date 10-14 July”. Say what?! That’s cutting it fine, as the bikes are being delivered to my AirBnB hosts in Barcelona, and I’m flying out on 18 July. Contact them again to ask why it takes so long to dispatch an ‘express bike’ which is sitting in their warehouse already boxed, and am told that the ‘dispatch date’ is actually the expected delivery date.

5) 1 July the bikes get shipped.

6) 4 July bikes are safely delivered to Barcelona. Phew.