Hello,

I am in quite of a pickle and would need some advices on how to proceed.

I have an electric bike as my main transportation vehicle. When I reached 2000km and had to be bed rested for a surgery, I decided to send it to a workshop in Brussels, and they offered a 30€ pick up and delivery service via a third party delivery service.

They picked it up a month ago… and it still has not reached the workshop. I have been calling the workshop, writing via WhatsApp to them also and the delivery service. The official reason is that there was "a confusion", my bike was apparently not labeled properly (see the screenshots attached). They still don't give me any tracking number or any expected date of delivery. Yesterday they didn't even answer and – you guessed it, they missed the delivery.

At that point, I am honestly scared to not see my bike again. The keys had to be on it for the repairs. And if I do, in what condition?

I asked by writing to my bike insurance what could I do, and am still waiting for answer. I also filed a complaint on test-achat/test-ankoop's website. I am seriously considering contacting the non-emergency line of the police to explain and maybe get some help/declare it as stolen.

What would you do? Do you have any other ways I could try to get my bike? It's supposed to be delivered to the workshop. If it arrives, I'll pay the repairs (with I hope a discount for the shit show) but there's no way I'm paying the delivery fee. This is all so enraging, particularly after surgery.

Thank you for your time and ideas!

by SimoneDoesnotCare

4 comments

  1. First of all, if you want a quick response of your insurance, you call them and ask for legal advice. Certainly if you choose a cheaper one, the customer service might be less effective/ fast as well. Do you have another legal protection for online purchases (maybe linked to a visa). Maybe you could contact them as well.

    You can also try to contact the delivery service.

    But my best advice is to use a real bike store, and not an online one, for your next bike/maintenance. In some product ‘if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys’ apply, and I would go for the service in this case.

  2. Also, English is nice but not an official language of Belgium,

    With your delivery/ pickup company or insurance I would suggest French or Dutch for legal reasons ( tracking of communication)

    And yeah, a pick up service to secure a 2k bike?
    Not very smart IMO

    Could be a scam or something shady

    Next time :

    Just go to the bike shop yourself or have it delivered by a family member if you can’t do it yourself

  3. I think forst thing is to he sure who you are contractually engaged with.

    If the 30€ pickup service is proposed by the workshop and you are paying the workshop for it, then your supplier legally is the workshop, not the transport company?

  4. Just to make sure we have some context: they mention bad labeling. Was your bike properly labeled or not? The reason I ask is I once had a similar issue with shipping and I made a similar mistake (not a bike) and it did cause confusion that took some time to rectify.

    Those people pick up a bunch of bikes in a single drive, possibly for multiple destinations, and if your bike is not labeled properly, I can easily see how that can cause issues.

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