Kickped vs. Xootr customer service: Losing Your Bearings

When I dropped the KickPed off at NYCeWheels on Thursday, everything was straightforward as if they hadn’t tried to welch on their lifetime warranty on Tuesday. The counter guy, previously dubbed “Brown,” was coincidentally named David Browne, which I learned not because he introduced himself, but because it was printed on the work order receipt that I insisted he give me. He asked if “Alex” said it was ok for me to leave it, I said yeah, he said then it might be ready today. I looked at the sign on the wall, which estimated a 9-day turnaround on service. David said it was something fast that they could probably do after closing the doors, so obviously they were full of malarkey the first time. I left my number.

Sure enough, Alex called at 1930, a half hour after they close, and said it was ready. Turns out they had read my post, but it seemed none of us were going to acknowledge that—though his “Thanks, buddy” was to be our most cordial exchange throughout.

Fair enough. I went in the next day to pick it up, and David and “Blond” were at the desk again. (He wasn’t blond at all, but the distinction had served. I could as easily have used Vladimir and Estragon, Rocky and Bullwinkle, or A and B.) “Aah, the blond guy!” said Blond with exaggerated cheer when he put my scooter down on the counter. I didn’t hear him because I was staring at some flange they had put on the bolt securing the rear wheel. I asked what that was, thinking it was a spacer, and he said “I don’t know, it’s not supposed to be there…You know what it is, it’s the guts of the old bearing.” He proceeded to unscrew the bolt, remove the race, and tighten the nut back down. There was a long silence while he did that, then he said, “So am I blondie, or brown?”

“You don’t have blond hair,” I observed.

“Neither does he,” he said with what must have been smugness.

“I thought you were, I didn’t really look directly at you.”

“Thanks!” he said. Was he offended by a perceived failure to acknowledge his humanity?

“So why were you such dicks the other day?”

“I dunno. We were busy.”

“You weren’t busy, I was the only one in the store.”

He gestured to a screen behind him, “We had a lot of internet stuff going on,” then without missing a beat, “you want an extra bearing?”

“Sure.” With that, it was done. It was clear that an extra bearing was the limit of his civil capabilities, and probably his way of suggesting “And stay out!” A lack of confidence in the materials, a dismissal, or both.

Maybe their service team (probably one frayed guy) is in over its head. Maybe the margins in their business are poor, and the staff don’t care about a career in alternative transportation sales. Repairs must be their biggest man-hour loss on paper. Introducing a simple, indestructible product like the KickPed would change that, though the novice buyer won’t choose a KickPed over a the dominant Xootr unless it has a gimmick like a lifetime warranty. And New York City leads the kick scooter market, which is growing: 45% of Xootr’s 2011 sales were here, up from 36% in 2010. But a warranty without service risks the store’s reputation, and most people who live here have neither a workshop nor the time to replace a defective bearing, even if it does take only a half hour.

The KickPed may be sturdier than the Xootr. You’d better hope yours is.

KickPed vs. Xootr: Customer Service review

Fig. 1. Drawing: Silberwolf; Wikimedia Commons CC

The wall seal on my KickPed’s rear wheel roller bearing broke last week. In fig.1 you see an example bearing with wall intact, in my pic below the interior is exposed—not an ideal condition for something packed with greased bearings a couple inches above churning road grit. I’d remove the wheel for a full view of the bearing but as you will see below, I don’t want to provide a pretext to void my warranty.  In my earlier review I noted that the rear wheel bearings began to whine 4 months after purchase whenever I rode through the rain, so they were not watertight from early on. The bearing filled with grit and degraded quickly after the wall broke; a couple of days after the breach the collar holding the bearings skipped off and the whole wheel slid on its axle up against the frame, so that the friction made it almost too hot to touch after a fast 3 minute ride.

There should be a blue plastic wall fused between the collar and outer edge of the roller bearing.

Yesterday I called the NYCeWheels store, which sold it to me just over a year ago when it hit the market. I told the guy on the phone that I’d need to bring in a KickPed for warranty service, and when I bought it. I explained the failure, and he supposed that the bearing had been defective when it left the factory, or the installer had hammered it onto the tire too hard, weakening the wall seal. “Thousands of scooters have been out there with no problem,” he added, and said they could replace the bearing in an hour. I could drop it off and pick it up the next day if I didn’t have an hour to wait, and that they’d loan me a scooter to get back to the train (a 10-minute walk from the store). I had thought I’d have to lug the KickPed while riding my troubled Xootr just to save on 50 minutes (total) of walking.

MAINTENANCE FREE, LIFETIME WARRANTY

At the store, 2 guys were at the desk. One was blond, one brown haired, neither was who I had spoken to. Both looked at the damage. “Blond” said maybe I said on phone that I wanted warranty service to a Xootr, which I hadn’t, and which wouldn’t have made sense anyway since the KickPed is NYCeWheels’ product (with GoPed). In fact the website encourages users to bring it in for free biannual safety checks as part of “free lifetime service.” They call the KickPed  “100% bullet-proof,” “indestructible,” and go so far as to say: “This is a kick scooter that you buy once and never have to worry about breaking or needing repairs.” Yet Blond added they might not have the wheels in stock, which I thought odd because it’s their product. Maybe they don’t carry them because the KickPed is “maintenance free.” Blond left the shop to ask someone if there were wheels in inventory. He returned and said they didn’t have the wheels there.

“Brown” told me I could get wheels online and they were “only about $55.” But, he added, if I had the shop install them, with labor I was “already halfway to the cost of a new scooter, so I might as well buy a new scooter.” At my incredulity, Brown told me that the warranty only covered the frame, and gestured at the KickPed on the counter to encompass the handlebar/stem assembly, deck, and chassis. Blond added cheekily that I “should have read the fine print.” When I complained, Blond had the balls to quip, “Maybe it’s time for a bike!”

I had to get to work and clearly the situation was deteriorating fast. I asked if I could just replace the bearings, and Blond said sure, I could get them at any skate shop. I picked up the KickPed and left, planning to check NYCeWheels’ website when I arrived at the office.

Of course I had read correctly a year ago. As an editor, it’s impossible that I hadn’t “read the fine print” when spending $250 of my hard-earned—editors are often as poor as they are punctilious. I called back and spoke to Alex, who was probably “Brown” because he was sitting at the counter nearest the computer and phone 45 minutes ago. I asked him to send me a link to the language stating that the lifetime warranty only covered the frame, and there was a 30-second pause during which I heard several mouse clicks. Finally he said dully, “We’ll honor the bearing repair for you.”

“You can’t send the language because it’s not there!” I said, “Then I’ll bring it by.” I’ll post whatever comes of that, if they don’t rig the KickPed to spill me in traffic.

And here: the thrilling conclusion to this weeklong saga traversing 2 counties and 3 trains.

By contrast, Xootr customer service has always been exemplary, even across great distances. For example, The ex3 was their short-lived nickel metal-hydride battery scooter with electronics from Nova Cruz. At $900 it was like buying a used car you could fold up. It went 17 mph for up to 2 hours and had an innovative regenerative brake, which converted braking power into energy fed back into the battery/ies. It was hella fun but developed battery problems, and Xootr always honored a 3-month battery warranty via an independent repair guy in Queens. He was himself an enthusiastic F-scooter rider. I took the ex3 there 40 minutes on the train, 3-4 times to have the $200 battery replaced, and each time he’d swap it out only for it to fail within the 3 month warranty. I gave up after a while, and because I moved and didn’t have to ride 4 miles to the train on something smaller than a bike, I never got it fixed. A couple of years ago I eBayed the ex3 to an electrical engineer specializing in batteries. FWIW, Nova Cruz LLC ultimately went bankrupt.

When I got a Xootr MG in 2007, it eventually exhibited some mystifying problems that persist today. The specifics are beyond this post, but my first service was 3 years after I bought it, and warrantied because they decided it was defective. A year later I had to send it to Pennsylvania again  (at $25 each time), but bought the KickPed to cover me.  They sorted what appears to be a defect promptly and sent it back—3 years after purchase, despite a 1-year stated warranty. The decision is at their Xootr’s discretion, but compare their engineers’ discretion to the cavalier fuckery of NYCeWheels, and caveat emptor.

Transmat bracelet

Sometimes the simplest things are the most striking. The perfect symmetry possible with modern machining has strewn our landscape with mathematically precise geometries, unseen to the casual users of products that contain them. Even when these shapes fail they are buried in their own graveyards without ceremony.

This steel bracelet was cut from gearteeth, heated in a forge and bent into shape, then milled out on the inside to be smooth. It was then varnished on the interior with Earth Safe Finishes’ Marine Varnish gloss, a non-toxic, water-based, low-VOC (volatile organic compound) sealant that will protect the wearer from the bare metal, which would otherwise rust.

I’ll be listing it on Etsy shortly.

Slavery-Free Christmas: What Is to Be Done?

This begins to look like lots of Christmas.

I’m not too shy to say “Christmas,” though even my annual token obeisance at a church thousands of miles from my home has gone unobserved for years now. I don’t need to have a “Keep Christ in Christmas” sign on my lawn either. If I must give gifts they must reflect humanist principles. I do need to see my family and emphasize something often forgotten in the shove-flooding savagery of this grasping holiday: Slavery.

“People hoisting themselves out of poverty with hard work” is boilerplate globalization-speak in defense of outsourcing. But expropriated peasants and dissidents, for their part, are not choosing to leave “poverty”—or freedom. Al-Jazeera recently produced a program about China’s laogai (government labor camps), part of their ongoing series on slavery.

This has never been a popular news topic in the States. A little digging yields yellow(ed) coverage like this 1999 CNN chestnut:

Red Giant!…A fundamental policy of the Laogai states that ‘forced labor is a means toward the goal of thought reform’…Organ harvesting!…We cannot condemn the evil actions of the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag while we ignore the continuing brutality of the Laogai.

Then in 2002 China entered the World Trade Organization, whereupon even this shrill searchlighting disappeared from our shores. Al-Jazeera takes a more serious tone, but still includes indictments like “state-sponsored slavery” and compares the face of slavery past (woodcuts of African-Americans chained at the neck) to the face of slavery today (Homer Simpson slippers made in a laogai). It’s a well-done piece rich with facts; I took an envelope-back of notes while sitting on my Chinese-made couch (don’t ask). Among the gems:

In 2010 U.S. imported $250B worth of goods from China…3-5,000,000 people are in laogai at any time (www.laogaimuseum.org)…laojiao means “reeducation through labor”…Chinese saying: “Laogai is dark and laojiao is bitter”…”Abigail” was charged with worshiping in an unlicensed Christian church (“disturbing order and security of society”) and made Christmas lights during her sentence  in the laogai…The EU lacks even the token protections of the U.S., importing $355B USD yearly from China, without a single law or regulation covering laogai products.

“WHAT IS TO BE DONE?” one asks, but maybe not in caps. I can only offer what I did by way of suggestion. This year I’ve found refurnishing my wardrobe very liberating, as I did so entirely with vintage, surplus and U.S.-made items, often military or workwear. (No one can tell the difference anymore since designers have been jacking designs from utility clothing for decades.) I bought a grip of stuff from Etsy where other makers like myself are, and some Made in USA items, and for the first time in memory feel proud of my holiday shopping. None of it supports the slavery of which I am the sworn enemy’s scion.

If you live in a food desert, where all your subsistence shopping must take place at a Wal-Mart, you’ll have to use the Internet, which I did for all of this shopping because I live in BoxStoreTon, a stripmalled suburb of New York City. These are a few of the items I and a like-minded friend found with an hour’s effort, and we’re proud to say we didn’t go Doorbusters or pepper-spray anyone to get them.

• A hummingbird feeder designed, tooled & molded in the U.S. The unusual design (54 ports simulate real flowers!) may survive the brutal Arizona sun and make my mum smile.
• A snakewood and gold-plated letter opener to replace the clunky, tatty one used by her father-in-law. The wood is from Surinam, but this is Our America anyway.
• A nuno felted scarf for her mother-in-law, who will doubtless appreciate the drape and textures of this silk gauze fused with wool felt.
• A wall-pocket fused glass vase that a girl I’m interested in will love, because she loves essential oils and this is the perfect way to decorate a wall while diffusing rosemary fragrance throughout a small room.
• A glass-tile photo-applique pendant of Chicago’s skyline which will remind same girl of Chicago, the only other place in America she knows well, and which she often misses. It looks even better in real life.
• An daunting oatmeal cowl scarf  with handmade zebrawood buttons (which had better be made by the same women in Brooklyn…). Its versatility is part of its charm.
• You might also consider a hammock from Twin Oaks, an intentional community of 100 people in rural Virginia who have been exemplifying horizontal democracy since 1967…Nowadays, there’s a waiting list to join.

Xootr vs. KickPed: Folding Scooter Throwdown

The boys waiting to go out. Xootr’s mudguard brake is custom.

(August 2012 UPDATE: A comparison of the companies’ customer service. Unlike the scooters, it’s a clear call.  Click here.)

Those who snoot at folding scooters should recall that not long ago, riding bikes was hardly a serious transportation option in the USA. People rode them for health or fun, but rarely while trying to get anywhere. Today, the huge market for fancy helmets and bikes trumpets their mainstream acceptance.

Folding scooters have yet to get there. In 2000 it was all you could do to avoid being hit by, or running over, children on Razors, and since then the market has changed—struggling to shake off the stigma of irritating flimsy toy rides.

Xootr has done much to mature the image. Its award-winning scooter design is magnificent and a pleasure to ride, fleet and strong. Its machined sexiness is the choice of celebrities (e.g. Leguizamo, Thurman, Jackman). I’ve loved my MG for several years, and appreciate Xootr’s great service.

But when I sent it to Pennsylvania for repairs, my eye wandered to other f-scooters. Because without it, I can’t run errands in New York City when I go in for work; in fact my life is structured around its portable  efficiency. I visited the fine folks of NYCEWheels to test-drive different f-scooters and after a lot of reading, riding and talking, bought a KickPed. I can’t say I like the name. It’s practical, affordable transportation that’s sturdy but prosaic…they should rename it the Proller.

It’s been a couple months of daily riding now, and I’ve decided it’s exactly on par with the Xootr MG. Here’s why.

The KickPed is well designed, but with less regard for style than the Xootr MG. It’s more functional, but its planning was guided by NYCEWheels in collaboration with Patmont Motor Werks (of Goped fame)—so it replies to criticisms of the Xootr as well as other makes the ‘Wheels team has sold and serviced.

The Xootr’s biggest flaw is its atrocious shock absorption. Its  hard polyurethane wheels cut friction, but transmit so much impact you could read braille by driving over it. Consequently it goes very fast (2-3 mph faster than the KickPed) but with no mean discomfort on rough roads. With roads going unrepaired in the U.S. and colder winters from climate change busting up New York’s roads for the foreseeable, I’ve come to prefer comfort.

Taking the KickPed and Xootr past “YOUR SPEED IS…” traffic scanners, I get 14-15 mph on the Xootr and 12-13 on the KickPed riding full tilt. But the KickPed can hit anything and lose little speed.

The Xootr’s linchpin is prone to encrustation and jamming; with time, opening or closing requires tugging or hammering . It’s taken me up to 30 seconds to free it. Conversely, the KickPed’s spring-loaded axle shaft locks it open once it’s at a 90° angle, in less than a second. It makes a hollow “TOCK” sound somewhat like a shell being chambered. But the only thing holding the KickPed closed is a nylon strap, and a few times it’s come loose to drop the deck like an axe, sometimes near people. On impact, it would probably cause more alarm than harm.

Carrying the Xootr requires a strap, but the KickPed is designed with a big gap between board and axle to rest on even the bulkiest shoulder. This gap also makes it impossible to neatly stow under a subway bench; I have to prop it between my legs where everyone can stare at the prosaic deck hardware. With some practice you can balance a book off it and have a place to hang your helmet.

With fewer moving parts and a simpler design, it’s easy to see why the KickPed has a lifetime warranty. But Xootr has always replaced everything except worn-out brake pads without charge. Even with their benighted eX3 electric scooter of the early ’00s (run by Nova Cruz’s faulty elecs), they’ve always been honorable.

The KickPed’s traction is superior, with its fat (slow) rubber tires, particularly in rain. Xootr expressly tells you not to ride the MG in rain, because the brakes don’t work and if you lean while turning on slick roads, it will skip out from under you. Neither brakes particularly well in rain, however, so the utmost caution must be used in traffic. It probably takes twenty feet to stop from full speed, and more if the oil from the asphalt has surfaced and sheens your works.

UPDATE: It’s been four months, and I am still very pleased despite a new complaint about the KickPed. The bearings in the Xootr’s wheels have been through all kinds of weather in all seasons, and have remained slick and silent. The ones in the KickPed have more friction and are poorly sealed, so every time I ride it through the rain it squeaks for a day or two. That’s a shame because it’s velvet ninja silent otherwise, unlike the Xootr which clatters with its hard tires and jarring frame.

On balance, they are both extraordinary vehicles, worth the money considering I save 20 minutes on my commute with an f-scooter each day (it saves you 66% of your walking time). Laugh all you want, walkers. You’ve time to during your quaint post-primate ambulations.

Sod It.

I think these screws held a VCR shell on.

Before you laugh thinking I’m at large with these franken-clogs on, I’m not. They’re German-made NAOTs from my father, who bought them for some podiatry purpose, then tried to fob them off on me for two years. I finally accepted when I needed studio shoes after the spectacular failure of a pair of Wolverine work boots (another story), and clogs kick off so I don’t track metal shavings and grease into the house. Perfect.

Problem is, the exposed thread used to sew the leather upper to the rubber sole is unable to withstand molten aluminum. You can see the burnt off ends protruding vestigially. Every crouch or stub would further distend the thread.  One day I found my toes ventilated, and with the tread barely worn on these clogs it would be decadent to bag them. I tried to repair some Red Wing bootsoles with a staple gun once; I’m sure you know that was silly. The glue on the soles had failed, and that was the last USA-made pair I bought—all bets are off since they’ve offshored.

So I tried screwing the four salvaged sheet-metal screws in, but they pulled loose after some workshop calisthenics. The point of this post is that I was oddly proud to have found a solution to this recalcitrant shoe-repair problem: a soldering iron, sometimes misdescribed as soddering.

If your soles strip because of extreme use or defective manufacture (no one avoids both), drive screws into them. Don’t use a drill or you’ll just augur a hole into the rubber. While setting the screws, heat a soldering iron up. I used an 80 watt/900 degree one with a chisel tip, but you can probably use any model in that $10-25 range. Lean on the screw with the hot tip for about 5-15 seconds depending on your unit; I did about 8 seconds with mine.

Not a day goes by without hunkering down and kicking things, and all four screws are still locked in. Necessity is sometimes the mother of invention, but in any event it’s a mother.

Demilitarized Zone

Black colorant panel detail; note original color.

Military surplus has connotations of craziness, bunkers and Mad Max, but it’s heavily cannibalized by designers for today’s pricey duds. QM Fashion documents this so thoroughly that if you read enough, you’ll probably find you’re wearing a martial detail/design right now. This “military creep” seems dishonest in a world where perpetual war is a crescendo without end.

A character in “A Separate Peace” creepily equates love of olive drab=love of war=love of country: “…and in these times of war, we all see olivine drab, and we all know it is the patriotic color. All others aren’t about the war; they aren’t patriotic.” As such, I’d like to expunge olive drab from my visual vocabulary. I’ve been testing Earth Safe Finishes products for creating a fully conscientious demilitarized zone in my functional wardrobe. As mentioned in an earlier post, I ultimately plan to tailor the boxy generic fits.  If you ever see anything from Los Angeles’s boutique T-shirtier E-Label, they were an inspiration: old thrift-store T-shirts overdyed, overprinted, cut apart and reconstructed with other fabrics.

Why go to all this trouble with surplus, anyway?

1. It’s phenomenally well-made because lives depend on it.
2. Our tax dollars have already paid for it.
3. Or globally, somebody else’s tax dollars have already paid for it.
4. It’s recycling, and a lot of surplus is barely used or is stored at length.
5. It’s affordable (see #2,3).
6. You will support small business; surplus dealers are always independent enterprises.
7. U.S. law requires that military suppliers manufacture in the U.S., so you’re indirectly protecting jobs, building tax bases, etc.
8. You thought there would be 10?
9. I don’t want to end on an even number.

In the photo above (enlarged to show texture – like breakfast cereal!), I used 1/4 ounce of ESF’s FabricMagic to an ounce of water, and over a week applied and reapplied as I gradually increased the black colorant I was using to see what would penetrate and dominate the olive drab. The above results on a very coarse, almost hessian fabric were from 65 drops of black in the 1.25 oz of fixative. The frisson of ESF’s metal powder is just to test its tenacity; this article is worn and cleaned a lot and I’ll update with results.

Swan Song

Part museum, part store.

Gardening and studio work require that I make frequent bike trips to my neighborhood hardware store. I haven’t shopped at Home Depot since its founder said retailers who don’t support the GOP “should be shot, should be thrown out of their goddamn jobs,” and Lowes hasn’t offended so flagrantly yet but there’s a guy in plumbing who tried to get me into Amway.

Increasingly I avoid the big-box hardwares for my peculiarly anachronistic local, where I shot this picture of a welding clamp so old, it’s a) largely obscured by dust and b) made in the USA. The store is a partner in the Do It Best buying cooperative, and besides that could be Anytown USA’s corner shop: aisle signs hand lettered on cardboard, radio blaring oldies or classic rock, and several dogs and a cat lying around. One of the older dogs is occasionally incontinent.

I bought all the store’s cotton buffing wheels when I first started polishing my aluminum jewelry, because they were made somewhere in New York State, well-stitched and affordable—with wide enough bores for an angle grinder. I went through four before they ran out and couldn’t get any more. Like a lot of their stock, everything has changed since those wheels were made. To recall our productive glory days, I head there and laugh at the irony of hearing Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” while digging past the newer imports for dusty Yankee relics.

US-made products aren’t necessarily better (though my oldest tools are Japanese- or US-made). Their quality has to evolve. Recall that we were once an agricultural country, when our first president wearing US-made clothes was inaugurated (Madison, 1809). And a few decades ago Japan made the junk in the “dime stores” of the West. Progress is a loaded word, but when it comes to industrial regression, I’m sure we’re the world leader.

In the Do It Best, we are still number one. They find my economic nationalist peccadillo amusing. When I ruin a brand new tool in five minutes of standard use, the owner vouchsafes for the tool company that offshores its production: “They’re a good name.” You wouldn’t want your name to be crap, but names became mere brands, which without a heritage can be (s)crapped for fleeting profit.

I remember heavy US-made tools from Sears in my father’s tool box in the same thought as I do the unbroken horizon of Arizona and the forest bands that once wound through Massachusetts suburbs. At the Do It Best, the owner is still smoking in the back room, but now he leaves the door open.