My turn to eat my hat...

[benb]

One of my Stages Power Meters is acting up this week....

It is the newest one, maybe 2 months old, less than 1000 miles since it's on the "Sunny Day" bike. It's never even seen any rain. (My other one has been absolutely beaten on in bad weather)

We'll see what they say when I file a ticket, but it's already almost completely turned me off of the whole thing. Three ruined rides cause I was wasting time trying to figure out what was wrong, and I even went out and bought another Garmin as I thought it was my Garmin! (It started happening right after a garmin firmware update.) But the new Garmin (I bought an Edge 1000) shows the same results. I changed the battery too even though the Stages app said the battery was full, no change.

The Zero Offset changed by about 200 points.. the thing is all over the place, either reading super low or super high. I am doing a rest week, today's recovery ride I averaged 300+ watts for 50 minutes. (NOT!)

Almost (almost) makes me want to just go back to just using HR. I kind of feel like I'd still be better of than I was before I started as I learned a lot using the PM and I think I can make more intelligent use of an HRM now.

[old fat man]

Stages customer support is very good. Sadly, they are quite experienced too, I think. I would encourage you to call them though, don't wait for the email back and forth.

If I could do it over again, I would buy the Pioneer or go back to a powertap wheel with a nice rim.

[batman1425]

n=1

One bad experience does not define a brand. Lots of people with positive feedback, including you before today. Get it fixed, switch to HR in the short term or use your other PM for data collection. Those that have had issues with stages have been taken care of from what I've seen.

[Mr_Gimby]

Sorry to hear of your woes. Have had similar issues with stages in the past. That said, a functional power meter can still be a fabulous training tool. Have you thought of the 4iiii PM? Price is way better than Stages for what can't fail to be a more reliable product.

[old fat man]

Sorry to hear of your woes. Have had similar issues with stages in the past. That said, a functional power meter can still be a fabulous training tool. Have you thought of the 4iiii PM? Price is way better than Stages for what can't fail to be a more reliable product.

What makes you say this? There are probably 20, or even 40 Stages users for every 1 4iiii user. In fact, I've never met a 4iiii user. It is less expensive, but the distribution is nowhere near the level of Stages at this time.

[chiasticon]

One bad experience does not define a brand.well...there's way more than one for the brand. I would say I know about a dozen Stages users and only one that I know of never had to return their crank arm or get new battery doors sent to them. a couple of them I'm not sure of, but that's already a large percentage. to be fair, they've all used the first gen arms and this is one of the first issues I've heard about the second gen units; maybe that's what you were referring to?

OP, I'd say give them a chance to make it right. I'm sure they will, they're very good at that, at least. I personally got sick of it and bought a Power2Max instead. it was only marginally more (like $100) but this was before there was another Stages price drop and I only needed to replace the spider on my crank with the P2M one, not buy a whole new crank like some have to. no issues with it so far after seven months, including cross season and winter riding (still on the same battery, in fact).

[benb]

I have to give them a chance to fix it.. I don't really see any option there, otherwise I'm just sitting on a $600 paperweight. It's not like it's out of warranty.

[Mr_Gimby]

What makes you say this? There are probably 20, or even 40 Stages users for every 1 4iiii user. In fact, I've never met a 4iiii user. It is less expensive, but the distribution is nowhere near the level of Stages at this time.

It's also brand new to the market, while Stages have been around for years. Level of usership is no barometer for quality when for years there were essentially 3-4 products making up the entire market. ALmost every disappointed Stages user I've encountered (10+) had gotten a Stages because it was the only PM below the 4-figure mark until recently.

[echappist]

buy it cheap, buy it twice.

The worst is that your problem isn't isolated, as someone over on bikeforums had an issue with his recently purchased Stages. The bugs are far from being all ironed out.

given the choice between a used SRM at $850 and stages at $500, it's a no brainer

[nate2351]

I have had nothing but good interactions with Stages customer support. I would recommend them as a brand to anyone.

[benb]

Haven't heard back from them yet.. we'll see what happens.

I swapped the other Stages PM from my other bike onto my main bike last night and went for a ride this morning and everything went fine.

[KF9YR]

I have two Stages and three 4iiii units and have had one issue with the oldest Stages unit (battery cover which was replaced and haven't seen another issue).

The 4iiii units had horrible battery life initially but a firmware update has really improved them.

I do the Calibrate function from my Garmin before each ride and they work well.

[benb]

Just an update Stages was indeed fantastic to work with.

The only thing they really did to question me is to have me upload a screenshot of the zero offset value from the Stages iPhone app. Once they saw that they immediately overnighted me a new left crank arm along with a pre-paid sticker in the box to send the bad one back.

The key thing and it's in their FAQ if you actually read the troubleshooting is the zero offset. A functioning stages crank generates zero offsets of 900 +/- 50 points. Mine went to about 570 when it stopped working.

I set everything up last night (3 crank swaps to get everything back to normal) and my 105 one calibrated right at 900 and the warranty Ultegra one came in at like 879 or something..

The hysterical thing was at least 3 days before I ever contacted Stages I also opened a tech support case with Garmin. I got the first response from Garmin ("I'm so and so, I can help you with your case now.") AFTER Stages had completed the entire process and I already had the new crank. Garmin really needs to improve their support.