Cycliq Customer Service Rant

tuxbailey · #1 08-02-2019, 10:28 AM

First of all, they only do email support (no phone, no chat) so any inquiry from the US take at least two days to get a response.

Issue: After my accident in 2017 I pre-ordered the Fly12CE and Fly6CE. I got them in December, 2017 and used them a handful of times due to health and schedule issues. They worked fine and the Fly6CE is still functioning while the Fly12CE had developed an issue after I used it last summer.

The unit just doesn’t stay powered up after fully charged. Turned it on, after a few seconds it chimes and shutdown. Resetting it doesn’t help and I couldn’t install the new firmware either.

I contacted them at the beginning of July, sending proof of purchase, followed instruction to reset sent by them and then I was told that they have high volume of support tickets and will get back to me. Then I haven’t heard anything else from them since mid July.

I do understand that I may be SOL because the unit is out of warranty period. But I expected that for something this expensive they would take an interest of knowing what could be wrong and/or offer repair/replacement cost.

After this I did a search and found that a lot of people is having complaints on their customer service as well as product life.

I ordered a $40 Cycolite metro 850 and using my old Actioncam for the front.

I am writing Cycliq off because of their product quality as well as shoddy CS.

Veloo · #2 08-02-2019, 12:03 PM

That's too bad. The 6CE sounds like a good product on paper but sounds like they can't keep up with whatever flaws it has. And they prob haven't figured out root causes/ fixes.

mdeth1313 · #3 08-02-2019, 12:26 PM

There's OH so much more to them. Their first taillight had a mounting system that would break, often while people were riding. I ended up finding and buying a 3rd party 3D printed mount. After a year or two your battery life drops SIGNIFICANTLY. I had the 1st gen rear light and then a 2nd gen and both had the same battery issue.
Their solution - send it back (to Australia) and we'll sell you another one at a (crappy) discount.

Not sure about battery life on the front but I've read about all kinds of issues there as well. I have light and motion headlights that are on years 4 & 5 and no batter issues.

Idea is great - company sucks.

Llewellyn · #4 08-02-2019, 05:22 PM

It makes me sad to hear this about a company that is based not too far from me. Bad/poor customer service does seem to be a recurring theme with them.

eddief · #5 08-02-2019, 05:28 PM

they're gone in a short time. my rear light/camera was fiddly p.o.c. challenging to fend off a ton o bad feedback.

bikinchris · #6 08-02-2019, 06:13 PM

I have no flaws in either of my Cycliq cameras. I did perform the firmware update to improve battery life.
I get 3 1/2 hours of run time out of the 12 and 4 hours out of the 6.This is my third year with the caneras.

The OP should try to set up the camera for firmware update and leave the charging cable plugged in during the update.

mdeth1313 · #7 08-02-2019, 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bikinchris

I have no flaws in either of my Cycliq cameras. I did perform the firmware update to improve battery life.
I get 3 1/2 hours of run time out of the 12 and 4 hours out of the 6.This is my third year with the caneras.

The OP should try to set up the camera for firmware update and leave the charging cable plugged in during the update.

4 hours out of the 6 (probably in warm weather) is not that good. I used to get 7-8 hours out of my 6 (actually both of them). Year 3 it dropped to 2-3 hours in warm weather and yes, I tried their firmware update.

djg21 · #8 08-02-2019, 09:24 PM

I loved my original Fly6 so much that I preordered the Fly12CE and Fly6CE the day they were announced. They worked fine for a season, notwithstanding the fact that the connected features were worthless apart from allowing you to adjust settings on your phone and syncing the video timestamp with your phone. If you paired with your Garmin, battery life suffered, and the ConnectIQ software for Garmin’s is pretty wonky.

Last month my Fly6CE failed. It’s taken 6 weeks to finally get the thing warrantied and it was an incredibly frustrating experience. Initially, my emails went unanswered. I finally got Cycliq’s attention by posting a negative review in the comments to DC Rainmaker’s review of the Cycliq cameras. The President of the company follows that site and it seems to be the de facto support forum for Cycliq. He responded to my comment quickly and I then was inundated with emails from Cycliq support ironically asking why I wasn’t instantly responding.
I was asked to troubleshoot, send a video of the unit turning on, and to perform a bench test consisting of turning of incident protection and letting the thing run until the battery fully discharged. It took days of back and forth by email to complete these processes, and they could have been resolved in a single short telephone call.

In the interim, I bought a second Fly6CE from Amazon, thinking that I’d give it to my wife after I got my replacement from Cycliq. It lasted 5 rides before it stopped working. I returned it to Amazon for a refund rather than deal with Cycliq tech support again.

I really want to like the Cycliq cameras. They are a great idea, and when they work, they work really nicely. Unfortunately, they have not proven incredibly reliable and obtaining tech support is a chore. If I weren’t committed to the Fly cameras, having purchased a number of aftermarket mounts for all of my bikes, and already owning a (for the time) functional Fly12CE, I’d go in another direction and never buy anything from Cycliq again. I’m really hoping another more stable company purchases the rights to the Cycliq technology, supports the current devices, and sells improved devices. Replaceable batteries and better firmware update process would be good starts.

Veloo · #9 08-02-2019, 10:04 PM

That blows my mind that a company would use another guy's personal review website as the primary point of customer communication.

Heisenberg · #10 08-02-2019, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veloo

That blows my mind that a company would use another guy's personal review website as the primary point of customer communication.

ehhh

as others have echoed, nice idea, terrible execution. they're capitalizing on an underserved market with an underdeveloped product and big margins - it's a private equity-owned org, pretty much par for the course. as soon as someone with a reputation and experience in the space makes a competitor, they'll quietly exit.

i wanted to love mine. badly. but then they both flat out died, aside from other issues.

the unfortunate fact of the matter is no one makes anything comparable - right now.

EB · #11 08-02-2019, 10:23 PM

Echoing Heisenberg and others with my experience so far. Commuting 28 miles a day, 5 days a week convinced me of the need for it - just saw too much nonsense out there. It’s a completely unique product that is wonderful when it works, but lots of issues in technical execution and very problematic customer service. I just spent weeks of back and forth getting them to warranty a Fly6CE that had simply stopped working.

It’s a shame that nothing else like it exists in the market.

false_Aest · #12 08-02-2019, 10:44 PM

At least you care find a bit of solace in the fact that product developers read threads like this one, bring it to the boss's attention, and say things like "We cannot release a product that has this type of reputation."

Seriously, you all have ranted about a bunch of things and I've taken these threads directly to the higher-ups and said, "See, this is why I ________ and why I keep insisting that we do _______."

Somewhere these threads do some good.

Heisenberg · #13 08-02-2019, 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by false_Aest

At least you care find a bit of solace in the fact that product developers read threads like this one, bring it to the boss's attention, and say things like "We cannot release a product that has this type of reputation."

Seriously, you all have ranted about a bunch of things and I've taken these threads directly to the higher-ups and said, "See, this is why I ________ and why I keep insisting that we do _______."

Somewhere these threads do some good.

letthebikeindustryburn

djg21 · #14 08-03-2019, 12:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veloo

That blows my mind that a company would use another guy's personal review website as the primary point of customer communication.

I don’t think it’s meant to be the primary point of contact. But with close to 700 comments, a good portion of which are critical, and the huge amount of traffic to that site, it may be a matter of survival to appear responsive to customer concerns.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/11/...irst-look.html

R3awak3n · #15 08-03-2019, 01:01 AM

I liked my OG cyclic but eventually died mysteriously. It was at least a year or so old so I count my losses and decided not to buy the new one and instead get a garmin varia. Sure its not a camera but actually tells me if a car is coming and to me that is more useful that video of a crash after it has happened.

Shame that these guys have a terrible cs reputation, its a decent product and the new cameras looked even better