A Bicycle is Abandonware Now? Clever Hack Rescues Dead Light
1 min read
Summary
Bicycle company VanMoof has used online tools to make its bikes more repairable following customer complaints about its electric bikes being hard to fix due to a lack of publicly available spare parts or information.
This would also make the bikes less attractive to thieves, as there would be less profit in selling them on.
VanMoof’s chief dog officer, a Great Dane, helped with the campaign, which was titled ’ canine- )}-.
The pledge included the release of a repair video featuring the dog, as well as a parts catalogue being put online free of charge.
However, a backlash emerged as some people claimed that the catalogue was impossible to navigate without the tools and skills necessary to strip down the bicycle in the first place.
In response to the criticism, VanMoof offered to send replacement parts to qualifying customers free of charge, and promised to explain how to remove the parts with ‘easy-to-use, standardized tools’ in the future.
