We have some really exciting news to announce, we have been able to arrange Molds for the Raptor wheels to be sent to Labeda in California.
Labeda is famous for making great wheels & the first batch of raptor wheels was also made by Labeda! Due to large oceans & complicated logistics, tax & red tape! We were never able to find a cost-effective method to get our wheels to our assembly lines in China!
This has been a long & drawn out “Production Nightmare” - Our customer deserves better and we have found a way to deliver better! We would also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the bad quality wheels that we have given to you we tried & failed - it’s our mission to rectify our mistakes.
All existing Raptor Customers will be able to buy the new labeda wheels at heavily discounted prices!
Please note; We do expect the setup process to take several weeks! But once we have wheels we will likely put them on Amazon USA to serve our USA customer base quickly!
We will also send a few boxes to our fulfilment partner FatDaddy in Amsterdam so that our customers in EU area & nearby countries can also get these wheels!
We will be using this thread to give updates! Thanks for your support!
If you want to make it right to your customers you should send them for free as warranty items.
Otherwise it is just a case of:
We are sorry we have been supplying you with badly manufactured wheels all this time. Here, pay us some more money and maybe your problems will go away.
Actually Taz, we agree - that’s why we’re sending out a whole bunch of wheels under warranty. There is a difference, though, between wheels that have been worn down through normal use (they are a consumable item), and wheels that have failed early due to a manufacturing flaw - but in any case, all existing Raptor customers will have the option of buying spare wheels at VIP rates.
That is good news.
I am sure there are some customers that have given up on previous warranty wheels that exhibited the same problems but it is a start.
Our (small groupbuy) faulty wobbly rock hard wheels were going to be replaced a few months ago, but have never been sent since. We expect to get at least some correct, soft, not-wobbly wheels now. I don’t give a crap if they’re labeda made but by god please send us our wheels already.
Yes we’re working on this - expect some more concrete news over the next week. We’re receiving 90mm and 97mm front wheels, but still are awaiting the outwheel remakes to be finished.
We know it’s super frustrating - we ended up making the tough decision a few months ago to get the quality right knowing it would cause delays - we just didn’t know quite how long.
There’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel though, and trust me when I say, we’ll be the happiest people on earth when all our customers get back to gleaming the cube.
if you could keep us updated via this thread, that’d be appreciated. it’s good tto hear you guys are picking this issue up more seriously now, keep it up.
I « pre-order » your new wheel a while back , i was suppose to receive them in mai , after that you told me in june and 2 week ago your told me july , if i understand it will take even more time than that like August?! @adrianenertion
@adrianenertion Good to hear you’re taking the wheel production back to the USA. I ordered some replacement outwheels for my Raptor 2.1 on 25th May, will the wheels (once received) be coming from the new Labeda batch? Thanks!
P.S. I feel extremely lucky as I’ve yet to have any issues with my wheels, I feel they have come from a decent batch… I’ve tempted fate now, haven’t I?
Hi @epss4 - we apologies for the several setbacks in when we expected to get the wheels back in stock. As we’ve communicated over time, it’s been an absolute nightmare dealing with our current wheel factory, and every time they don’t deliver, it’s you guys that suffer. We always attempt to give you the best information that we have - and we know it feels like we’re just making stuff up half the time - but it’s just not the case. All we can do is try to keep you guys as informed as we can so you can understand what’s going on.
The website’s been updated with the latest expected stock arrival dates: (summary below) (you can also expect your order to ship out according to those dates too, but we’ll share if there’s any changes.
However we can get people functional wheels the quickest, is the route we have to take. We know a lot of people have been waiting a really long time, so we want to get people wheels asap.
About the lucky aspect - we realise that there’s a lot of doom and gloom surrounding the wheels, and rightly so (to some degree), but as we always said, not all wheels have had i- many customers haven’t had problems with their wheels, but as usual, you don’t usually see too many posts from these folks, because they’re happily out riding.
