The Price of Fitness
Fitness and diet – Something I haven’t really written about before (and probably won’t again) but here’s a little story for you:
Around Christmas time, like many of us, the result of some rather indulgent meals and lack of exercise prompted me to weigh myself for the first time in years. The results were not pleasing. I was, as far as I know, the heaviest and most out of shape I have ever been to date.
I must point out though that one of the highlights of the Christmas-stuffing-selves-with-fattening-food session was a huge goose, fresh from the local butchers. Nice.
A Goose Yesterday
Again like many of us I have had various gym memberships over the years. I always find the gym a great place to be but no matter how close the gym was, it was just too easy to avoid. Plus very, expensive of course.
So I decided it would be a good idea to buy a decent exercise bike for the home. I always enjoyed the bike at the gym as it seemed to be great for loosening up the lower back and burning the calories. After some shopping around and the usual “Sorry that model is out of stock now but it was in stock when you ordered it that’s why we took your money”… I was blessed with the arrival of a brand new Reebok b57e.
Reebok b57e
After an hour or so to set up, it was ready to be sat upon next morning. Great!
I also discovered a fantastic iPhone App called Tap & Track, which keeps track of your food intake (including recipe management), weight, calories burned, exercise done and all the other associated facts.
This kind of thing is perfect for me because it appeals to my geeky side and to be fair, it really does help when you can see exactly how many calories you are allowed in the day and how much that freshly baked pork pie will cost you from your daily calorific allowance.
Tap & Track
Next was to start looking at getting some more healthy but enjoyable food. Banished from the kitchen and shopping list are the pork pies, chicken in bread-crumbs, huge loaves of fresh white bread and sadly (or not) we have avoided McD’s KFC and the rest of the fat+salt+sugar machines since December.
For example, we have re-discovered Sainsburys fresh fish counter, where you can get fresh salmon and trout fillet steaks put in a bag, cook in the oven – add large amounts of salad and a bit of dressing and egg etc. very tasty and great on the calorie meter.
Salmon Fillets
Anyway – there are a ton of web sites available for diets and recipes and it is not my intention to write about all that here.
So, after 3 or 4 days of getting up and doing 30 – 40 minutes on the bike and counting the calories I was already noticing a difference. I also noticed a difference in the bike… Was that a squeak from the flywheel or am I imagining it? Over the next few days the thing began emitting some noises as if trying to complain to the god of mechanical exercise equipment that this big guy was giving it a tough time.
After a few more days the noise had become so loud that the whole house would be brought to a standstill by this horrendous squealing and knocking whenever I did my daily 40 minutes. But the whole routine was working for me even though it felt like I was constantly riding through a large pack of noisy rats whilst pedalling over a cobbled road. The video was taken at one of the quieter moments. It was obviously time to call the shop.
Can you guess what they said? I think you can…
“Sorry sir but you’ll have to call the dealers.”
I would for the next 3 months be wishing that at this point I had simply said “I am not satisfied and I’m sending it back.” But alas I do not have the gift of seeing into the future. So I attempted to follow the correct channels.
I know – I should have known better.
So I called the Reebok Technical help line. The following is rough condensed version of events from then on until yesterday.
December:
- Call Reebok Tech Support (hold for 15 minutes waiting for answer being told how important my call is)
- Reebok have no record of my purchase
- Call shop again and arrange for record to be sent to Reebok
- Wait for call back from Reebok… Never happened
- Call Reebok Tech Support (hold for 15 minutes waiting for answer…)
- Get an appointment with an engineer
January
- Engineer arrives – smashing chap – knows his stuff – nice guy – diagnosis: bike needs new parts
- “But I’ve only had it 3 days before it started doing this”
- Weeks pass
- Nothing happens
- Call Reebok Tech Support (hold for 15 minutes…)
- I am told that parts are very difficult to get but should be with me soon.
February
- Call Reebok Tech Support (hold for 15 minutes waiting for answer…)
- Parts are on their way
- Send email with above video for the head support guy – he never mails me back
- Parts arrive – in fact one part arrives – a flywheel – nothing else
- Call Reebok Tech Support (hold for 15 minutes…)
- Arrange appointment with engineer
- Same chap arrives – finds it odd that not all the parts he ordered have been sent and spends 2 hours opening up the bike
- Engineer discovers that the flywheel is the wrong size – Reebok don’t use part numbers
- Call Reebok Tech Support (hold for 15 minutes…)
- I am told that I will be sent a new bike but that they are out of stock so I’ll have to wait and I can’t get an upgrade because my bike is the top of the range (actually I now find out that’s not but maybe it was at the time – I feel like a penny farthing was top of the range at the time, it was that long ago!)
March
- Get a call from a delivery company – We are coming to pick up your bike – not deliver a new one – Sorry I say, No take without give
- Get a call from delivery company office – The delivery vehicle has broken down, can we collect anyway – Erm Nope
- Re-arrange delivery / collection date
- Get a call from a delivery company – We are coming to pick up your bike…
- Get a call from delivery company office – The delivery guys have put the wrong item on the wagon, can we collect anyway – Haha Nope
- Re-arrange delivery / collection date
- New bike arrives old one taken away – It took a few days short of 3 months!
- Open and set up new bike (an hour job)
- We discover (hardly surprisingly) that the bike is not new it is reconditioned and some of the fittings don’t snap together properly because they are broken off.
- Eventually start pedalling.
- Bike makes a soft grinding noise…
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
And there my friends the story ends for now. Will it get worse again? Will it go away? Will I be forced to go back to step 1 of the above list?
The thing that makes this extra sad is that when it works, the bike is great.
I have lost almost 10 kilos since December. I have not for many years, felt better.
How much of that loss is due to the stress of dealing with the above (believe it or not – very condensed) list?
But what do you do when you get caught in a loop by this kind of ridiculous customer service?
What would you have done? I would really love to know.
And if you say
“I would certainly not buy a Reebok bike”
I think I would understand.
Update MAY 2010:
I have just finished with my THIRD exchange bike. this one finally gave up on me earlier this week. It was making a very similar noise to the first two, as this video, recorded earlier in May, shows here:
And then, shortly after that video was taken, something went bang and the crank now seems to just spin without any breaking action whatsoever. As you can imagine – I had finally had enough!
I called Reebok yet again and after being on hold for exactly 46 minutes I got through and requested my money back.
I then had to call Gym World which is where it was originally purchased. Spoke to a lady named Claire who was very nice, very helpful, sympathetic and on the ball… Thank goodness!
To cut a long story short – Gym World are sending me a new bike – NOT a Reebok one. If only I had done that after the first mishap in December / January.
At least hopefully if anyone else is in the market for an exercise bike and they search the net like I did – my post may show up as a warning!
Cheers and Thanks for reading.
