Oh Canyon! All I ever wanted was a little love and attention…….

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Additionally they also specifically make a claim that the frame/bike is "robust", again this description leads one to think that the bike will not be a complete write off with a simple sideways fall with no other object/persons involved. 

Depends what it falls onto. I refer you back to the engineering and design. You can drive a car along a road at 70mph. LOADS of kinetic energy and force going through it. But if that same car falls sideways off a small ramp you'll write it off. If it hits a wall at even 10mph you'll bend the chassis or dent the doors or break the bumper.

If you drop a hammer or a rock onto a bike you'd expect it to dent the tube very significantly. So why should dropping the bike onto a road be any different? It's not designed to take that force in that way.

If the rider has landed across the top tube in the fall then that's force and weight acting in a direction and manner totally out of design spec. That said I still reckon you should be able to get the original frame back (after all it's still yours I assume?) and just get it repaired. Any decent carbon place should be able to cut the tube and rebuild it, I've seen plenty of pictures of similar repairs including to Pinarello and Cervelo. One of the frames was the result of a rider sitting astride the top tube outside the cafe, not even a fall/crash. Just weight going through the bike in a way it wasn't designed to cope with.

Christ, I did not buy my Canyon because it was cheap. Purchased purely on reviews and that it was exactly the bike I was looking for. Everything about it (so far) has been perfect, so I can’t comment on their customer service, but please don’t think everyone with a Canyon is a cheapskate bargain hunter. £2,500 for a bike is a fuckload of money for me.

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Because essentially that is what Canyon have said, your low impact/low speed fall should not destroy completely a product meant for every day use and must have a certain robustness to it.

One can claim that it's because the frame is so light, but that would be an absolute nonsense, that's no excuse whatsoever. Bikes are not ornaments to sit on a shelf, they are used on the roads which with the daily rigours of life should mean a certain robustness when a minor incident happens, like falling over from a stationary/low speed without the product completely failing.

A car is designed to be driven at potentially high speeds, potentially fairly laden, yet if you hit a pothole or kerb (even at quite low speed) you can wreck a wheel. If you reverse into a wall (even at fairly low speed) you can bend the chassis. If you drop a brick on it, it'll put a fair old dent in it!
It comes down to design and engineering - a bike is designed to be ridden along relatively smooth roads and absorb vibrations at that frequency with a certain weight perched on it in a certain way.

It's not designed to be dropped onto tarmac and ironically, slow speed crashes are almost worse in that respect since it just falls over. High speed crash it tends to slide.

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Whenever I feel the 'itch' to move to carbon I read stories like this (to add to other carbon tales of woe I've heard over the years) and think, no thanks.  There's no mechanic to hand me a new bike if I trash the frame; I'll stick with steel or titanium.

You can repair carbon more easily than titanium. Also over the years I've seen aluminum, carbon, steel, titanium and magnesium frames and parts break.

How many frames do see get broken like this in pro races when they crash............very few. The norm is to get back on and pedal like hell to catch up.

You don’t mention your payment method. If you paid by credit card then i would seek a refund through them first on the basis that the goods were not fit for purpose. Section 75 may well become your best friend. Will only cost you time.

Sad story and not one to fill anyone with confidence in buying direct. Canyon do make it very appealing along with cheaper prices, but if the back up is not there, what is the point?

I do hope the OP gets the result he deserves.

Can't people just admit they chose an online-only manufacturer to save money, and the trade off is there is no face to face local customer support/ handover, which has value to most/ some consumers, especially when things go wrong.

Rubbishing the LBS model in this case seems to be an attempt to justify, or spin, one's own buying decisions.

I certainly think you'll REALLY struggle to go down the legal route of not fit for purpose. You'd essentially have to prove that your bike failed in a way it shouldn't have due to either a faulty design or a manufacturing flaw - this will be extremely difficult to do.

I would suggest, if you want nothing more to do with Canyon, you cancel the order and buy a frame from another manufacturer. If you want to prevent something similar occurring in the future, aluminium or steel is the way forward - metal is much much more resilient to impact damage than  CFRP.

Just beware about other manufacturers, there's no guarantee they would be any better in warranty/service if one of their bikes failed like this. As I mentioned previously, my other half works in a bike shop where they had a Trek and Orbea returned both with severely damaged top tubes (one fell over whilst clipped in and the other fell over whilst propped up) - neither manufacturers would warranty their frame.

EDIT: you might also get a response from CanyonChloe here...

Happy owner of 3 Canyons (+1 I've sold on) and a YT. Mates own another 3 Canyons (+ another YT) between them. Never had any problems, I imagine my next (road) bike will be another Canyon. My only beef with Canyon is that rear mech hangers appear to be made of cheese, so I buy generics from Pilo/gearmechhanger.com which seem to be more robust.

I am sorry that your triathlon season has been compromised. 

Other than some poorly worded automated comms that combined with/exacerbated poor expectation management, I'm struggling a bit to see what Canyon did wrong?  Based on my experience of having to wait for orders to be filled (at differing times of the year), they don't seem to carry a huge inventory of stock, so fulfilling your order may well have meant delaying someone else's order. Canyon chose not to warranty your frame - I don't know why but I imagine they had their reasons, and I imagine they receive a load of "I was just riding along" claims. You were paid out under your insurance - which seems a good result (and some recompense on your premium). What about the driver who caused your accident in the first place? If there's a villian in this piece, isn't it him/her?

I agree with you that you shouldn't buy from Canyon again. You should be able to get your money back - I think German law gives you a right to rescind your contract to buy (in a way that is much more consumer friendly than the UK).  Hopefully you can find a suitable replacement frame from a local bike store.

But while we are on that subject - the rosy picture you paint of local bike stores doesn't reflect my expereince.

"whereas a local shop is always on hand to help out and to talk to in person. Service is pretty much guaranteed."

"A shop tends to own the relationship and fix the issue as a front line – service matters."

"Biking is a passion and people in bike shops are passionate."

These statements are so fantasy land that part of me wonders whether you are the bike shop equivalent of a Russian state sponsored troll, out to generate as much noise about the failings of internet retailers as possible in an attempt to make anecdote feel like evidence. 

Your average bike shop is increasingly about selling a narrow range of complete bicycles to new entrants to the sport. They no longer carry a lot of stock on site. (The closest bike shop to me regularly replies to my request for an item with "have you looked on our website? We can order it in for the end of the week." Sure, this works for me - or I could look on Wiggle/Chain Reaction and have it at my desk by tomorrow.) This is stuff as basic as tubeless rim tape. Wor betide you if you want something a little bit out of the mainstream (freehub spares; hub bearings; CX tubs). I've had more than one out of hours email exchanges with the guys at YT about subjects as esoteric as the pros and cons of running a DVO Jade on my 2015 Capra. In my experience, the YT employees are just as passionate as most bricks and mortar employees. I would be surprised if the same wasnt true of the employees at Canyon.

The good bike shops - the ones that will survive the armageddon that will follow when the big brands decide to sell direct via the internet - differentiate themselves on service. Unfortunately they are dealing with a group of people who don't value service (at least at a level that pays rent/puts food in mouths). 

I beleive that this is not right behavior for Canyon. I have a Kona carbon frame from 2014, advertised as "below 1000g". I crashed the bike twice, both time so severly that I broke my hip bones, but the frame is still ok. 

Being race or not, bicycle frame must not fail in such conditions.

BTW, both of Shimano hydro calipers on my Canyon inflite have failed in the same week, both two months after 2 year warrany has expired, and despite being commonly know issue, Canyon has declined my replacement claim. Not buying from them any more.

Conversely, I went down heavily on my Cube Agree and broke a few bones in my body .... but the bike was fine (well, apart from the handlebars and deraileur) which was a bit of a bummer as a new bike might have compensated for my injuries! 

Whenever I feel the 'itch' to move to carbon I read stories like this (to add to other carbon tales of woe I've heard over the years) and think, no thanks.  There's no mechanic to hand me a new bike if I trash the frame; I'll stick with steel or titanium.

If a bicycle falls from a standing position and snaps the frame then in my opinion and probably that of UK/European law then the prodcut is not fit for purpose. 

Is there a 'if your bike falls over in the shed/hallway get's blown over whilst parked outside pub/cafe/toilet, you fall sideways whilst trying to clip out' clause that states your bike may well break in two if those occur and because it is effectively made of water biscuits invalidate any claim under warranty, if it doesn't then you should make a claim under not fit for purpose. Because essentially that is what Canyon have said, your low impact/low speed fall should not destroy completely a product meant for every day use and must have a certain robustness to it.

One can claim that it's because the frame is so light, but that would be an absolute nonsense, that's no excuse whatsoever. Bikes are not ornaments to sit on a shelf, they are used on the roads which with the daily rigours of life should mean a certain robustness when a minor incident happens, like falling over from a stationary/low speed without the product completely failing.

That is unless the contract terms/waranty specifies that the frame is so fragile you have to have it at all times in a protective bubble, would fail upon any impact, which in itself would be unfair contract terms anyway for that type of product.

You should check out the law regarding fit for purpose because a low level impact should not break something that is used for not just sport but utility as well. The use of the word "crashes" in the warranty wording is in itself ambiguous, you fell, you did not crash, the fall is not different to the bike falling over at home or outside a cafe/pub/parked against a wall/car etc.

Canyon's own wording "The Ultimate CF SL frames offer great value for money since you are getting a durable, lightweight carbon frame with integrated cable routing to keep things looking clean and sleek. The carbon frame offers a responsive ride when you put the hammer down, but works to absorb inevitable road vibrations."

Also "The permissible maximum overall weight comprising rider, luggage and bicycle should not exceed 120 kg"

This gives the impression that the frame is robust to the rigours of a large person putting the hammer down, this could exceed 2000watts of effort.

I would suggest you seek legal advice through your home insurance over the original warranty claim and cancel the sale  by letter as they have breached the T&Cs of your replacement in any case.

Why throw good money after bad? If Canyon did that to me, they would never get me back as a customer.

I've seen top tubes bent and broken just from riders sitting on them. A mate seriously dented his when he leant it up against the foot of his stairs, it slid forward and the top tube clunked into the bannister. Totally innocuous. The top tube just isn't designed to withstand forces like that.

Could probably get it repaired; there's a carbon repair place just down the road from me and I've seen pictures of work he's done including cutting out sections of damaged tube and rebuilding them.The frames usually end up stronger than they started!

I can't say I'm particularly surprised that they won't warranty a top tube failure in that way - I doubt a local bike shop would.

My other half works in a bike shop and they've seen a few carbon fibre frames returned that have snapped at the top tube (Trek and Orbea) when people have slipped trying to get on/off them or fallen off at very low speed (not colliding with anything).

The reason the frames are so light is that they aren't designed to be able to withstand this type of damage, so they will fail if you bump the top tube too much. It's not a quality issue, it's simply that they are light - Aluminium frames won't do this as Aluminium is isotropic (making it unnecessarily strong in secondary loading directions).

Needless to say, the manufacturers refused to warranty the frames, so I don't find it surprising that Canyon refused a warranty.

The delay and lack of communication from Canyon in simply getting a new frame is very disappointing though, it seems they operate such a lean manufacturing system that they aren't great at managing customer requests like yours!

I must say, I've got myself a Canyon Ultimate and I bought both a VCLS and an integrated bar/stem from them. Everythime I've contacted them, they've resolved my query within 24 hours. I also requested some longer bolts for the cable covers for the bars, Canyon sent me replacement suitable length bolts free of charge and they arrived in 4 days.