I wrote a pretty long post on Reddit about my experiences with Canyon quite recently (linked below).
One of the things that seemed to come back a lot in the discussion on Reddit was that your location can play a big role in how good or bad the customer service experience is.
Here’s my full post that I did in Reddit:
I’ve got 5 Canyons in my garage at the moment (Ultimate AL, Ultimate CF SL, Inflite, Grand Canyon, and Aeroad), so obviously I’m a Canyon customer.
My general thought on Canyon is that they’re great bikes – I’ve ridden Specialized Tarmacs and BMC Team Machine before as rentals, and I would place Canyon next to them as equals. If you compare the amount of bike that you get (and especially if you look at things like wheels, tires, saddles, etc that come with Canyon), the amount of bike that you’re getting for your money is not even remotely comparable to brands like BMC and Specialized.
That being said, there are definitely some things to be aware of. First of all, dealing with Canyon is often a bit of a nightmare. I’ve had multiple terrible experiences with them (I’m located in Belgium, so your location may also make a difference). Like seriously, really really really bad experiences. Lots of them. Apart from one particularly bad experience with my internet service provider, Canyon by far has provided me with the worst customer experiences of my whole life. In general I’ve been lucky enough (or easy-going enough) to not have had many (or nearly any) really bad experiences in dealing with customer service from various companies, but it’s been really bad with Canyon. Nearly every time I deal with them, at least one thing goes wrong.
Other things to be aware of: on the road bikes, they use a non-standard steerer tube size, which means that changing your stem, or replacing headset bearings is never going to be as simple as with a bike with standard sized bearings. I suppose it’s more and more common these days for bikes to have custom sized parts, but on the other hand, you can also be sure that there’s no Canyon dealer located in your town.
I’ve heard stories of some shops refusing to work on bikes that weren’t purchased there (could just be a Belgian thing though). That’s not an issue for me, because I do all my own work on my bikes, but it’s something to keep in mind if you are dependent on a shop for repairs.
The bikes are delivered nearly built, and final assembly isn’t difficult, although someone who is clueless about working on bikes (or who doesn’t recognize the importance of using a torque wrench on fragile carbon parts) will likely struggle.
So in general: yes, Canyon bikes are great, really great, but just be aware of what you’re getting yourself into.
Here’s a link to the full discussion on Reddit: Reddit - Dive into anything
