Decathlon 500 Home Spinning Exercise Bike

Poor build quality, essentially unusable

I bought this back in February and have had issues with it ever since. From the very beginning, it started making this very loud grinding noise at certain resistance levels. This made the bike essentially unusable due to the volume of the noise and how unpredictable it was. After lots of back and forth with the customer service team, I eventually was able to get them to send an engineer out to take a look. The engineer altered the brake pad, which made the sound worse (you could even hear it as he was trying the bike after - but he said this would go away with time). After giving it a couple of weeks, the noise remained. I contact the customer service team again, who told me "as this is chain operated, this will always make some kind of noise rather than being silent." I've used spin bikes for years and am used to the general sound they make but I've never had a noise like this, and clearly it was concerning enough for them to send an engineer (I provided recordings to them of the sound). A month on, the sound persists, and the bike manufacturers appear to have given up trying to fix it, instead claiming some noise is normal. While I can use the bike sometimes, it significantly impacts the user experience. I would seek a return but all this waiting for it to improve means I am past the 30 day returns and the manufacturer is claiming it's not faulty anymore. There are also issues with the general build quality. No matter how tight I make the knob for handle bar height, it sinks throughout a ride, usually about a level at a time. This is very frustrating, especially for longer rides. Also some more cosmetic issues which I would not expect in a bike of this price. The resistance knob has an incorrect translation and there is a chip in the metal handle bar. Also, not a criticism of the bike but something to note - it's definitely a bike for taller people. I am 5'7" and have the seat at its lowest height (albeit with a padded seat cover on as the saddle is very uncomfortable). So not sure it would work for shorter users. While cheaper than its tablet-embedded competitors, I would say this bike is on the higher end price-wise when compared with other offline bikes, and yet plagued with several serious and cosmetic issues. Therefore, I would advise you to save your money and look at other options.

Abi, 25 - 34