Defective Battery on Breeze - less than 6 months old and 6 miles of use
So where do I start? I got a Velotric breeze for Christmas. Rode it once for a total of 6 miles. I was about to take the bike out for another ride and before I grabbed the bike I was testing FindMy and it was a “red” battery bar. I was perplexed cause it shouldn’t have drained the battery in 3 mos of idle time. I then go to the bike and the LCD screen confirmed the battery is at 13% so it lost 80% of its charge in 3 months.
So I take the battery out of the frame and I press the button and see a single green bar confirming the 13% battery life. After troubleshooting with Claude and ChatGPT it recommended I reset the battery by holding down the test button. I did….the battery reset and I briefly saw 5 bars. I then plugged it back in. Charger still showed a green light (which means fully charged) and the battery test button again showed one bar and the LCD screen showed 13%
Then I noticed on the screen just above the speed a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark (!) and code E9E. After consulting the Manual it says battery failure.
Fast forward to my tech support. You can’t actually talk to a person. I had to call tech support, they send you a link to document the problem, upload a photo and video. Then that ticket went unanswered. I then sent an email with the ticket number and got a response within a few hours. After some back and forth a tech support person said battery is defective and they will send a new one. Then the next day I received a response from my sms ticket and the response was sorry for the delay we’re backlogged and will get back to you shortly? REALLY? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I literally got a reply back from tech support the day before with a diagnosis and solution for a new battery. Does support run two different teams? One via SMS (Zendesk) and email support runs something different?
Now get this kicker. Tech support says we have no extra batteries in any color in stock and they’re back ordered until next month? How do you run a company where you don’t have replacement parts for your bikes?
Does not having any batteries indicate there is a high battery defect rate? It’s not like every bike owner is buying an extra battery to have on hand as a backup.
Anyone else with bad customer support? Bad breeze bikes? Bad batteries?
I would just love to use my breeze but with a dead battery it’s just a very heavy pedal bike which isn’t what I spent almost $2k. Is Velotric a reliable e-bike company?