Went to e-ride at the end of March and have had nothing but problems since. After the first week, all the lights blew out on it when I turned on my highbeams. I brought it in and was told that the lights had been 'accidentally' hooked up wrong. I was then told that he couldn't replace the ones on the dash since they are 'internal'. The ignition began to fall apart the next day. At the end of week two, the whole bike completely died. I had it brought in, and they managed to get it going. The ignition wasn't replaced though. I was told that this is not normal. Week 3 had the bike not start up one day when I went to have lunch. I tried it intermittantly during the day and called them. To his credit, Steve did come down to Richmond (he closed his shop although he said he didn't have a customer all day), but by the time he showed up, it was working again. He brought it down to his store, rode it around the block and said he couldn't see anything wrong with it. I had about 2 weeks of good riding (minus dashboard lights, and the falling apart ignition) and then this past Monday, the throttle stuck on my way to work, when I hit my brakes, I almost bailed because I didn't realized that it was stuck. I turned it off and back on and had no throttle at all. I waited about 10 minutes and managed to get it going, which meant I had the throttle stuck and used my brakes to control my speed. Half a mile from work, it died completely. I pushed it to work, called and left a message (they don't open on Sun. or Mon.). Again, after trying it through the day, it was working by the mid afternoon. On my way home, I was at an intersection about to make a left hand turn, when a car almost hit me from behind. The driver yelled at me, and said something about turn signals. I pulled over and sure enough, the turn signals weren't working. I got home and had my wife bring it in the next day. Went I showed up right before they closed, I was told they had been too busy with sales to look at my bike. I proceeded to complain to him about how this is now costing me money and time to take transit to work, and he said it would be ready tomorrow. He said since "your problems are intermittant' he will have to 'see what the problem is'. I said my problem was I spent $1500 to pay to take the bus to work and walk home from his shop.
The next day, I tried calling them when I got home from work (a 30 min ride turns into 1 hour 20 min on the bus) and their phone rang with no one answering it. I finally got there just as they were going to close. Again, my scooter wasn't ready. He said he was working on it right now, and it would be ready tomorrow. At this point I demanded my money back (oh yeah, the clip on the helmet broke too), and he proceeded to state that the return policy is 7 days. I told him I was gonna cost him a lot more money that it is worth. He said it could take 3 months for parts and that his warrenty doesn't give a time on when he has to have it fixed.
I went home and checked out the Better Business Bureau rating for E-ride and found out they have had 4 official complaints against them in the last 3 years, with them refusing to even reply to 2 of them. This gives them an unsatisfactory rating with the BBB, and I started to go online and post my problems with them on any place that mentioned them. (how I found this link btw)
On Thursday, I went it and picked up the scooter and was checking it out, when Steve (owner/tech/guy who has my money) came up and said 'So, I see you're already complaining'. I replied,'This is Canada, I have the right to my opinion'. I left and went did some errands and came home. I was going to leave to visit a friend and when I was pulling the bike out of my basement (I keep it completely dry when not riding it) I heard a 'ping'. I looked on the ground and found a metal part had rusted off from somewhere in the steering column. It turns out that it's the clip that keeps the handle bars from now going 90 plus degrees.
I've had it, I am currently having a professional ticketed welder examine the frame welds. I am also going to have an engineer do an inspection as well. I have contacted multiple consumer groups and Transport Canada as well. Since he seems to like selling unsafe, problem ridden goods, I as a health and safety professional cannot simply let this pass. This is about more than my $1500, this is about safety. I doubt that there is any inspection process on their part with the stuff they sell.