Inmotion policy in France - Shitstorm

[SamSuffit]

Inmotion has an exclusive contract with New Walking for distributing wheels in France (One of the reason why we have such a high price on EUC in France )

They just issued a statement against well established shops in France (same kind of statements as against Aliexpress sellers):

They encounter a lot of backlash on Facebook from the shops and their customers: https://www.facebook.com/InmotionWorld/posts/2881105175304936?__tn__=KH-R

I just hope one day the different brands would stop with their exclusive rights, grey market, geographical discrimination and just let some competition benefit the final consumer.

But that's just a dream...

[meepmeepmayer]

It's like they have a compulsion to shoot themselves in the foot or what? Well, looks like people should buy a GW or KS instead.

Luckily, EU means you can just order from any non-French EU store. And if they try any restrictions or geoblocking, you can always tell them you might report them for that. Single market means they can't (at least) arbitrarily do what they want, though I'm not sure about the details and how far they can go.

[mrelwood]

5 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

It's like they have a compulsion to shoot themselves in the foot or what? Well, looks like people should buy a GW or KS instead.

U kidding, right? KS is absolutely the worst in this regard. Getting firmware upgrades on a wheel purchased from Ali in 2017 (years before any declaration even hinting Ali of being unofficial channel) had gotten near impossible, until they released the temporary Soft Tuner app. Connecting to the official KS app is said to later in the spring to drop the speed limits to 20km/h as soon as an unofficial wheel is recognized. KS is dead to me as a manufacturer for my wheels.

5 hours ago, meepmeepmayer said:

And if they try any restrictions or geoblocking, you can always tell them you might report them for that. Single market means they can't (at least) arbitrarily do what they want, though I'm not sure about the details and how far they can go.

I'm not sure how effective the reporting would be though. To me it seems that any Chinese manufacturer has a very effective firewall called "Language Barrier" to disturb any small scale legal threat.

[Unventor]

I am posting this as to add perspective my personal opinion I keep for myself. This not reflection on Inmotion.

I have seen similar things like this in many different items and brands. If you are putting out a new unknown product one way to speed up awareness is to partner up.

So for a new item it means investment on both side. To get a profit return on this you can make exclusive deals for a region and or country. It build up easy distribution and service of products fast also. 

But once passing a certain point only one partner will be a like a ball in chain you are dragged about. It stops developing market further as it take much more to grow to a much bigger size. 

Also some customer might love or dislike your partner for whatever reasons. A exclusive partner can block customers to buy your product. 

You can take a higher price as exclusive partner but only to a certain limit. If you take even higher price if you don't meet sales target that will only lower your sale of units and risk unhappy customers as a result. 

On the other hand looking at my country we have no real EUC dealers. So both service is a pain. Shipping cost is high as EUCs are not cheap or easy to ship due to weight and battery capacity. And there is no option to test ride a wheel before buying unless you find a EUC buddy that bought it before you. People travelling here has no rentable options either. 

So button line market forces are in general beneficial but only if there is a market. To kickstart there might not be any real options to exclusive partnership. 

I would support local dealer as much as I possible can. As it also make warranty claims so much easier.

In short ot is a 2 edge sword. 

[SamSuffit]

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

 KS is absolutely the worst in this regard. Getting firmware upgrades on a wheel purchased from Ali in 2017 (years before any declaration even hinting Ali of being unofficial channel) had gotten near impossible, until they released the temporary Soft Tuner app. Connecting to the official KS app is said to later in the spring to drop the speed limits to 20km/h as soon as an unofficial wheel is recognized.

1) I did not know about the Soft Tuner app. From looking in the forum, it seems to be an apple only app for professionals, not sure i can use it in case of issues (and i am an android user)

2) Connecting to the official KS with an unofficial wheel could drop the speed limits to 20kmh in the future? Where did you get that information? Is it sure?
If true, someone who bought a wheel in China and come back with it in Europe would be F.CK.D. Big time. Same for all the Aliexpress buyers not knowing it.

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

I'm not sure how effective the reporting would be though. To me it seems that any Chinese manufacturer has a very effective firewall called "Language Barrier" to disturb any small scale legal threat.

I think the relative small size of the EUC market, the language and justice barrier makes it indeed difficult to sue any Chinese company. However suing the local distributor as a representative and benefiting from an abusive commercial policy might be possible. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know.

Concerning Inmotion situation in France, I guess we'll see if the shops and distributor find a deal (seems difficult as of now, the further exchanges in French seemed to be quite harsh). A possibility if not: the shops suing Inmotion and/or the exclusive distributor for not respecting competition laws (As indicated, i'm not a lawyer so I don't know if it is plausible).

[meepmeepmayer]

3 hours ago, mrelwood said:

I'm not sure how effective the reporting would be though. To me it seems that any Chinese manufacturer has a very effective firewall called "Language Barrier" to disturb any small scale legal threat.

1 hour ago, SamSuffit said:

I think the relative small size of the EUC market, the language and justice barrier makes it indeed difficult to sue any Chinese company. However suing the local distributor as a representative and benefiting from an abusive commercial policy might be possible. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know.

You don't sue them, you threaten to report them to a competition regulator. I don't think a tiny Chinese company with sketchy electronics (do wheels really fulfill all regulations?) or one small distributor would like that attention. Can get expensive fast, I believe.

Anyways, you would only have to do that if you bought from another EU country and they give you trouble for it (inter-EU geoblocking or so). The exclusivity deal isn't disallowed on its own, only preventing inter-EU competition. If Inmotion has some dumb exclusivity deal in France, you can just buy your IM wheels from another EU country if you're French.

I'm no lawyer too.

Edited April 28, 2020 by meepmeepmayer
clarification

[xorbe]

There's something weird about InMotion management imho that gives me bad vibes.  They need less whining, and more products that riders will actually buy.  Geo-locking and shaming shops selling your product ... if you want to cut off your nose in spite of your face, okay then.

[WI_Hedgehog]

How does a company protect and recoup its investment in innovation and prevent being undercut by knock-off clones without an official supply chain? How do they warranty a unit when 5 units with a cloned (the same) serial number exist? Which is the real unit that they built from top-tier parts?

How do you know you're getting a genuine item without buying from a certified reseller? How do you know the battery pack hasn't been removed and sold off, only to be replaced by a generic that lasts 3 months? If a certified reseller does unscrupulous things the OEM can pull their line; if any old place like Rob's Resale Shop can sell stuff they claim is from an OEM, the OEM cannot pull the line if Pete's Pawn Shop is buying the units and Doing-Business-As Rob's Resale. The OEM gets a bad name, Pete's pockets money they basically stole from you, everyone but the crook loses.

If you buy from a certified reseller that reseller warrants the EUC, and there's cost involved in doing so. A brick-and-mortar store pays sales/VAT taxe, property taxes, utilities, employee salary, import duties, unemployment insurance, etc. There's even something called Carrying Cost. What if they don't sell every unit in stock at market prices? (they eat the cost)

INMOTION is perhaps trying to maintain excellent customer service, and with other major brands competing it makes sense.

[mrelwood]

8 hours ago, SamSuffit said:

1) I did not know about the Soft Tuner app. From looking in the forum, it seems to be an apple only app for professionals, not sure i can use it in case of issues (and i am an android user)

Soft Tuner does exist for Android as well, but it isn’t distributed freely. You should get it and the login details from your distributor, if they deem your issue as such that it could benefit from the app. A “forgotten” serial number is probably the most common such issue.

8 hours ago, SamSuffit said:

2) Connecting to the official KS with an unofficial wheel could drop the speed limits to 20kmh in the future? Where did you get that information? Is it sure?

The official Finnish distributor showed a scan of a signed letter from KS announcing this earlier this year on the “Finnish riders” topic. KS was not clear about when exactly the new app would start doing that, but as a precaution the local riders have already stopped using the official app, never to be opened again.

8 hours ago, SamSuffit said:

If true, someone who bought a wheel in China and come back with it in Europe would be F.CK.D. Big time. Same for all the Aliexpress buyers not knowing it.

Exactly. I have spread the warning to a reasonable extent, but it is obvious that not all KS users will receive the warning in time. And not all Ali buyers will know this before purchase either, despite KS having already earlier declared very publicly that wheels bought from unofficial channels won’t get warranty, spares or support from them.

 

5 hours ago, WI_Hedgehog said:

How does a company protect and recoup its investment in innovation and prevent being undercut by knock-off clones without an official supply chain?

The way i see it, the only situation that would even enable cheap knock-offs to be manufactured and sold is exactly the one where the prices are held high with a supply chain that limits the number of retail stores. I see no danger of a modern GW wheel turning out to be a knock-off no matter where it’s bought from. I just don’t think it would be feasible for another company to meet their price point with a knock-off that would have specs anywhere near of the original. And this community would pretty much stop a blatant cheater before they’d have sold five units.

KS wheels are much more expensive in the EU than GW. The old 18XL costs 400-500€ more than a new MSP, despite losing clearly in motor power, battery size and speed, all by a large margin. This is the most effective marketing decision I know of to steer customers away from KS. And if anything, it opens up the markets for a knock-off product it’s trying to prevent.

5 hours ago, WI_Hedgehog said:

How do you know you're getting a genuine item without buying from a certified reseller?

By being aware what the product specs are that you’re supposed to get. And in our case, checking the forum if the distributor had gotten positive experiences, not that forum feedback works as an universal solution or in large scale of course. But for what EUCs are, it does pretty well.

5 hours ago, WI_Hedgehog said:

How do you know the battery pack hasn't been removed and sold off, only to be replaced by a generic that lasts 3 months?

That could be a risk, but we haven’t seen it happening yet. Taking big moves in distributor policy because of a threat that may exist some day... does not sound like a good move to my untrained and uninformed business eye when the ramifications of the move are obvious instantly.

 Regarding the OEM example, sure, it can become a problem if there is a place in the markets for crooks to exist. I just don’t think that there is in the EUC business, unless the markets grow to much larger in volume.

 In the current market, do you see an opportunity to make money as a crook? By manufacturing knock-offs, switching batteries, etc? I don’t. But I know many people have already said that KS has made choosing a new wheel much easier by dropping themselves out of the race. That is the effect their policy has already had, even when the policy hasn’t been fully enforced yet.

I often answer questions on which wheel someone should buy. I have pretty much stopped recommending KS, and if I do, I let their policy be known. I’m sure that my behavior alone has already cost KS a direct loss of ten if not more units from being sold. By many of the customers spreading this info, the effect has been multiplied several times. And I sure aren’t the only one having done this. I fail to see where KS take up for that loss.

5 hours ago, WI_Hedgehog said:

A brick-and-mortar store pays sales/VAT taxe, property taxes, utilities, employee salary, import duties, unemployment insurance, etc.

So do the French stores that were now blacklisted by Inmotion.

5 hours ago, WI_Hedgehog said:

INMOTION is perhaps trying to maintain excellent customer service, and with other major brands competing it makes sense.

I’m not convinced. A unit sold is a unit sold. Egg farms do not limit the number of stores that can sell their eggs, and counterfeit eggs are not an issue. Inmotion seems to have decided to cut down the number of shops from four to one. (I have no idea what the actual number of shops were, are, or will be.) In a niche business that is largely held in place by community support, a move like that rarely makes sense in the end.

 But EUCs are probably not the main segment of Inmotion anyway, so we are just passengers on the train and the train doesn’t ask us where it should go.

[.....]

12 hours ago, mrelwood said:

U kidding, right? KS is absolutely the worst in this regard. Getting firmware upgrades on a wheel purchased from Ali in 2017 (years before any declaration even hinting Ali of being unofficial channel) had gotten near impossible, until they released the temporary Soft Tuner app. Connecting to the official KS app is said to later in the spring to drop the speed limits to 20km/h as soon as an unofficial wheel is recognized. KS is dead to me as a manufacturer for my wheels.

Sorry to derail, but damn this is startling news. I wonder if certain governments are forcing this hand, or if KS is taking the initiative? This is a can of worms to open up and the wrong thread. Surely there's a thread about this in particular?

[mrelwood]

 

2 hours ago, ShanesPlanet said:

Surely there's a thread about this in particular?

Sorry, I got carried away. This subject tends to do that to me.

 That may be the most coherent single thread on the subject. I remembered a few details wrong, but the basic idea and the end result remain.

[yuweng]

Although abit deviate from this subject, one company has go to the extend to put up device locks meaning even if you have the genuine parts replaced, without their software to activate/ pair it, it won't work properly, only them or their authorised service provider is able to do that !

This has already gone to the medical sector for years, thats why our medical bills are so damn expensive world wide !  They must be stop or all other companies will follow suit ! Later, you won't be able to repair your own EUCs even if you own it & paid for it with your own money !

Learn more about it here & here & spread the awareness !

[Unventor]

I really think that KS upgrades belong to different places than this thread.

Mainly so it is much easier for Inmotion to see how customer view this policy of having exclusive rights. 

So due to that I hope you all see the benefit of this staying strictly on topic.

[SamSuffit]

9 hours ago, mrelwood said:

The official Finnish distributor showed a scan of a signed letter from KS announcing this earlier this year on the “Finnish riders” topic. KS was not clear about when exactly the new app would start doing that, but as a precaution the local riders have already stopped using the official app, never to be opened again.

Exactly. I have spread the warning to a reasonable extent, but it is obvious that not all KS users will receive the warning in time. And not all Ali buyers will know this before purchase either, despite KS having already earlier declared very publicly that wheels bought from unofficial channels won’t get warranty, spares or support from them.

Thanks a lot for the additional details about this sad and upsetting information on Kingsong

16 hours ago, WI_Hedgehog said:

How does a company protect and recoup its investment in innovation and prevent being undercut by knock-off clones without an official supply chain? How do they warranty a unit when 5 units with a cloned (the same) serial number exist? Which is the real unit that they built from top-tier parts?

How do you know you're getting a genuine item without buying from a certified reseller? How do you know the battery pack hasn't been removed and sold off, only to be replaced by a generic that lasts 3 months? If a certified reseller does unscrupulous things the OEM can pull their line; if any old place like Rob's Resale Shop can sell stuff they claim is from an OEM, the OEM cannot pull the line if Pete's Pawn Shop is buying the units and Doing-Business-As Rob's Resale. The OEM gets a bad name, Pete's pockets money they basically stole from you, everyone but the crook loses.

If you buy from a certified reseller that reseller warrants the EUC, and there's cost involved in doing so. A brick-and-mortar store pays sales/VAT taxe, property taxes, utilities, employee salary, import duties, unemployment insurance, etc. There's even something called Carrying Cost. What if they don't sell every unit in stock at market prices? (they eat the cost)

INMOTION is perhaps trying to maintain excellent customer service, and with other major brands competing it makes sense.

Concerning the french shops, they are well established brick and mortar shops, whereas the official distributor in France does not even have a showroom to try the wheels. And as a consumer, I much prefer free competition in manufacturors as well as in distributors. And I think currently the EUC manufacturers clearly are not acting in the best interest of the consumers, and might even not respect competition & consumer laws in the European Union.

Edited April 29, 2020 by SamSuffit