Calibre Bikes Reviews 9

The worst bike i ever purchased. Within 1 year and 4 months, the Frame snapped off which is a manufacturing fault and must be fixed however they do not have any contact details available on their website.

Bought a lead from go outdoors. First thing that went wrong was the cheap cup and cone bottom bracket, (what a cheap saving they made here) noisy and loose. paid and fitted a sealed unit. Seat post would not stay tight, splines are soft as butter and splines do not interlink, had to have new stem and tighten it myself with a drop of 243.. Then the steering head made a odd grinding noise, go outdoors not helpfull, I took it apart to find a thin steel cup loose in the frame and acting as a cone bearing!!, no proper fit in frame, just loose, this is what was making the noise, no real fix here as I would need to make a proper bearing cone that was in interference fit to frame then have it hardened and tempered, ended up putting in some molly grease to reduce the stress and grinding. Paint is terrible, just chips by looking at it. The mechanic in GO was a wally, when i questioned him about the brakes not being right and mentioned the pad locking grub screw, he said he didnt bother with them, hence ours was damaged where he had not backed it off when adjusting the fixed pad, i dispair. Then the cassette became very noisy, their answer to that was "they are all like that" as if i was a muppet. Iam a 60 year old fully qualified Engineer so i know what a grub screw does and what a shot bearing sounds like.. overall a rip off even at the lower price. My sons s/h dawes bandit needed less attention in 5 years that he bashed about, than this needed in the first 2 weeks. they should refund you the wasted time you spend driving the bike to the shop with problem after problem, i gave up with them in the end as the warranty is pointless and the service is restricted by the lack of parts, lack of knowledge and high incidence of failures., i just fix it myself now and its been a lot better. shame on you.

Good bike for the price but difficult to get parts

Started off with great bikes, impressive specs & performance, but since Go Outdoors was bought by JD the bikes are now cheap Taiwanese crap, the guy who designed Calibre bikes now works for Planet X so Calibre now just use generic mass produces bikes and slap a sticker on it, half their bikes don't even come with the bottom tier Shimano, or even the most basic Suntour fork, all the components are "own label" Calibre stuff which means cheap garbage factory supplied, yet the prices are almost the same.

They've moved to the "Polygon" brand as their high end now.

Purchased a Rake last year. The rear axel has chewed into the frame with next to no use. If you own a calibre please check for this issue as it cannot be a one off

I’m short : great bike with worst ever customer spare parts service. If something breaks good luck in getting the right spare part!

So I am really happy with the performance and quality of my bike, however I would not recommend anyone to buy one for this reason: if you break something on the bike good luck in getting a spare part!

My experience: the rear trailing arm bolt broke and I was pleased to see this was a spare part stocked by GO Outdoors. However their stock control is useless - they have bags clearly incorrectly labelled and cannot fix the problem. I’ve tried ordering this part 4 times and each time they have sent the wrong part. I’ve called customer services and they say the problem is fixed when it is not.

AVOID!

Bought a Calibre Bossnut 3 months ago
two bolts have fell off
customer service is non existent
anyone buying one of these bikes should be aware

As the other reviewer has stated. I’m left with a 1 year and 5 month bike left completely un usable because of the corner cutting this firm chooses to do. Have tried contacted them many times unfortunately all to no avail as they just ignore you.

Start from the beginning. The gearing was never right straight out of the shop. That’s more of a go outdoors problem rather than a calibre one granted. Anyway go outdoors fixed it. Problem sovled. Well for a few months anyway. After only about 5 months and maybe 1000 miles headset bearing failed. As there is no information online about which bearings it takes I thought I would give calibre a message on Facebook. They replied and told me which one to order so I did. It didn’t fit. Got back in touch with them to be told they would check the frame drawing and get back to me. You guessed it they didn’t. Fast forward we’re now a year and 5 months into ownership. My rear wheel starts losing spokes. No bother went to local bike shop where he advised me that the wheel was toast never built properly in the first place so was pointless replacing the spokes as the hub is shot anyway. New wheel time it is then. Well the clever folks at calibre have shoved discs onto a bike frame designed for rim brakes. You cannot purchase a wheel to fit. Got in touch with calibre to source a replacement as they still make the ladies version which uses the same wheels. Shock no reply. Avoid this company like the plague they take your money for bodged products that have been designed to just out last the warranty. Complete waste of money and time.

I really wanted to love this company and their bikes but it has been a horrible experience owning a bike from them!
So I am sharing in the hope that Calibre will
A)Respond to the numerous messages I have left them on FB messenger and also respond to queries from one of their GoOutdoors mechanics!
B) To prevent anyone else going through what I have

I bought a Caibre Bossnut for my son 8 weeks ago, his first mountain bike, but after 3 weeks he skidded and bent the rear derailer hanger so I needed to remove rear wheel inorder to fit new hanger...The bike comes with a non brand axle and is made of very flimsy aluminium that rounds out easily and is thus very hard to remove by correct size hex key so I had to buy a replacement- I rang GoOutdoors who contacted Calibre and we were told axle was as follows Maxle Stealth 12mm by 142mm total length 164mm, thread length 10mm and TP 1.5
These are hard axles to get hold of (Gooutdoors were told by zyrofisher (sram axle distributors in the UK) it would be a 6-8 week wait on receiving axle but I found some on Amazon and also German company and so ordered one. Axle I ordered arrived 10 days later but it is too short! It didnt pick up all the thread! And when my son rode bike wheel felt wobbly- so bought bike to local bike shop who confirmed axle was too short
So contacted GoOutddors and asked them to send me photo of a rear bossnut axle on a bike the mechanic was making up and lo and behold the measurements written on side of the axle Calibre use is as follows - 12mm by 142mm by 165mm total length, 20mm thread length and thread pitch 1.5mm - so as you can see the axle size myself and Goutdoors mechanic was told was totally different!! 1mm out in length and 10mm out in thread length!! And according to zyrofisher axle experts they have to be exact! And furthermore you cannot buy that size axle from ANYWHERE except the robertaxleproject in the US. Which means that any poor sod who has problems with their rear axle (and according to Gooutdoors there have been numerous!) you will have to wait weeks to receive the correct size!! None of your LBS will have the part!! (And believe you me I rang over 16 shops and scoured online looking for it!!) So I contacted Caibre bikes 3 days ago as did GoOutdoors mechanic and nothing! They havent even bothered to respond! And you know the worse part- what should have been a pleasant and exciting experience for a 13 year old getting his first mountain bike has been ruined!