Despite the warranty running out I sent my kit to Gerbing to test what was wrong.
This was their reply. Such stars.
We have tested all of your items and can confirm the faults with your Dual Controller - Intermittent dead short, Hella Plug - breaking up. And your Jacket Liner failed inline connectors to both Glove feeds, Intermittent Continuity between the Glove and Jacket Input Plugs. No heat in Right arm - Failed inline Connector.
I have asked the warehouse to send you a replacement Hella Plug
I have asked the workshop to Remove all failed Inline Connectors and solder the Joints.
I have taken this opportunity to update the Jacket Liner wiring, correcting the wiring polarity to the Gloves and transferring power to the accessory plug from the Glove feed plug to the Jacket feed plug soldering all joints.
This is advantageous should you wish to update to our new digital gloves in the future.
That’s bloody marvellous customer service! I thought this was going to be a case of expensive technical garment fails once out of warranty, but nope!
Absolutely brilliant. “Oh no, it’s failed, well I guess we’d better fix it. While we’re in there, lets also make it work with our new shiny stuff just in case he’d like some of that in future”.
If only more business thought like that, rather than “Well, we made your £200 gloves last over a year so there’s nothing we can do… can I interest you in some new and shiny gloves?”
Just another reassuringly expensive manufacturer failing to meet expectations.
That’s what I thought.
Its the number of posts I see around the forums complaining of failed heated kit that puts me off it. Its all very well getting this type of after sales service from a manufacturer but apart from the obvious question of correcting the polarity of the jacket how many other faults were there?
Well I’ve had four and a half years of warm riding with this jacket and gloves with no problems and am now looking at more years. I’m certainly not going to look this gift horse in the mouth.
The seem to have exceeded expectations, i dont see how they failed.
Yes, it broke, however much you spend things can brake. What marks a good complaint from a bad one is how they deal with it. In this case they thought that it was their doing that caused it to fail, and rectified it, even though its out of warranty and potentially expected life span. This is a company doing good, i cant see how it can be made into failing to meet expectations.
On the polarity front, its dc with no earth and a resistor, that will work which ever way the current flows. The only sensitive bit might be a controller, but even that appears to be fine, possibly not with the new digital bits but they have fixed it ready for that. They have seen a potential issue before the user did, and rectified it. Would it have been better that they ignored this until eerie had another issue? Again, this looks to me like good customer service
4½ years falls short of my expectations, especially for reassuringly expensive kit such as Gerbing. Most of my riding kit is 10+ years old and is still doing what it did on day one, why should I expect anything less than that, let alone less than half of that, from kit with heated elements?
On the polarity issue there are many other Gerbing jackets out there that have not had the polarity changed therefore will not be compatible with the latest Gerbing gloves, surely it would have been better for the latest gloves to have been backward compatible. As it is, the latest gloves makes the previous kit obsolete without an upgrade. If that upgrade is provided free then expect the reassuringly expensive price tag of new kit to become even more reassuringly expensive to pay for the costs of upgrading the built in obsolescence.
Have sent gloves back to Gerbing’s in the past when I had issues with the heating elements, always been great. Turning around a new set of gloves in a couple of days, no questions, until I got given a later version which was more robust and has done me well for half dozen years now.
You mentioned yours were out of warranty- they used to offer a lifetime warranty on the electrical side, is that not the case anymore?
Not sure, i got them fitted before i bought the bike and any identifying marks have worn off the grips long ago.
The controller says 'hot grips’so i guess they could be an older version of Oxford Hot grips.
See i read it as they have updated it and not rectified a fault with polarity …
I have taken this **opportunity to update the Jacket Liner wiring, correcting the wiring polarity to the Gloves and transferring power to the accessory plug from the Glove feed plug to the Jacket feed plug soldering all joints.
This is advantageous should you wish to update to our new digital gloves in the future.
Ie version 1 (analogue) connection plug is wired for a +ve tip connection
Yet v2 is digital controlled and has been wired for -ve tip connection
So whilst version 1 will work with either polarity the version 2 as digital requires the correct polarity
Received everything back yesterday exactly one week later and all working fine. Gerbing paid for the DPD delivery. The gloves were good all along. Hopefully everything will work for a few more years to come. I’ll let you know if they get to 10.
