Is It Time to Buy an E-Bike?

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So one day when using your city’s bike share program, you decided to splurge, and instead of getting a regular bike you rented an e-bike. After experiencing the pure bliss of the wind flying through your hair and the extreme lack of muscle exertion required to pedal, you might have asked yourself: Should I buy one of these bad boys for myself?

E-Bikes Apparently Offer a Better Workout Than We Give Them Credit For

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If the answer is yes then it’s worth taking a look at Upway, an online e-bike retailer that sells both new e-bikes and vetted used ones.

Note: If and when you do this please wear a helmet, brain and bodily safety is of the utmost importance.

E-bikes have seen an uptick in popularity, with 1.1 million sold in 2022 alone — almost four times the sales in 2019. Whether you’ve seen tourists zooming around cities or DoorDash couriers hastily delivering food on them — e-bikes are easily becoming a part of our everyday life.

Upway offers a lot of variety when it comes to e-bikes and we can speak to the legitimacy of the site and its smooth checkout and purchase processes

So Where Do I Start?

The first question you may ask yourself when buying an e-bike (at least I certainly did) is how the hell do I start? Which e-bike do I pick? Do I buy new or used? Will it get shipped or do I pick it up?

Upway, thankfully, makes selecting a bike quite easy with a quiz that essentially tells you which e-Bike you should buy. Plus, a quiz is so much more appealing than plopping yourself aimless into the ocean of e-bikes because who doesn’t like taking a self-descriptive quiz, and it takes a good chunk of the decision making off your shoulders.

The quiz consists of questions like the kind of activity you’ll be using the e-bike for ( leisure, more rigorous activity or purely as a mode of transportation), how many miles you’ll be traveling and the kind of terrain you’ll be on. The rest of the quiz is extremely thorough — or as thorough as an e-Bike quiz can be — will take into account additional info like your height, budget and if you are okay with buying a used e-bike.

When I took the quiz I was starting from ground zero — a total e-bike novice. My budget ranged from $799 (the minimum you can input) to $1000. I was going to be using the bike for leisurely activity on flat concrete terrain, and for reference, I am 5 feet 5 inches tall.

I was matched with a used Aventon Sinch, priced at $999 — 23% cheaper than buying one new at $1299. Then, I was matched with two alternatives, both Aventon Soltera 7’s — one priced at $849 and the other at $799.

This would be a good time to note that the used bike selection at Upway is a good one to sift through if you don’t want to remortgage your home, but still have something that will last a few years. On average, new e-bikes range at Upway from $800 to over $10,000. But used e-bikes often go for much less.

If you’re not happy with what you see, and still have questions, you can book a 20 minute meeting with an Upway expert to go over what kind of e-bike would suit you best.

Warranties! Warranties! Warranties!

You will automatically get 1-year warranty coverage on your bike when you purchase from Upway, but it only covers mechanical and electrical defects that happen up to one year after that purchase. It does not cover any accidental damage, vandalism or thievery.

FYI: The added e-bike protection, which covers accidental damages, ranges from 1-3 years in length and $259-$439 in price. Protection against bike-thieving and vandalism as well as accidental damages varies in cost from purchase to purchase, it’s usually estimated to be $13/month.

Sometimes additional insurance can feel like a cash-grab at the tail-end of a purchase. But like when you rent a car and are asked to pay a small fee to protect the lives of your passengers in the event of a crash, adding insurance can give you some peace of mind.

Getting Your goods

You can either get your e-bike shipped to your place of residence or you can pick it up from a nearby warehouse. The cost of shipping will depend on where you are located, but if want to shave a few (hundred) dollars off that total, picking up your bike is free if that option is available to you

That being said, if you’ve ever purchased IKEA furniture and know for certain that you detest putting things together yourself, you can opt to get your bike shipped to you in a pre-assembled form. In fact, you can specify how assembled you want the bike to be when it arrives.

Your options are 85% assembled or 99% assembled. (What each level of put togetherness actually looks like is something we can’t tell you…that will have to be part of your own journey.)

What Customers are Saying

If you’re going to try anything new — whether it be a wellness product or a restaurant — the first thing you should do is look at the reviews. Upways customers have a mix of things to say — but they are mainly positive.

On Trustside, the consumer review website, Upway has an overall average rating of 4.7 out of 5. That makes it almost completely excellent with a few flaws — but hey nobody’s perfect.

Among the glowing reviews customers report that their bikes arrived on time, with little to no damage incurred from the shipping process and they boast good communication from Upway regarding any kind of mishap.

Some of the more common complaints include missing components. For example, the wrong battery sent with the bike or shipping times that took longer than expected. The more egregious reviews echo concerns about shipping times and mention difficulty accessing a person on a customer support line, as well as having a hard time troubleshooting the bike return policy

Ultimately, there are way more positive reviews than bad ones so you can let those numbers speak for themselves but it’s always good to get a robust idea of what people are saying.

Overall, there is a net-positive response from real-time users regarding Upway, so from that we can conclude that the site is a pretty reliable source for you to purchase a new or pre-owned e-bike.