"Action Needed: Secure Your VARG EX Delivery Date"

[DirtSurfer]

Stark is asking for the bike to be paid in full, months ahead of the bike being available to the public.

Not only is this a break in the contract (I've paid a deposit to receive the bike), but more importantly the message it sends is "we need cash to continue operations". Neither is good...

Question: Is this the experience the V1 adopters had? Does anyone have any useful knowledge of why they've decided to go this route?

Not confidence inspiring...

 

[Swank171]

We did not have this. I still have 100$ down on my ORIG dec 17 21 order. I was able to get one faster through ordering it from a dealership as a NEW order in JAN of 2024 from a dealership in OR than getting my ORIGINAL ORDER FROM 2021! Hahah.

That aside and to answer your question….we did not get asked to pay in full until we were contacted for production. once contacted you HAD TO PAY in full to have bike produced. Definitely never had any “operations in danger” messages.

Note on this topic:
The industry is in a tough spot. I mean look at KTM…the US rates and DXY strength is crushing every other market as the US is passing all the inflation that has been created the past years on to the rest of the world. Typically we see a market crash 6-12 months after first rate cut following the feds rate hiking cycle. Puts us pretty close to the standard correction. Hope STARK can hold on until the 4th quarter and we will see the market free up again in 26. Bummer to hear this but I’m sure they aren’t making up stories. We have see the big 5 try to crush stark and we also saw them successfully crush Alta. Really wanna see them succeed.

 

[Beagle]

That's new for the EX, Anton talked about it a little bit in there

Edit: starting at 1:10'35

Paraphrasing here,

if you pay a deposit you booked your slot in the queue, but when you pay in full that's when you'll have a prioritized slot, if you have a lot of people paying in full, they will get the slot before you. The reason is that with the MX in the beginning we started asking the payments too late then it made delivery a bit of a mess, where people had their production slot but if we hadn't received the payment, but we had received payment from someone else, we hadn't built that bike. That's why we prioritize fully paid bikes now.

They are supposed to communicate a deadline to inform when you need to pay in full in order not to lose your spot.

Gotta say we have seen the issues he's talking about for the Varg (some paying in full waiting longer than others) so basically they decided to ask for full payment a little earlier than before to streamline production.

If that's about 1 month that seems reasonable to me but more transparency at the time of pre-order could have been missing.
Of course if you don't want to do that you can still wait a few more months and buy it from a dealership, that's not mandatory to go through that, all depends if you want it early or not.

 

[Theo]

we did not get asked to pay in full until we were contacted for production. once contacted you HAD TO PAY in full to have bike produced. Definitely never had any “operations in danger” messages.

Maybe Stark is ready to start the production of DirtSurfer's bike, then.

 

[Swank171]

Maybe Stark is ready to start the production of DirtSurfer's bike, then.

I’d like to think so but based on the context he gave it doesn’t sound like it.

 

[Beagle]

I’d like to think so but based on the context he gave it doesn’t sound like it.

Edited my answer above giving time stamp to get Anton Wass explanation about this.