Stark varg support is the worst

[AgileMike]

I don't know the situation of the OP at all, but having ridden Starks since November 2023 and spoken with quite a few Stark owners at MX races, my opinion is this:
1. Many dealers are not familar with Starks or electric dirt bikes in general. They are not good at troubleshooting them. Many dealers view Starks as a fad that will soon fade, thus it's not worth the time to become knowledgable. Everyone I've talked to with major Stark issues is relying on their dealer to fix their bike.
2. If you rely on your dealer to fix your Stark, you many have major issues due to #1 above.

I work in the construction industry and it took plumbers about 10 years to become proficient at working on tankless water heaters. They loved tanked water heaters with 70 year old technology and complete refused to understand/debug tankless water heaters. Eventurally they begrudgingly began working on them.

In a decade, dealers will be great at working on electric dirt bikes. Until then, it's probably better to call Stark support yourself, as you are more motivated to get your bike going than the dealer is. And Stark support is generally great.

 

[AL_V]

And Stark support is generally great.

I agree, but they are getting much slower lately.

 

[DaveAusNor]

I agree, but they are getting much slower lately.

This is probably due to them having maybe 10,000 bikes out in the wild now as opposed to a few thousand. And most of the team focused on getting deliveries out of the door. Hopefully they increase the amount of man hours on their support team as time goes on.

 

[OpaTsupa]

This is probably due to them having maybe 10,000 bikes out in the wild now as opposed to a few thousand. And most of the team focused on getting deliveries out of the door. Hopefully they increase the amount of man hours on their support team as time goes on.

I experienced poor communication with Stark while attempting to place an order, but I must forgive them when I see all the dumb complaints from the new owners floating around.
Dealing with that sort of correspondence deserves it's own level of hell.

 

[DaveAusNor]

I experienced poor communication with Stark while attempting to place an order, but I must forgive them when I see all the dumb complaints from the new owners floating around.
Dealing with that sort of correspondence deserves it's own level of hell.

Yes, I agree. It seems like many new owners haven't even opened the manual or watched the unboxing/assembly video

 

[Beagle]

One problem they're facing with scaling up so fast is the lack of training for their 400+ dealers. And of course scaling up online support.
Even more so when you're past early adopters and start tapping into more casual riders.
Growing pain (for everyone involved!).

 

[Erwin P]

I still have problems with my bike not recording rides. Did contact them at the beginning and they didn't really came up with a solution. But that was at the time that montly updates were comming so i decided to sit it out for some time and maybe those would fix it.
So far it didn't so i contacted them last week. Got a reply in just over 24 hours, wich i think is very much OK. After that most emails got answered seriously within 2 hours. Only the one i did send back friday did have to wait for a reply up to today, wich again is OK. It's with tech support now so we'll see.

However on their dealers... Most of them are dirtbike dealers, not E bike dealers. Anything to do with wires was concidered witchcraft not so long ago (and by many up to today). So i'm not surpriced ''their'' dealers are close to useless in this thing.

 

[Beagle]

I still have problems with my bike not recording rides. Did contact them at the beginning and they didn't really came up with a solution. But that was at the time that montly updates were comming so i decided to sit it out for some time and maybe those would fix it.
So far it didn't so i contacted them last week. Got a reply in just over 24 hours, wich i think is very much OK. After that most emails got answered seriously within 2 hours. Only the one i did send back friday did have to wait for a reply up to today, wich again is OK. It's with tech support now so we'll see.

However on their dealers... Most of them are dirtbike dealers, not E bike dealers. Anything to do with wires was concidered witchcraft not so long ago (and by many up to today). So i'm not surpriced ''their'' dealers are close to useless in this thing.

That's fair but all the more reason to train their dealers. They've been selling bikes for 2 years, now would be as good a time as any.

 

[Erwin P]

True, although with many dealers it might be a lost case all together. My dealer is very good with finetuning carbs and is an excellent rider. Still when i had the cracks in the inverter cover there was no doubt in my might replacing the motor myself or having him do it free of charge if you know wat i mean.

It's a bit of a hard case.
On the one hand you want dirtbike dealers to be you dealer. They have the customer base and the knowhow of suspension etc etc.
On the other most of those guys got stuck in the 90's for better or worst. Often great mechanical workers, but little fee with electronics or connectivity.

 

[Beagle]

I would not like to pretend I know anything about this.
From my armchair perspective, providing your dealers with some troubleshooting guidance, access to diagnosis tools and explanations of errors codes, procedures to follow to solve or rule out issues would gain time for everyone. Simple cases could be solved at the dealer level, more complex issues would escalate to CS, knowing what has already been checked by the dealer. OFC give them some privilege access to Stark CS as well for timely answers.

They must have their reasons not to do that, and they're probably awfully busy, but with about 10 000 motorcycles out in the wild and much more to come whenever they'll branch into proper road bikes, they will have to do that. Dealers simply have to be able to diagnose and service bikes, exchange parts and so on.

 

[Erwin P]

I've seen what dealers receive and it's at least as detailed as any OEM. However a lott of them have proven too @#$% to open up a manual let alone read it.

As you can read i don't hold most MC dealers in high regard for anything more complex than part swapping.
Saw my local dealer do fault finding on a ICE bike he has been dealer of for years. Somehow picking up the multimeter and just start top-down from the troubleshooting page to pinpoint it in minutes didn't occur to him so it was swapping expensive part after the other and waiting for those parts to arrive...

If that is the average Stark, and thus us poor consumers, have to deal with i'm glad Stark does answer email from consumers directly.