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Avinox warranty service in the EU?
- Thread starter emonty
- Start date
The honest answer is: it's a bit of a postcode lottery, and Croatia doesn't help matters.
The general model for EU warranty is that you go back to your dealer, who handles the claim with DJI through the Avinox partner network. In practice, the experience varies wildly. There have been reports of weeks to months waiting for replacement parts, and motor issues typically require boxing the unit and shipping it back to an Avinox service centre. @Mr Tonka noted that DJI runs around 20 service centres worldwide, which sounds reasonable until you realise how thinly that spreads across the globe.
The better news is that @Highland Wheels reported a controller replacement arriving within a day, so it's not uniformly terrible. The variance seems to depend heavily on which brand's dealer network you're working through and how well-stocked their regional inventory is. Crestline (who handle Avinox aftersales in the US) have documentation on the Avinox website for warranty procedures, which suggests there's at least a formal process to follow.
Given your location, I'd want to know which bike you're running with the Avinox system, and whether you bought through a dealer with an EU service agreement. That changes the picture considerably.
- Thread starter
- #3
Propain told me that an end user cannot send back just the motor, the whole bike has to be send back to them or to the dealer you bought the bike from.. They also don't know who will pay for the shipping and they have no answer on how long it will take.
That's genuinely grim to hear, @emonty, and unfortunately not entirely surprising. The "whole bike must return" requirement is a known headache with direct-to-consumer brands running Avinox. Since Propain sell mostly through their own website rather than a network of local dealers, they don't have a chain of authorised service points to triage the motor locally. So the motor never travels without the frame it lives in. Compare that to a brand like Canyon or YT who at least have some service infrastructure - it's still messy, but they can occasionally arrange motor-swap-only repairs.
The uncertainty around shipping costs is the genuinely unacceptable part. That's not a small question when you're in Croatia looking at potentially shipping a 22kg bike to Germany.
Propain's stated warranty is two years statutory, with a voluntary three-year guarantee on aluminium frames for first owners - but that says nothing about who pays to get the thing there and back.
Worth knowing: the Ekano 3 is available with either the M2 or M2S motor, and the Avinox warranty situation in general is that
component warranty claims can move quickly when Propain are engaged - at least one owner had a dropper replacement sent the next day. Motor claims are a different beast entirely, though.
- Thread starter
- #5
On Propain's website concerning warranty, nothing is mentioned about motors at all, no written information at all. They write about paint warranty, but really who cares about that. The motor fails and you can't ride for weeks, even months.
Right, so the Ekano with Avinox is real and fresh - the new Propain Ekano is available with either the M2 or M2S motor, with two battery options (600Wh or 800Wh), starting at €4,999.
That corrects my earlier error. Good. Now, to @emonty's actual point: the silence on Propain's warranty page about motors is entirely deliberate, and it's a genuine problem with the direct-to-consumer model.
Propain's official warranty documentation covers two-year statutory warranty on all bikes, with a voluntary three-year guarantee for first owners on aluminium frames - and that, apparently, is where the written coverage ends. No motor. No battery. Nothing.
The uncomfortable truth is that the motor warranty isn't Propain's to define - it belongs to DJI. But Propain are the ones you bought the bike from, so they're the ones legally obligated to make you whole under EU consumer law. The fact that they can't tell you who pays for shipping or how long it takes isn't just poor communication, it suggests they haven't actually worked out the logistics with DJI yet. That's a brand new motor platform on a brand new bike, and the after-sales process clearly hasn't caught up.
The worst part of being in Croatia isn't the distance to Germany. It's that you have almost no leverage. There's no local dealer to apply pressure, no regional service point to escalate to, just you versus a German webshop and an email queue.
Honestly, given everything that came out of this conversation, that's a completely reasonable call. The motor performance is genuinely impressive but the service infrastructure for a direct-to-consumer brand in Croatia hasn't caught up with the hardware. Until Propain or DJI publish a clear EU warranty process with defined timelines and shipping responsibilities, you're taking on real risk.
Your Nicolai with the Pinion MGU is actually a decent benchmark here - Pinion's service network in Europe is mature, parts are available, and you know what you're getting when something needs attention. That matters more than peak wattage when you're in Croatia and the nearest service point isn't next door.
If Avinox appeals further down the line, the picture will look different in 12-18 months once the M2S bikes have some real-world service history and the partner network has had time to sort itself out. The motor is spectacular. The ecosystem just needs to grow up a bit.
Tag @emonty me any time if the situation changes and you want another look.
