Long-term warranties are commonplace in the four-wheeled world. Bodywork guarantees up to 10 or even 12 years are commonplace, and firms like Kia offer full seven-year/100,000-mile guarantees that cover the whole car.
But the bike world has been much less generous – until now. Chinese bike maker Sinnis has announced a new seven-year parts warranty on its bikes, which it claims to be a UK first. The eye-catching deal is part of an overall package, which gives a one-year labour warranty and one-year breakdown cover on new bikes and aims to provide added confidence in the build quality and reliability of the brand. Launched on March 1, 2023, it applies to all Euro 5 Sinnis models sold through official dealerships.
BDN spoke to Sinnis brand manager Drew Irvine about the new warranty and asked him how it would work. “Since Sinnis was established more than 15 years ago, we have consistently worked to develop the quality of our products, working with our manufacturing partners to elevate towards European and Japanese quality levels while maintaining affordable pricing. The seven-year warranty is our latest commitment to that quality assurance and development. We believe that our products will continue to rival the quality levels of our much larger competitors, and we want to stand by this for the long term.
“It wasn’t something that was being asked for; however, we have received a lot of feedback from our dealers and customers that they are highly impressed with the quality and longevity they have seen with Sinnis products, especially compared to our competitors. Rather than stall on this progress, we wanted to reward the commitment shown in supporting our development over the last 15 years by committing to providing support for the longer term to our dealers and customers.”
Has the initiative come from the UK operation, or has it been driven by the factory? “This is a UK initiative in which we have had extensive talks with our manufacturing partners. We’ve worked to forecast our current platforms’ lifespan and model year updates to ensure that we have strong future cross-compatibility and hold the right amount of parts stock”.
Irvine also clarified that the warranty could transfer to new owners of a bike, provided servicing is kept up to date and paperwork retained.
The seven-year warranty has extensive terms and conditions, with some exclusions from cover. Some are obvious, normal wear and tear, damage caused by poor servicing or abuse and aftermarket modifications using non-approved Sinnis parts. Consumable parts like clutch, brake pads, chain and sprockets and other ‘service’ parts are also excluded.
There are also some surprising exemptions, from seat foam and seat covers, wheel bearings, bushing and suspension parts being covered by a ‘limited’ warranty, where Sinnis might judge the ‘normal useful life’ has expired.
Small print aside, the seven-year parts guarantee looks like a great initiative from Sinnis and should have some far larger firms looking to their laurels. More info: www.sinnismotorcycles.com.