As a matter of fact the discussion also included the verbal exchange reminding the press conference given by the industry and the reply of Stiftung Warentest (RadMarkt reported on this subject). The CEO of Biketec, Kurt Schaer, of course took the opportunity to assure the big number of Flyer dealers on the spot that there was no truth in the defects on the low-step-through frames of Flyer alleged by Stiftung Warentest. Intensive tests had been conducted on their own and no modifications to the frames were made. He is of the opinion that the frame breakage was caused by a wrong clamping into the test stand, in this point he had the assistance of the tester Dirk Zedler who sarcastically remarked that the fix clamping of the rear frame was a wrong method used by Stiftung Warentest, which can normally be done by a trainee, whereas the correct movable clamping of the rear frame required a sophisticated construction which was only mastered by competent engineers.
Such kind of tricky situation is something Dr. Holger Brackemann has to go through quite often. He is responsible for these product tests at Stiftung Warentest and had accepted the invitation to take part in the controversial discussion. When he started for example defending the setup of the frame testing, in stating that all other frames had not broken, he had to get informed by Zedler that this was a weak argument from the point of view of an engineer. Theoretically, it was even thinkable that one of the successfully tested frames would fail if tested with a correct test setup. Dr. Brackemann could neither be pleased by the reproach of VSF managing director Albert Herresthal to spread test results which have proven to be false with the “presumption of infallibility” and to publish the correction then only in the small print – example disturbance of the police radio.
Author: Michael Bollschweiler