looking for a reliable electric vehicle – the R Martin EVD is NOT for

you.

I purchased the EVD from Randall Martin (via his website) last year

after reading the sparse reviews out there that seemed mostly positive.

From the minute it arrived things went poorly.

First, the company he uses (SAIA shipping) to deliver the bikes fails

utterly. They could not deliver the bike to our door because they only

use semi trucks and our residential street had wires too low. That

means they left the bike, wrapped in a box wrapped in a banged up,

rusted metal cage, 1 block from our house, in the middle of the street,

with only my husband (I was at work) to unpack and move the bike down to

the house (which I might mention is at the bottom of a large hill). Oh,

and it was mid summer in Florida, so 95+ degrees and humid. The driver

happily left him alone to do what is clearly (as stated in the manual,

conveniently located INSIDE the giant contraption) a two person job.

After several trips up and down the hill to get various tools, my

husband was finally able to free the bike from its packaging, but in the

process ended up with it falling on him once and almost another time

(and they are heavy – almost 400 lb).

We charged it that day and come evening tried it out – only to find out

it was not capable of even driving up our hill (it literally stopped

midway up, on a full battery, and made a dragging sound near the rear

brakes.

To make a long, aggravating story short, after contacting the dealer on

a near daily basis (and then him contracting the manufacturer, in

Japan), performing hours of labor ourselves on it (trying to replace the

brakes several times, etc. – he wouldn’t pay for labor, would only

provide replacement parts based on our amateur description of what

seemed to be wrong and some videos we emailed) and even eventually

taking it to a shop for brake replacement, the thing still does not work

as intended (sometimes can make it up the hill, sometimes can not – even

on a full charge and on the same day) and Randall Martin eventually

ignored my emails until we were forced to contact a lawyer (never had a

reason to do that before).

He now states it is too far past the time frame for return, but it was

he who refused to return my email and never offered to return the bike.

Mind you, I was somewhat skeptical of making such a large purchase

online, but there were no dealers of fast, fully electric bikes like the

EVD in our area. Also, I emailed him twice before making the purchase

to ask questions and even specifically asked about shipping and whether

he would take the bike back should it have any problems. He assured us

that he would try to fix it via parts but if that didn’t work, would

have it returned (and also stated he had never had a shipping problem).

Summary: I truly hope no one has to fall for this money trap like my

husband and I did. Find a local dealer if you want an electric

vehicle, test drive it well and know the return policy backwards and

forwards. And whatever you do, I implore you not to purchase from

Randall Martin (at least for his larger vehicles such as the EVD).