I am not Mr. Eleiko

This is an open letter to all of the customers of Dynamic Fitness Equipment LLc over the past 25 years to announce that we no longer offer the Eleiko brand products. The Dynamic Fitness Equipment company had been the sole source for the Eleiko bars and discs for more than 20 years, beginning in 1986.

We had supported the product in such an exemplary manner over this time that the bars and discs had achieved a very high reputation for quality even though this was not necessarily true.

For many years people referred to me as Mr. Eleiko. That is unfortunate because the credit for the quality name of the product in the USA was not connected with my name.

We have discontinued all Eeiko products for three principal reasons:

-        Serious quality issues with the bars and discs;

-        Lack of and/or shoddy support for the products by the eleiko company (see also warranty iformation presented below);

-        The excessive cost of the eleiko products are unjustified given that other manufacturers make comparable products at a lower cost.

The quality control issue with the bars:

Recently more than forty 45 lb international training bars were returned to the company for various defects or suspected defects: One university reported they dropped the bar and the sleeve assembly fell off and all the parts fell out.

Pictured above are the parts from a new bar which fell apart after being dropped with bumpers; and, below another bar of the same production date is shown where the customer returned the bar after the end cap fell off revealing corrosion damage.

Other issues with the training bar and other bars (male and female competition bars) of the current assembly design, involved the end caps falling off and the internal parts of the sleeve corroding.

There has been an ongoing (more than ten years) problem with bars manufactured from approximately 1999 – 2006. The sleeves either stop rotating or rotate and suddenly freeze. This is a case (in our opinion) of serious negligence ON THE PART OF THE MANUFACTURER not to issue a recall of all of these bars, because an athlete could be injured lifting the bar overhead or to the chest only to have the bar suddenly fail to turn.



Pictured above are the defective parts and the date of production of the bars from which they were removed. These parts were prone to failure. They were used to assemble bars made from approximately 1998 - 2005 or 2006.

These parts were prone to shear into pieces and the pieces become lodged in the bearings causing the sleeves to freeze up without warning. The part pictured in the center was the traditional part which was not prone to this type of problem, but some of these parts also were discovered to fail with the bars manufactured in late 1990s.

Numerous attempts to resolve this issue over the years have failed. We simply gave up trying to repair the bars and began replacing them with new ones, but eleiko refused to stand behind this policy. The out of pocket expense became prohibitive, so we stopped replacing or fixing the defective bars.


Anyone who has one of these bars should remove them from the training room. I would guess based on the number of I have received and/or repaired over the years, and based the law of averages, there are probably 100 of these bars still out there in the USA alone. I had noticed some in Europe as well.


The quality of the discs:

Several quality problems with the bumpers had arisen over the years. Bumpers began shedding what looked like sand but was in fact a cheap binder. In one case 70 of these "sandy" looking bumpers were replaced for LSU, out of pocket, because the company refused to warranty their own discs. See discs pictured below.

 

Customers began complaining about the hardness of bumpers (probably because of the cheap binders).

Some customers complained of the bolts holding the metal parts of the bumpers together either loosened up or sheared in half. No doubt the hard content of the rubber portion of discs which provided little elasticity caused the parts to shear and or drop out from force of dropping the weights.

If these issues were not enough, some excerpts from the eleiko warranty presented below takes the cake. I will not insult the reader’s intelligence by going over warranty line by line, because the person who conceived this has accomplished that and much more.

Bud Charniga


Currently on eleiko site as of 04/06/2011

"Lifetime Warranty Bars"

"CONDITIONS:"
"The lifetime warranty is valid for bars purchased after 1th of January 2009,
the definition of lifetime warranty is 10 years."
"The Eleiko Bar must only be dropped on an Eleiko Platform and be loaded with Eleiko Discs."

"Normal  wear and tear is not an argument to invoke the guarantee"

"5 Years Warranty Discs"

"CONDITIONS:
"The warranty is valid for discs purchased after 1th of January 2009."
"The Eleiko Discs must only be dropped on an Eleiko Platform."
"Normal  wear and tear is not an argument to invoke the guarantee."