Rear Dropout Alignment Issue on New Carbon Framed Bike

Hi all,

Hoping for a bit of friendly advice on a couple of issues I’ve had with an EU made carbon framed bike purchased from a nationwide retailer.

Firstly I’ve already had the forks replaced after one store split the carbon headtube, they’ve been replaced (by another more local store), they aren’t 100% colour match, they also have a small paint chip and are missing a bit of clear coat on one of the legs. Metallic paint is hard to match so I accepted them just to get the bike I was sold and already love up and running.

After a couple of weeks I swapped in some 25mm tyres and noticed the rear dropout wasn’t correctly aligned, with about 1-2mm space on one side of the chainstay and 4-5mm on the other. I flipped the wheel around and it wasn’t the dishing so took it the bike back again. The head mechanic wasn’t in but we checked the frame with the alignment tools and it was a frame issue. Higher end versions of the bike come fitted with wide Vision Metron rims so the frame should accept 25mm without issue.

Now it comes to the advice, I’ve been told by the manufacturer that a repair might be possible, I guess by filling down one of the the carbon dropouts. But I’m starting to feel that a crude repair like this isn’t acceptable on a new bike from what is supposedly a decent brand. I wouldn’t have purchased a bike knowing that it had a mismatched replacement fork and repaired frame and if I ever decided to sell it, it would be have an effect on it’s value.

Do you think a dropout repair is acceptable in instance? A replacement frame or bike might be on the cards but I face up to a week of not knowing whilst things are investigated and the shop does their business with the manufacturer so I would appreciate some advice, especially from anyone in the industry dealing with sales/replacements or just as a consumer on what should be acceptable/not acceptable in this situation.

Thanks for reading.