I purchased the RipCurrent S a couple of months ago and have about 1k miles on it so far. To be fair both ways, this is a price point bike so the components are not that great and, if upgraded, you end up spending more than you would spend on higher end electric bikes. As long as you go into it with your eyes open and willingly accept the trade-off, you are fine. The bike needed adjustments and it quickly became clear that paying a bit more to buy locally is more justifiable when dealing with slow responding customer service techs where you get a single instruction every other day. That is a decision you will need to make. After several weeks of back and forth, I ended up requesting an escalation and being denied. That is bad customer service (they know that you can no longer return the bike.) To add insult to injury, I wrote an honest review on their site which was not published or was maybe taken down so I understand now how they maintain their high ratings. I cannot recommend a company that deals unethically regardless of how good its products are so I recommend looking elsewhere.