Cargo bike manufacturer Babboe deliberately hid broken frames, NVWA conducts criminal investigation | RTL News

Babboe appears to have been misleading the NVWA for years, as our investigative editors discovered. For example, employees of the Dutch cargo bike manufacturer got up early on Wednesday morning, September 15, 2021. The Amersfoort-based company is then under high tension, because the supervisor had announced that it would come to inspect at ten o’clock. The cargo bike manufacturer has this in its sights, because there was a recall in the summer of 2019. However, complaints continue to be received from customers and that is why the inspection is taking place, several Babboe employees told RTL News.

‘Hiding things up’

“The NVWA was supposed to arrive at ten o’clock. So at a quarter to eight in the morning we went to hide everything. We put the broken bicycles in a van, because they were afraid that the NVWA would go for a walk,” explains a former employee. from Babboe.

Photos of that moment show an employee dressed in a black sweater with the capital letters BABBOE on it lifting part of a frame into the cargo area of ​​a white bus. Behind that bus is another smaller, black van.

According to several employees, that van was also fully loaded and then placed further away on the site. A colleague confirms: “We had to empty the entire workshop. We loaded those frames into a van and the old iron bin as well. Everything that the NVWA was not allowed to see was hidden and that worked out well.”

The research editors spoke with six employees who confirmed that they hid bicycles for an NVWA inspection. Several other employees confirm that they were also aware of this, for example because they were present at the instruction: “The scrap iron farmer was specially asked to pick up the broken frames a day earlier,” one of them remembers well. .

That Babboe employees hid bicycles is also evident from an audio recording in the possession of RTL News. An employee said in November last year: “Things have happened in the past that are not correct. (…) I have also, here, er, lugged frames away and pushed them into containers or into buses of, of mechanics, while the inspection came to keep things calm.” Another employee interrupts him and says, “Yes, me too.”

The supervisor is furious

The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) calls the hiding of frames from inspection ‘really shocking and downright disgusting’. “If things are withheld, we cannot do our work. That is undermining and bad,” says NVWA spokesperson Bjorn Elsebrock.

According to the regulator, ‘people’s safety has been seriously undermined’. “What we can confirm is that a criminal investigation is underway,” says the NVWA spokesperson. This investigation is carried out by the regulator’s own investigation service, the Intelligence and Investigation Service (IOD) and the Public Prosecution Service. “This must show whether the findings actually happened.”

RTL Nieuws is also in possession of a confidential document that was provided to technicians and customer service employees in February 2019. Customers were contacted based on this question and answer. This states that if the bicycle is well maintained and used normally, ‘it is in principle not possible for your frame to break’. When asked whether they have often seen cracks or fractures in the frame, the answer is: “We have had a number of them, which often involved overload.” It also says: “And of course we try to get this number to zero as we transport the most precious cargo: children.”

‘Customer’s debt’

The audio also shows that a manager who is confronted by a mechanic about the many frame breaks places the blame on the customer. “You have to think openly about how that bicycle is used. Look at this bicycle and how it is put together: it rusts and is never cleaned. (…) Look at those people who have their most precious possession, their children, in that bicycle. (…) Those people who continue to ride them. That woman would rather buy shoes at Zalando.nl, so to speak, than have that bicycle refurbished for a hundred euros.”

According to expert Gitta Veldt of Leiden University, ‘there may be deception’ if, after an increase in complaints about broken frames, customers were still treated as prescribed in the question and answer.

Accell, the owner of Babboe, says in a response: “If these new signals from the past are correct, we also strongly disapprove of them and distance ourselves from them. It is now policy and practice that we actively and transparently cooperate in NVWA investigation.”

At the beginning of February, RTL Nieuws revealed that Babboe frames break quite regularly. The cargo bike manufacturer then said that it ‘does not recognize the image painted by RTL Nieuws’. The NVWA subsequently imposed a sales ban on Babboe. The advice is still to ‘not cycle on such a cargo bike at this time’.

Response Accell

Accel said it immediately started an in-depth investigation after the first broadcast of RTL. Accell spokesperson Uneke Dekkers: “As previously communicated, we want to get to the bottom of the matter. Quality and safety are always number 1. We think it is important that signals from employees and customers are taken seriously and lead to the right actions. should have been done more alertly and better in the past.”

According to the bicycle manufacturer, ‘the safety investigation into all Babboe models is in the final phase’. The Accell spokesperson: “We expect to be able to provide clarity about this to our customers around Easter.” Read the full response from Accell, the owner of Babboe, here.

Call

Did your cargo bike also break down or did you work at Babboe and do you know more? Then you can tip the editors (anonymously). Click here to send us messages and photos via WhatsApp to this number: +31641663754. Enter your experiences here if you also had problems with, for example, the frame of your cargo bike.