With regards to the rusted cable- cables are consumables and they need to be replaced. You did well to get 3 years out of it before it snapped. My winter bike gear cables get replaced yearly (hydro brakes so don't need to worry about them). My summer bike and my TT bike- every 18 months - 2 years. They rarely see wet weather, but do inspect them every so often to check to see if they need early replacement.
With regards to the rims: The email back from alpkit said you had toured on them. How heavy were your loads? If you were doing heavy, loaded touring then maybe you needed stronger rims with a higher spoke count.
Thanks, your post is constructive. I agree that I was lazy about the cable. It's my only bike with full housing, so the cables cannot be visually checked. I was expecting bad functioning before failure, but I was wrong.
As for touring I detailed about it above. Most of the time I have negligible load. As a family in three years we rode about 4000 km with light load, 10 kg (22 lbs) on the rear rack. These 32-spoke wheels were explicitly described as gravel and touring wheels.
None of my bikes are that pricey but you have to expect a certain amount of wear and tear. How many chains have you had in these years ?
Are you a cop ? Are you working at Alpkit ? When there is a conflict about a warranty, the seller must prove the user's fault, otherwise the seller must take the repair in charge. That's the law, and brexited UK is no exception.
I change my chain as soon as it gets ~0.5% elongated as measured by the appropriate tool. For the Santiago I'm running on the 4th chain. I'm checking the cassette regularly, I have a brand new one as a spare, but for the moment the shifting is as perfect as the very first days.
As a family we have 6 bikes at home, from 200 to 1500 GBP. I'm like you, I never experienced a rusted cable before the rear one on my Santiago. What you said above make me suspect that indeed it was a galvanized cable. We have an old and cheap MTB, the wheels are not cracked.
I'm the one who maintain the 6 bikes of the family, and I'm regularly contributing to an open access local bike workshop. All the people there, who are more experienced than me, say that such cracks are anomalous. Is that enough for you ? Do you want my criminal record ? My vaccination certificate ?
Do you at least know what is a good customer service ? I give you an example. I wear Tilley hats
https://uk.tilley.com/
It's a canadian company, I warmly recommend them to you. The hats are guaranteed for life. After a few years my first hat was damaged at one of the eyelets. After a single mail it was replaced for free, with a smile and a nice word recommending me to use the damaged hat for gardening. This is an excellent customer service.
The only thing where I agree with you is that I only contributed to this forum to complain about Alpkit. I understand it's not nice, I'm sorry for that. I'm active on French bike forums, but not english-speaking ones. In 2019 the Santiago was new, and basically only here I could find someone who got the touring version of the bike. There are very few Sonder bikes in France. I know only one guy from a French forum who rides a Santiago, a few monthes ago he completely destroyed the rear wheel while going a bit too fast on a bump... it was just after the end of warranty period (so he didn't try anything) but with significantly less miles than me.
When I plan to buy something expensive from an online seller that I don't know, I like to check real customer reviews. That's the only reason why I described in detail the problems I had when I ordered the bike (and that Alpkit corrected later, as a confirmation that I was right), and now the warranty issue I have just before the end of the formal period.
. Are you one of these kind of guys who spend 3000 GBP in a bike to ride it 6 miles/week ?
