It’s not a very interesting story. tl;dr: I had some warranty issues, RM took care of them, but didn’t communicate very well and it took a long time.
The frame was originally recalled in mid '20 due to a bad headtube weld. The replacement took about 4 months to come back. Since it was lockdown, I didn’t really ride it all that much. After rode it for the '21 season, I didn’t really like how it rode. When I took the suspension in for service last February, I noticed the shock mounts were crooked. The shop took care of the warranty return, but it took 7 months to get it back. The last 3 months was crickets from RM about where the frame was. At the end of August, I started looking around and got the idea to just do a Marino using the existing shock and fork. I figured Marino would have the frame done before I got the replacement back from RM.
A week after I placed the deposit with Marino, I got a call from the shop that I could pick my bike up. At that point, I’d already consigned that I was going to flip the frame. I’ve ridden it a couple times since, and it’s way better than the old frame. I’m kinda already committed to the Marino, though. Plus, my wife would make me sleep with the dogs if I added a third MTB to the garage.