disappointing experiences of local bike shops

donnoirf

Pedelecer
Oct 19, 2010
101
0
KINGS NORTON BIRMINGHAM
A week ago I ordered a new tyre from my local bike shop.

I took my bike today to have them fit it for me. I returned to collect within 2 hours,
when I came to set off on my ride & put the bike in 1st gear & went up a slight incline, as I rode along I began to hear a loud clunking noise. when I got off & took a look at the rear wheel, I noticed the derailleur was clunking against the spokes of the rear wheel. This only seemed to be happening when riding in 1st gear.
I turned around & rode back to the shop in 3rd gear.

when I arrived and explained what was happening, I got:

"this wasn't like this when you left the shop",
"this has taken a bash"
"someone has been messing about with this"
"where did you leave your bike?"

It took 2 mechanics to reset the derailleur, which included what seemed to be a lot of tweeking, as they discovered it would not drop into 1st gear Or in the 7th gear.

Nevertheless, they put it right, but left me feeling like some second rate citizen, a liar and a time waster, with not even a hint of an apology from them.

I prefer not to tweek with thing that I am not 100% sure about, but if that is the service I'm going to get for something as simple as a tyre replacement, then I think I need to get myself on to a basic bike maintenance course!

any suggestions anyone?

sorry for ranting, but thanks for reading!
 

Streethawk

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jan 12, 2011
634
15
The Bike Book by Haynes is quite good. Although if you're not confident changing a tyre i'm not sure i'd encourage you to DIY your maintenance. I know that the Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative hold bike spannering courses which are highly regarded.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
52,765
30,351
Sadly the cycle trade has always been plagued by oafs like this, but there are exceptions giving good service so it's worth trying others and finding a good one.

A bike maintenance course is a good idea too, and a big money saver. Try your adult education centre as a start point to finding one, they often have one themselves.
.
 

donnoirf

Pedelecer
Oct 19, 2010
101
0
KINGS NORTON BIRMINGHAM
Sadly the cycle trade has always been plagued by oafs like this, but there are exceptions giving good service so it's worth trying others and finding a good one.

A bike maintenance course is a good idea too, and a big money saver. Try your adult education centre as a start point to finding one, they often have one themselves.
.
Cheers Flecc

I will take a look into that, I had not thought of that angle. My local adult education is a short walk from the bike shop, maybe I could take a flyer to the mechanic at the bike shop :D
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
52,765
30,351
:D. Good idea!

Maybe they do a diplomacy course as well that he could benefit from. ;)
.
 
C

Cyclezee

Guest
I was rather disappointed this weekend with the service I got from a LBS that I have had reasonable service from in the past.

I took a the motor wheel from my Torq in to have it trued as it had a bit of a wobble. The owner, who is friendly enough said it would be ready by the end of the day Saturday and he would give me a call.
I also took a spare rim which I new to be perfect, tested it against a sheet of glass, but when told the cost of a rebuild:eek: , I just went for truing the original wheel.

No call Saturday, so I left until Sunday morning and was told it would be ready by 3 pm. I arrived at 3 pm and the owner said it wasn't ready, so he asked the mechanic to do it while I waited. When I asked if I could watch him I was told no, he doesn't like an audience, OK fair enough I thought.

Half an hour later the mechanic arrived with the wheel. After listening to how he didn't like electric bikes, I asked if he could spin the wheel to let me see if the wobble had been corrected and to be fair it looked fine, so I paid £12 and went home with the wheel.

Whilst fitting it back to the bike, I noticed some spokes were loose, this was probably a result of tensioning other spokes to true the wheel, but I would have expected the slack to have been taken up on the loose ones. I ended up performing this simple task myself.

I am looking for a good bike mechanic or LBS which I may need to use from time to time, but this one failed the courtesy and customer service test.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

donnoirf

Pedelecer
Oct 19, 2010
101
0
KINGS NORTON BIRMINGHAM
Bike repair shops seem far and few in-between on our high streets. When u know of one and then go to look at customer reviews all seem to give 5*.

It seems we are becoming accustomed to the lack of availability, so when we do find a service locally it's fab because we have actually found something,

It's a bit of case of 'In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king'

Donna
 

banbury frank

Banned
Jan 13, 2011
1,565
5
Halfords

Hi

I am in a good mood sold 4 Bikes /Kits today the price off fuel is biting HARD

Have you tried Halfords


Ha Ha JOKE

Frank
 

nbmk

Pedelecer
Jul 4, 2010
29
0
42
milton keynes
Without naming names Aldby what part of mk was this bike shop in? I was thinking of taking my bike to a shop to get the spokes tightened.:confused:
Or I could just find a spoke key that fits and do it myself.
 

Caph

Esteemed Pedelecer
Feb 29, 2008
440
11
Nottingham, UK
I'll second the Haynes Bike Book. Easy to understand, full of pictures of real world examples. I wish it went in to a bit more depth in places but overall I rate it very highly and it has given me a lot more confidence. Well worth a tenner.

Aldby, have you seen Sheldon Brown's wheel building page? It's got a special section covering improvised tools which means you can do it without any special equipment.
 
C

Cyclezee

Guest
Without naming names Aldby what part of mk was this bike shop in? I was thinking of taking my bike to a shop to get the spokes tightened.:confused:
Or I could just find a spoke key that fits and do it myself.
Hi Nick,

I have sent you a PM.
 
C

Cyclezee

Guest
Aldby, have you seen Sheldon Brown's wheel building page? It's got a special section covering improvised tools which means you can do it without any special equipment.
Hi Caph,

I have seen that before, and it is a skill I want to learn. I am looking into doing the Cytech course which is a run in Milton Keynes.
 

morphix

Esteemed Pedelecer
Oct 24, 2010
2,163
119
Worcestershire
www.cyclecharge.org.uk
A week ago I ordered a new tyre from my local bike shop.

I took my bike today to have them fit it for me. I returned to collect within 2 hours,
when I came to set off on my ride & put the bike in 1st gear & went up a slight incline, as I rode along I began to hear a loud clunking noise. when I got off & took a look at the rear wheel, I noticed the derailleur was clunking against the spokes of the rear wheel. This only seemed to be happening when riding in 1st gear.
I turned around & rode back to the shop in 3rd gear.

when I arrived and explained what was happening, I got:

"this wasn't like this when you left the shop",
"this has taken a bash"
"someone has been messing about with this"
"where did you leave your bike?"

It took 2 mechanics to reset the derailleur, which included what seemed to be a lot of tweeking, as they discovered it would not drop into 1st gear Or in the 7th gear.

Nevertheless, they put it right, but left me feeling like some second rate citizen, a liar and a time waster, with not even a hint of an apology from them.

I prefer not to tweek with thing that I am not 100% sure about, but if that is the service I'm going to get for something as simple as a tyre replacement, then I think I need to get myself on to a basic bike maintenance course!

any suggestions anyone?

sorry for ranting, but thanks for reading!
That sounds like a terrible experience but glad you went back and got it sorted. I guess some shops are like that but then you get the good ones that really look after their customers and provide a friendly service.

Learning how to do maintenance and upgrades on your bike is a good idea and will save you a lot of money. It's not that difficult really as I've been learning a lot from bicycletutor.com and using the helpful video guides to do routine jobs.