Wrongly advertised bike

[harry henderson]

I recently purchased a new bike online from a large nationwide retail store. The bike was on sale and nearly half price. So far so good
I then went to collect the the bike. This is where it went downhill. While looking around the bike I noticed the spec was nothing like advertised. Wrong brakes, suspension forks, rear suspension, tyres and shifters etc.
The staff were spot on about it and said they will contact their suppliers. They are going to contact me when they no more.
I just wondered if anyone has had any experience with a situation like this.

[BunkMoreland]

harry henderson said:

I recently purchased a new bike online from a large nationwide retail store. The bike was on sale and nearly half price. So far so good
I then went to collect the the bike. This is where it went downhill. While looking around the bike I noticed the spec was nothing like advertised. Wrong brakes, suspension forks, rear suspension, tyres and shifters etc.
The staff were spot on about it and said they will contact their suppliers. They are going to contact me when they no more.
I just wondered if anyone has had any experience with a situation like this.

What bike was it and is it possible the reason the spec is different is its a 2024 or even 2023 new old stock bike?

[BOR]

harry henderson said:

I just wondered if anyone has had any experience with a situation like this.

Oddly, yes.

My recent bike came with Rock Shox fork instead of a Fox fork.

I re-checked the written spec, and it did specify the Fox, but also said that the specification could vary.

This pissed me off, for obvious reasons. I felt it was fraudulent.

However, I really wanted to keep the bike so asked the shop to send me the correct fork, or the difference in cost.

While waiting for an answer, I clicked on the spec for the other colour option for the bike, and that one was correctly described.

So, just a lazy cut/paste error, rather than malicious. At this point, I would have been happy with just an apology.

They offered me a couple of hundred euros, happy customer.

Postscript: I checked one of our bike forums, and found that several people had had the same problem!

Why would the shop not correct their text, rather than have to keep giving away money?

I think you have a couple of options:

1.Reject the bike.
2.Ask for a price reduction, or for the correct parts to be switched in.

[GravelBen]

Sometimes component options do change depending what they have available at the time of assembly, if the components are similar or better quality than the advertised spec it might not be a big issue but if they are lower grade parts I'd probably reject it.

[harry henderson]

The bike was advertised as having a full Shimano Xt groupset and high end RockShox suspension front and rear. When I went to pick it up it had a very basic Shimano groupset and basic RockShox suspension. The sales assistant asked her manager and he was shocked and even started pointing out other differences like the tyres etc.
It's from a very large nation wide store so I trust that they aren't trying to rip me off and they are trying to sort it out with their supplier.
I just wondered if anyone else had been in this situation and what the outcome was.
Thanks all.

[ChocolateFrog]

They always add the line about spec changes without prior notification.

I always thought that was a bit vague without a caveat around comparable spec.

[WPA]

harry henderson said:

The bike was advertised as having a full Shimano Xt groupset and high end RockShox suspension front and rear. When I went to pick it up it had a very basic Shimano groupset and basic RockShox suspension. The sales assistant asked her manager and he was shocked and even started pointing out other differences like the tyres etc.
It's from a very large nation wide store so I trust that they aren't trying to rip me off and they are trying to sort it out with their supplier.
I just wondered if anyone else had been in this situation and what the outcome was.
Thanks all.

So it is not the model that was sold to you / listed or maybe someone has stripped the parts off, not as described so just return it.

Why except it if wrong

Also what make / model is the bike