Discussion
I have just taken the bike round to them to have the whole thing cleaned de-greased lubed etc, cassette tightened, gears re-tuned, wheels aligned, brake pads de-greased/replaced.
Apparently that is classed as a full service, no doubt they will look at everything, one would hope.. £30? Sound reasonable?
Unfortunately I am wary of places these days, and was very close to ordering all the gear and doing it myself. But I have decided to give them a shot and see what happens
Anyone else have any good/bad stories about their LBS?
Apparently that is classed as a full service, no doubt they will look at everything, one would hope.. £30? Sound reasonable?
Unfortunately I am wary of places these days, and was very close to ordering all the gear and doing it myself. But I have decided to give them a shot and see what happens
Anyone else have any good/bad stories about their LBS?
Sounds good to me...take a deep breath before you read these service charges.. 
http://www.evanscycles.com/servicing/workshop-pric...
http://www.edinburghbicycle.com/comms/srv.a4d?f_pg...
There are a few very good sites out there to help you and save a few quid by doing stuff yourself....Parktools and Sheldon Brown.
http://www.evanscycles.com/servicing/workshop-pric...
http://www.edinburghbicycle.com/comms/srv.a4d?f_pg...
There are a few very good sites out there to help you and save a few quid by doing stuff yourself....Parktools and Sheldon Brown.
fortunately i have a mate who is the best bike mechanic in bristol and only charges me a few beers for an evenings labour if i give him the parts.
£30 sounds a bit cheap to be honest but in general, bristol bike shops are pretty poor when it comes to value for money servicing (and the quality of the servicing) and i would probably go over to red planet in swindon if my mate wasnt the spanner ninja that he is. i think the problem is so many cycles and so few people with the time and space to do their own maintenance hence they can charge a fair bt and still get the through flow...
£30 sounds a bit cheap to be honest but in general, bristol bike shops are pretty poor when it comes to value for money servicing (and the quality of the servicing) and i would probably go over to red planet in swindon if my mate wasnt the spanner ninja that he is. i think the problem is so many cycles and so few people with the time and space to do their own maintenance hence they can charge a fair bt and still get the through flow...
There seems to be a feeling that bike servicing is a scam, larger shops trying to rip you off, etc...
Ask yourself how much you would want to perform these services? And would you want them done by a 16 year old with no experience or a qualified mechanic that still earns a comparatively s
tty wage.
These places are not forcing you to have your bike fixed, but if you want it done, that is the price. A service that takes an hour to perform may cost £50, take the overheads off and the shop may pocket half of that. In that same hour the member of staff could be selling bikes instead, any bike sale will make many times that amount.
If a bike shop could exist without service facilities, they would. There is hardly any money to be made but obviously providing that service is part of the game.
Punctures are a particularly st job. Fix a puncture, inform customer their tyre is worn out. Customer doesn't listen (because obviously the shop is just trying to make more money 
), gets another puncture 2 miles down the road, but guess what? Its the shops fault!
Its not 'daylight robbery'... if its that easy then do it yourself.
Cheers!
Ask yourself how much you would want to perform these services? And would you want them done by a 16 year old with no experience or a qualified mechanic that still earns a comparatively s
tty wage. These places are not forcing you to have your bike fixed, but if you want it done, that is the price. A service that takes an hour to perform may cost £50, take the overheads off and the shop may pocket half of that. In that same hour the member of staff could be selling bikes instead, any bike sale will make many times that amount.
If a bike shop could exist without service facilities, they would. There is hardly any money to be made but obviously providing that service is part of the game.
Punctures are a particularly s
t job. Fix a puncture, inform customer their tyre is worn out. Customer doesn't listen (because obviously the shop is just trying to make more money ), gets another puncture 2 miles down the road, but guess what? Its the shops fault! Its not 'daylight robbery'... if its that easy then do it yourself.
Cheers!
DRB said:
There seems to be a feeling that bike servicing is a scam, larger shops trying to rip you off, etc...
Ask yourself how much you would want to perform these services? And would you want them done by a 16 year old with no experience or a qualified mechanic that still earns a comparatively stty wage.
These places are not forcing you to have your bike fixed, but if you want it done, that is the price. A service that takes an hour to perform may cost £50, take the overheads off and the shop may pocket half of that. In that same hour the member of staff could be selling bikes instead, any bike sale will make many times that amount.
If a bike shop could exist without service facilities, they would. There is hardly any money to be made but obviously providing that service is part of the game.
Punctures are a particularly st job. Fix a puncture, inform customer their tyre is worn out. Customer doesn't listen (because obviously the shop is just trying to make more money ), gets another puncture 2 miles down the road, but guess what? Its the shops fault!
Its not 'daylight robbery'... if its that easy then do it yourself.
Cheers!
£12.50 to change a tyre (that is what the website says) is a fAsk yourself how much you would want to perform these services? And would you want them done by a 16 year old with no experience or a qualified mechanic that still earns a comparatively s
tty wage. These places are not forcing you to have your bike fixed, but if you want it done, that is the price. A service that takes an hour to perform may cost £50, take the overheads off and the shop may pocket half of that. In that same hour the member of staff could be selling bikes instead, any bike sale will make many times that amount.
If a bike shop could exist without service facilities, they would. There is hardly any money to be made but obviously providing that service is part of the game.
Punctures are a particularly s
t job. Fix a puncture, inform customer their tyre is worn out. Customer doesn't listen (because obviously the shop is just trying to make more money ), gets another puncture 2 miles down the road, but guess what? Its the shops fault! Its not 'daylight robbery'... if its that easy then do it yourself.
Cheers!
king joke. Period.DRB said:
Would you care to elaborate why it is a joke?
In a busy shop it is simply is not worth touching a bike for anything less.
sounds like a sIn a busy shop it is simply is not worth touching a bike for anything less.
t shop/management to me, they clearly just want the big sales and have no thought for after-sales service - which is where subsequent big sales will come from..... Those charges from the bigger stores are daylight robbery, full stop, no matter how you claim to justify them by market forces, overheads etc. They simply prey upon and expose those that are new and uninitiated to cycling. My advice would be to buy a book for £12.50 and do it yourself, or go to a decent LBS.
Edited by gbbird on Friday 11th September 08:33
My local LBS is in Fleet.. and offers quite simply the best service I have ever had buying anything. Yesterday they completed a free 6 week running in service and I watched them tune it up for well over an hour. Its already been in once for a tune up because I caught the rear deraileur on a stump. They quite simply love their job! Faultless. (their basic service is £25 otherwise so not bad at all)
DRB said:
Would you care to elaborate why it is a joke?
In a busy shop it is simply is not worth touching a bike for anything less.
Not sure I totally agree with that.In a busy shop it is simply is not worth touching a bike for anything less.
I use my LBS which happens to be owned by a school mate of mine. These are their service charges, which aren't fantisctially cheap but are often 'bent' in favour of the customer terms of what they actually do for the money charged:
Mammoth 'green' service
Mammoth 'polka dot' service
Mammoth 'yellow' service
As far as 'regular' customers go, my LBS does not apply your logic; a group of us ride out from there on Wednesday evenings throughout the year and theor other week two of us (following a very wet muddy ride the previous week) arrived with shagged brakes. They fitted three pairs of pads and charged no labour.
Edited by Digga on Friday 11th September 09:18
rocksteadyeddie said:
TBH if you are so lazy and/or mechanically inept to not be able to repair a puncture then you put yourself firmly in the "deserve what you get" category.
As you do if you set out for a ride with fked brake pads. 
To be fair, both me and my mate whose brakes were also shot had decent brake before the previous weeks ride but Cannock Chase being predominantly sand & gravel and it having been torrentially raining the week before, all the wear had been ground away. Still our fault though, but the LBS didn't tuck us up.
DRB said:
There seems to be a feeling that bike servicing is a scam, larger shops trying to rip you off, etc...
Ask yourself how much you would want to perform these services? And would you want them done by a 16 year old with no experience or a qualified mechanic that still earns a comparatively stty wage.
These places are not forcing you to have your bike fixed, but if you want it done, that is the price. A service that takes an hour to perform may cost £50, take the overheads off and the shop may pocket half of that. In that same hour the member of staff could be selling bikes instead, any bike sale will make many times that amount.
If a bike shop could exist without service facilities, they would. There is hardly any money to be made but obviously providing that service is part of the game.
Punctures are a particularly st job. Fix a puncture, inform customer their tyre is worn out. Customer doesn't listen (because obviously the shop is just trying to make more money ), gets another puncture 2 miles down the road, but guess what? Its the shops fault!
Its not 'daylight robbery'... if its that easy then do it yourself.
Cheers!
I think everything depends on whether or not they actually charge those prices to people buying stuff from them.Ask yourself how much you would want to perform these services? And would you want them done by a 16 year old with no experience or a qualified mechanic that still earns a comparatively s
tty wage. These places are not forcing you to have your bike fixed, but if you want it done, that is the price. A service that takes an hour to perform may cost £50, take the overheads off and the shop may pocket half of that. In that same hour the member of staff could be selling bikes instead, any bike sale will make many times that amount.
If a bike shop could exist without service facilities, they would. There is hardly any money to be made but obviously providing that service is part of the game.
Punctures are a particularly s
t job. Fix a puncture, inform customer their tyre is worn out. Customer doesn't listen (because obviously the shop is just trying to make more money ), gets another puncture 2 miles down the road, but guess what? Its the shops fault! Its not 'daylight robbery'... if its that easy then do it yourself.
Cheers!
If I went into my LBS with my bike and asked them for a bottle cage, I'd be f
king outraged if they tried to then charge me £12.50 for the privilege of unscrewing 2 allen bolts and then screwing them back in again.If, on the other hand, I went in with a bottle cage which I'd bought off the internet for a pound less than they have them and asked them to fit it for me, they could charge whatever they liked and I wouldn't have any right to complain.
My "Local" bike shop isn't actually the closest one to me. It's about an 18 mile round trip, but their service has been absolutely outstanding.
They generally don't tend to charge for fitting parts they've sold unless the work is disproportionate to the price of the item, and they charge £40 per hour with a minimum of a fiver, so a puncture repair would be an altogether more reasonable £5. They're also always willing to have a quick look at little niggling things, and refuse payment even when offered.
As a result, I bought my bike from them (£1,300), upgraded forks (£350), my daughter's first bike (£139), my son's first bike (£139), my daughter's second bike (£220) and a few hundred more on various other items over the last 3 years or so. They will also be getting my business for any future bikes for me or any of the three kids plus plenty more extras, all because they're nice guys who take the time to get things right, charge reasonably when they do charge, and know when not to.
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