Rich Clark

This is what we've been talking about with your road bike.

These are machine built wheels. As such, they will be undertensioned, and the spokes will not have been stress-relieved. The wheels may have been geometricaly true, but they were not proprly prepared.

A good bike shop will tension (with a tension meter) and stress-relieve the wheels on a new bike before it's delivered. If this is done, even wheels of modest quality will last indefinitely without major problems. If this is not done, even high-quality wheels will fail prematurely.

Unfortunately, many shops use less than the highest standards, particularly during busy season, when assembling bikes, and this step is often omitted. And in a surprising number of shops, it's unknown.

If the the shop won't tension, true, and stress-relieve these wheels for you (or, worse, claims it's not necessary or doesn't understand what you're talking about), take the wheels to the wheelbuilder you found that's doing your road bike wheels.

But I'll say this: if you've bought two bikes from this shop in the last month, they should be going to great lengths to keep you happy. They should definitely be prepping all four of your new wheels with loving care, to the highest standards, at no charge, since this should have been done during assembly.

RichC