Originally Posted by KleinMp99
Yea maybe that shop should start letting everybody take a test ride on muddy trails and downhill and stuff. Then they could have the opportunity of washing all the bikes, cleaning the tires off and making the bike look new. Maybe dealing with bikes that come back with scratches....and then having to take money off the price of the bike when somebody asks about it.
It's quite possible that Blackberry is talking ahout a road bike, and not a mountain bike. In that case, taking it for a test ride probably wouldn't result in a whole lot of mud or very many scratches on the bike.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to expect to be allowed to actually test a bike on the kind of surface you're going to be riding on. A parking lot is going to be a lot smoother than actual roads, so it wouldn't give any indication of how the bike handles rough roads and vibrations.