Originally Posted by alanbikehouston
The most important choice is picking the right shop. One that answers your questions and puts time into making sure you get the right bike in the right size. A shop that builds bikes correctly, trues the wheels, tunes them up, and takes care of you a month, or a year after the sale.
If people running a shop seem to just be selling products, they might as well be selling sweaters.
We dropped into one shop (one of small chain of "ski and bike" shops - red flag! red flag!
) where it was like pulling teeth to get the salesman - the manager - to assist us. The coup de grace came when he gave us a bike with nearly flat tires to "test ride". Pointing out said tires elicited only a bored expression and no response from the manager. 30 seconds later we were saying our polite goodbyes and thank yous and drove straight over to the local shop to purchase. No matter what I want to buy for a bike or accessories in future, I'm going to give the local shop first crack at selling it to me.