H1449-6

Don't even get me started.

OK. You did.

My wife and I recently went shopping for minivans. Unfortunately Detroit has no idea how to build a minivan, so we were shopping the Japanese vans: Nissan, Toyota and Honda. For each I did nothing more than look up the specs and carsdirect.com pricing before I went to the dealerships.

Keep in mind that we were looking at the $28-30,000 vans. NOT ONE of the salesmen we encountered could answer the most basic questions about his own product, let alone highlight the differences between his product and the competition.

Absolutely insane. And you know those guys are on commission.

Sirrobinofcoxly

What kind of service do you expenct when they don't know you personally? Sounds like they gave you a couple of options. I think it is as much the consumers responsibility to ask questions as it is the sales guys. And you can't expect the H2 driver to have a $500 bike. They already have a car they don't need. Why not get a bike they don't need?

H1449-6

The reality is that a small percentage of shops are actually equipped to fit a road bike properly. This is because training low-wage employees to do the work is hard, and buying the Serotta Fit Bike or similar is expensive. Also, the process absorbs a lot of time; when I was working in shops, I could sell a low-end mountain bike in fifteen minutes, and a high-end mountain bike in two visits of half an hour each, but a road bike took me two or three hours across two or three visits to sell; then the hand holding after the sale took another couple of hours.

Only fairly high volume roadie shops can really make the investment to do this work correctly. Find a good one, and you're golden. Just respect the fact that they need to sell their stuff for more than you can mail order it, and you'll get along fine.

goody2shoes

My lbs, due to there incompetence, forced me to buy my own tools and do my own work, and I could not be happier. I got very displeased with owning a high end bike with B.S> service.

Exeye

i expect damn good service. or at least acknowledgment! i shouldn't have to know every single sales person everywhere i go in order to get treated like i exist. i think its also bike shop proprietors' responsibility to foster a warm and engaging atmosphere in a place of business. Particularly one that asks ridiculous money for a bicycle, it would/should be in their best interest to do so.

true H2 statement, though. i fully agree

Propofol

I find this extremely hard to believe. So are you saying that if I have 50000 square feet of floor space in my shop, I am required to fill 42500 square feet of that space with Treks? I don't think so.

A shop's physical size should have nothing to do with it.

DamianM

Which shop is that Troy ?


GuitarWizard, bike shops still seem to be better than most guitar shops

trmcgeehan

Moe Fugger: I am interested in your quote: "He is not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!" Is this Biblical? If so, where can I find it? Tom McGeehan, Somerset, KY

royalflash

sounds like the "Life of Brian" (Monty Python film) to me

baj32161

It is indeed...I don't do the biblical...now back to the OP. After reading it again I have to say that going into a shop and "playing the newbie" approach is dishonest. And here you sit complaining about the service you got. I worked in retail electronics for many years and would hate it when people did this. People would use my time and resources....receive good service and then go buy from someone else anyway because they got a better deal. After a while you learn to spot these people. Were you actually going to buy a bike? If you had no intentions of buying a bike in the first place, then perhaps, you need to climb down off of your soapbox. The next time you demand good service, perhaps you may want to try being a good customer instead of a dishonest schemer. Even still I do find that good service has mainly gone by the wayside.

bob the nailer

I have owned three different "high end" bikes, purchased from 3 different stores, one a specialized, one a trek 5200, now a look 585(on order). My experience is if you know what you want, or at least have a pretty good idea, you will be ok, but i am not so sure if you go into the store without a fairly concrete idea or at least a choice of 2 or 3 bikes, you may not fare so well. for example when i bought my trek(2000) i knew ahead of time that was what i wanted, went to a store that mostly sells trek but has a reputation for good service, which was exactly my experience, the guy let me test ride one my size for a week, and got a good price when i bought it. So i agree with the post above, do your homework, ask your friends, don't go in unprepared.

rufvelo

'Dishonest'? How did you come up with that? Or is this another assumption you made as you did with your prospective customers while rendering 'good service' (or 'questionable service' to them I'm sure). No surprise you excelled at peddling electronics.

Do you know that I haven't bought a bike in a local store in 15 years? From previous poor LBS experiences I'd settled for mail order just buying odds at the local store when needed. I had a genuine interest in trying/buying a steel Lemond, pursuant to my post here on steel bike information. The other option was to buy online. I'm not familiar with the latest tech, remember I also posted a while ago asking about this threadless headset business, having never owned one. I walked in with high expectations, only to discover that quality of service had not changed, in fact it had probably deteriorated in the last 20 years - run by folks who seemed to care even less than they did all those years ago.

Your intuition must certainly serve you well these days.

SteelCommuter

Trek is more than bikes. They own other companies with parts and accessories. Not that I know anything about these percentages...

SteelCommuter

You might try this. Start with the idea you want to buy a cyclocross bike, the most versatile kind of road bike available in shops. They can be used for racing, for touring, for commuting, for fast road riding, and off-road. Felt even makes one. If you were solely racing or training all the time for races, it wouldn't be a first choice, although it still could work.

Then, figure out why you need a more limited bicycle like a road racing bike instead.. Do you know for sure you will make racing the priority of your cycling activitiy? Do you own other bikes?

You could read up on this site and roadbikereview.com about the range of bikes, to make a more informed choice. Then, if you still get a Felt F75 you know it's because of your research, not the happenstance of what your shop has in stock and what they put you on, what little you may know of cycling culture, etc. But you might surprise yourself after reading other people's discussions of their type of bike, because there are so many kinds of riding and bikes, and you should know a bit about it before dropping your money on something.

I know if my brother, who is around your age, was ready to get a nice road bike and perhaps be competitive, I would suggest a nice cross bike. For the money you plan on spending, the weight difference is very small. Just an idea, take it or leave it

minolta7

Buy any bike, as there are very few poorly-made bikes out there- except overpriced, Lance-factored Treks!

baj32161

oneradtec is that you?

minolta7

Nah- just another hater of a hyped up brand of bikes that are 1.5-2x more expensive than their comparable Taiwanese counterparts!

some_guy282

'splain please. Did he want to make sure you could afford to make the payments on it or something?

Waldo

Believe it. Trek is rather well-known for such business tactics. It seems to depend on the number of dealers in the area and the outside sales rep. They're pretty good at making ridiculous demands of dealers for fllor space and orders, threatening to open other shops in the area, and then doing so even after a shop caves. Check out Bicycle Retailer's site-they might have some info on it. It's been a pretty hot topic lately. Specialized is getting in on the act a bit too.
Giant, on the other hand, makes no demands of us. Speaking as one of the larger Giant dealers around, we've never had an issue with that.

minolta7

Well, that's what you need to do to be able to push such crappy bikes...

Richard Cranium

Gee, I guess you want to sit around and talk about how you are superior in the subject of "sales knowledge" with respect to LBS employees.

When you get done with defining what's wrong with the retail bicycle industry, could you move on and fix the federal government for me?

No doubt, there is a wide range of ability among sales staff in any retail industry. I doubt you have the ability to discern nor comment about the bicycle retail industry's repsective ability to compete with other bicycle sales channels.

In the absence of any intelligent way to comment on the viablility of retail bicycle stores, I would guess the bull-manure being tossed around in this thread should be discarded by anyone actually interested purchasing bicycle related items.

In other words, when shopping for a bicycle be sure to keep an open mind, let sales people know what you really expect to do with the bike and what you really expect to spend. If they can't show you, and compare for you several bikes in the price range you specify, move on.

Waldo

TomM

I found the same thing when I was car shopping a few years ago. I started asking the salesmen a simple(in my opinion) question: "How big is the gas tank?". I either got no answer or the wrong answer. This was for a $60K automobile.

Exeye

its a ASSuming, prejudice, condescending salesperson thing. not tryin to tell you my life story, but since i was 16, i've had salespeople ask it. it translates to something like, "why is someone like you inquiring about something so expensive? you can't really afford this can you? i dont really think so. im going to ask this question, just to see if he's wasting my time." some other times i remember was when i was car shopping when i turned 16. salesguy was like. "oh so you like this car?".."yeah"..."ah, so how long have you been at your job?"...didn't really understand it back then, but it rubbed me odd. other time was at a cingular store trying to switch from verizon, i asked about plans... "so where do you work?"..i have t-mobile, now.

it could be chalked up to 'conversation', but the timing and tone used never look for a good chat.

some_guy282

Ah. Thought it might be something like that. I can see why you'd be upset in that situation. If the conversation with that guy at the bike shop had been blunt it would have gone like...

"Are you familiar with the pricepoint on this bike?" - translation "Can you afford this?"

"Yes." - translation "Yes."

"So how long have you been at your job?" - translation "I think you're full of $hit. Can you really, really afford this?"

Yeah that's pretty condescending and prejudice....