c0urt

I like bike bike co-ops !!

roadwarrior

Around $65 is what it should have been. For a chain.

BTW...we teach people how to work on everything on their bikes. And the guy that teaches it wrenches for the US Under 23 National Team. We do it early on Saturday mornings. It's a lot easier to learn in a class, like good mechanics do, than trial and error on your own.

FlashBazbo

Or $55. I told my wife to expect somewhere between $55 and $70 for the chain and between $0 and $2 for the link pin.

She knew I couldn't get my bike rolling before Christmas Eve without the chain, so she bought it anyway.

Psimet2001 

You'd have to embrace that too. In fact you'd need to go to the point of teaching people how to do the work as well.

There are many "how-to's" concerning car repair and yet the vast majority of the population would rather have "someone knowledgeable" take a look at their repairs. There will always be enough people - like pcad - who will keep mechanics employed.

Besides - when you have a good shop even the good home mechanics will feel comfortable bringing you the BB that needs to be chased and faced because they know you have the tools.

Flak

Wow, lots of ****ty bike shops out there it looks like! We're not all like that though. I'd venture a guess that there are more good shops than bad too.

We don't charge for shipping, get orders every wednesday and friday (order on mondays and wednesdays), charge no "special order fee", and sell bikes below MSRP (to the tune of about 10%). We'll take a hit on our margin (within reason) in an effort to price match if you give us the chance. We sponsor 2 teams, host group rides, and everyone in the shop either races, or rides a ton for fun.

Maybe we're a rarity, but i prefer to think there are lots of shops like us all over the place.

Spin Bike Shop, Lakewood, OH

nesdog

Naw....that's Sundance....they are always over list on everything! I never buy stuff from them if I can help it.

crhilton

It also keeps more money in your city, assuming the shop is actually local. No measurable direct benefit, I suppose. Just a tiny amount of tax benefit for the city whose roads you're riding on.

crhilton

They're idiots. I often rant about businesses who charge extra for special orders (through normal distributors). If you offer to pre-pay they are taking ZERO risk on the product and have no excuse to ask for their normal markup.

Now, if you have a reputation for not paying when it comes in, or it's your first order and they've been burned, well maybe they don't want to special order for you.

crhilton

Car repairs are bit of an exaggerated beast though. Forces are bigger, parts are heavier, torque requirements higher, and everything is rusted together.

And like you said, facing and the like gets done by the shop. Anything that involves removing material from a frameset I leave to somebody else: Somebody I'm gonna take to task if they ruin the frame. Also, anything that involves a tool over $100 I'm not doing at home!

Also, bike mechanics works for peanuts.

crhilton

She's a keeper dude.

RIC0

I do all of my own repairs so I truly don't need a LBS at all. I do throw money toward them one once in awhile just because they are good guys and do offer me discounts but it's hard to beat the prices on ebay for new and used stuff.

El Diablo Rojo

One thing that really soured me on the SoCal bike shop scene was after moving to Austin and seeing how well the bike shops worked with their customers. The worst shops here are on par with the best of Socal when it come to customer service.

urbanknight

Not that I ever liked that shop, but just to be fair, the price tag read "Race X Lite seatpost $89.99" while list is $99.00. The bad thing was that inside the box was a Race Lite seatpost, list $69.00.


Too bad when I live in the San Fernando Valley, that's actually part of the city of Los Angeles. They get all the tax money and fix the roads downtown while forgetting about us.


If I'm ever in Austin, I'll have to check out some shops. Having lived in So Cal all my life, maybe I don't know what I'm missing.

crhilton

Yea, that sucks. Probably still better than sending the money to another state.

El Diablo Rojo

You don't. Had I never moved to Austin I probably would have never started racing. Much friendlier environment here, that extends from the racers to the shops.

urbanknight

Are they slower in Austin too? I keep trying to convince myself that I'm not really slow, but So Cal is just really fast

Jed19

Am I doing something wrong or unsafe! I bought about six Shimano 7800 chains at a great price from Probikekit two years ago, and I have been running the chains with KMC reusable links without any issue(s), even though Shimano says to use their pins, which by the way, came with the chains.

Is it unsafe to use KMC reusable links with Shimano chains?

ok_commuter

Bike repair shop as front for marijuana dispensary. I like it!

ok_commuter

"They" aren't, generally speaking, but I am! You can drop me anytime you're in town, my treat.

El Diablo Rojo

The fast guys are pretty equal in the Masters classes..we just had a lot more fast guys in the field when I raced in SoCal. The teams are better organized in SoCal and there are just more races. When it comes to racing in the heat TX guys would really put the hurt on the Cali guys....our summers are freakin' brutal. At the same time most Cali guys can out climb a TX rider just because there are so few opportunities to climb out here. But I'd say the top 4's in SoCal stack up to the top 3's here. What I meant by my comment was that the guys here are for the most part pretty damn cool and getting into racing was a lot more inviting.

Psimet2001 

Yeah that one's been taken.

Eclectus

I think if you buy something you can install, maintain and repair yourself, it's worth looking online. If you can't do these things, go to the LBS. If it charges reasonably competitive prices, not gouging, I'd go with LBS. I just can't tolerate well-above MSRP as a community "standard".

I live in the hinterland. Long ago freight cost a lot. Okay, that warranted surcharges relative to what was charged in big mainstream cities. Today, with FedEx, UPS and priority mail, and living on an interstate, I'm not going to pay more for products shipped from Minneapolis that it costs less to ship here in Kansas, on the I-35, than down to Austin, 400 miles further down the road.

I don't know if I was the first person to suggest bike-shops going coop like Ace and True-Value hardware last year, but it's a smart idea. Maybe even consumer-member coops, like REI. The mfrs do their thing in China and former Soviet-bloc countries to get rock-bottom production costs. Big distributors like QBP have eliminated the in-state, personal service traveling wholesale reps. Small-volume LBSs don't get big-volume discounts.

Sometimes they're screwed, like my LBS last May declined to offer discounted Specialized frames and bikes. Specialized had an overstock on its 09 frames and bikes, needed to move them, and gave LBSs discounts on them. But Specialized didn't offer post-purchase rebates to LBSs on unsold 08 bikes. So, my LBS had a 2008 Roubaix Expert at $3200 (originally $3700) in June, when Specialized was marketing the 09 version for the same price. Then when the 2010s came out in the fall, a lot of Cali shops were unloading their 09s at big discounts to make room for 10s, but not my LBS. They figured they had already paid for their 09s, and winter sales are slow here, so they'll wait for April-May 10 to discount whatever they haven't sold--8-9 months after the 10s have been out.

I decided to get a Cervelo RS. Bothell Ski and Bike gave me a great deal on a custom build. I mean $1100 under Competitive Cyclist and $2000 less than my LBS. Perfectly assembled and tuned.

It looks like they have lost the franchise. . They no longer carry Pinarello, either. I suspect other dealers were complaining. They were selling frames list, but deeply discounting components. I think businesses that give customers superb bang-for-buck deserve our business. I knew buying online, if I needed service, I'd have to pay two-way shipping, or do it myself. I've done the latter so far, but that's been normal-wear-stuff. When I test rode an 08 RS here (I paid a rental fee), the LBS didn't even have the RD properly adjusted: they were selling a $4000 bike not even functioning properly. As in, I had to shift two down (bigger cog) then one up (smaller) to upshift in the middle gears, on a Dura-Ace 7800.

I know the DA 7800 RD can shift properly, if tuned properly. My LBS didn't even do this. I ended up getting Red at Bothell. Excellent bang-for-buck ($1100 for the entire gruppo, including ceramic bb bearings).

I agree with the point if you pre-pay on a special order, charging above-MSRP is a real turnoff. The LBS has no inventory-stocking cost. It's just an electronic order, call the customer for pickup transaction, with the dealer making bucks as a pass-through-agent at MSRP.

I go online, even paying MSRP, to get the goods delivered directly to me, in the same amount of time, for less money (MSRP + shipping vs. inflated-price plus sales tax). Or even in less time occasionally. For example Jenson in Ontario CA has a relationship with QBP, where QBP sends Jenson online orders directly from its Minnesota warehous to Jenson's retail customers, rather than to Cali, and then back to the Midwest, so if I order on Wednesday, I get the order Friday by cheap ground delivery (800 mile shipment down the I-35), rather than have to wait for my LBS's next-Monday order arriving on next Wednesday, with an above-MSRP surcharge.

I feel bad that small-volume LBSs don't get big-volume discounts from the mfrs and distributors. That's why I think they need to band together and do coop purchasing. That's better than hand-wringing over lower-priced competitors and gouging customers as "the only solution", IMHO. If that's what they think, God Bless Them, but I'm not paying for their outdated "local" business concepts. They can have the newbies who want some warm-season weekend cruising, except Dick's is starting grabbing that market segment--and has decent builds and service. I talked to the wrench there--he was an experienced guy who knew his stuff.

My son has a friend in Brooklyn, where people come in and learn to build their own bamboo bikes. That's a great thing: teaching people how bikes work by having them build and tune their own, under guidance.

I can do most maintenance. I'm wanting to get a truing stand and try building my own wheels. I can already true wheels on the bike. Put some rubber bands on the brakes to semi-tighten them, get the rim to slip through with no wobble. Building a wheel looks time-consuming for a first-timer, but the principals appear to be straightforward. It's geometry, and spokes tension reading by tensiometer and/or sound, the latter being fun--oh that's a quarter-note flat, tighten it.

Jed19

Eclectus has hit upon the most-likely situation for the serious biking enthusiast. I definitely try to support my LBS, even going to the extent of taking a case of brewski at xmas time. The LBS is not gonna be able to compete with the internet shops price-wise, and the serious enthusiast is most likely to be a price-shopper. Especially in this economy. The small bicycle shops need to form co-ops, otherwise it's game over.

operator

Not all 7900 chains come with pins.

The cycling world does not consist solely of the United states of freedom

FlashBazbo

Yes, we need to give more respect to our northern colony.

(You've got to love a country with such a huge inferiority complex, eh?)