Originally Posted by
itsjustMATT
@ilikebikes:
Standard consumers who know nothing about bikes don't replace things. They go, oh hay, I has a bike. Ride ride ride break death. Someone on the product review site in the original post stated that to change the chainring, you have to drill through rivets. Rivets. Come on. What did they do? Weld the wheels into the dropouts, too? It seems to me, Wal**** knows that the standard consumers aren't going to replace things on the bike, due to the fact that they just don't know how or what to replace. And plus, Wal**** doesn't sell chainrings, do they? "MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SWITCH OUT CHAINRINGS ON OUR BIKES" says Wal**** CEO.
Another issue that needs to be adressed is the elitism within many parts of the cycling community. The I am better than you vibe quite a few LBSs have. When I got back in to skate boarding I was lucky to find a super helpful and friendly shop but they are not always like that. Where I live there is around 15-20 bike shops and many have an atitude. Where I am from we only had 3 shops and 2 out of those three had a huge atitude too... So with that in mind and not even taking into account other riders on the street, would you as someone with limited funds and new to biking want to be seen with a walmart bike? Hypothetically it could be a sweet bike on par with say a kilo tt or surly and just having the walmart connections would instantly get you shunned. If we really want biking to spread we need to end that sort of BS... sigh... just my 2c.