Thread: Toronto Fixed
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Old 04-12-05 | 05:40 PM
  #123  
qqy
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 476
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From: New York
Originally Posted by gokiburi
what are people's experiences with duke's? any problems?
That used to be my primary LBS, and I've dropped a fair bit of money there, so I think I can contribute something. First, in terms of service, it totally depends on who's helping you, how busy they are, and how muc they think you're gonna spend. It's all on commission there, so they'll happily spend two hours showing the rich 250lber their range of $5k+ bikes (god, that Stock is so hot though) and ignore the guy who just wants a new helmet. If you go when it's quiet, they'll always be helpful, but will tend to push you towards their higher-profit stuff (Cannondale and Specalized bikes in particular) unless you're quite firm. However, once you develop a working realtionship with a certain person, they'll always drop whatever they're doing to help you.

Their maintence staff is similar - your experience will totally depend on who you get. Their head mechanic (Dave?) is great and will always gives great advice and good turnaround time. Better yet, he will actually push customers towards better value stuff, rather than trying to get you to spend as much as possible. Some of their newer, younger staff are total crap and only out to rip you off. One of them built me a wheel that lasted 500km, used the crappiest break pads on the planet after charging me for their most expensive ones, and lost/stole my old triple crankset all in one session. Worse yet, he refused to use the parts I asked for and acted as thought they were out of stock of everything I wanted. He basically refused to build a wheel with anything other than a Mavic rim and lied through his teeth about the quaility of my old hubs, and said that I needed "at least" Ultegra hubs. This on my beater bike. I haven't been back since and now do all my own wrenching.
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