good day, all. my special lady friend (SLF) recently purchased a gt(w) tachyon 3 bicycle. it's really pretty, but the behavior of the left shifter bugs me.

first of all, we're dealing with a shimano st-r225 left shifter/brake lever here. it controls a derailleur for a triple crank. all the components are stock, if you want to check them out for yourself.

one issue that is simply aesthetic, but it bugs her, is that the numbered dial displaying the current gear shows the wrong number. i could fix this by opening up the shifter and painting over the dial, but one wonders if this isn't indicative of a larger problem.

the thing that bugs me the most is that it is impossible to shift down from the big chain ring to the middle one. moving the downshift trigger at all jumps all the way down to the small ring (on release--it seems to move to the middle when it's pulled). looking at the specs for the shifter, it doesn't seem like this is supposed to happen.

i've never worked with shifters like these before, and it being new and not mine, i'm hesitant to simply take it apart to have a look at the internals. this isn't standard behavior for these things, right? is there a way to correct this issue? has anyone had similar experiences?