You're in Florida, where a BikesDirect also owns a local chain of bike stores (or an affiliate of BikesDirect; not sure how all their various businesses are owned).

Personally, I have huge admiration for the core of what BikesDirect does -- importing no-name frames from Asia, putting name-brand components on them at terrific prices; getting bikes delivered to customers on time in good condition. Hooray! It's always great when consumers have choices.

Some practices that are disturbing:
- hyping their bikes by putting on "inflated" list prices (when, in fact, the bikes are never, ever sold for that, anywhere)
- describing bikes as "ultegra" or "dura ace" when they might only have 1 or 2 pieces from a component group on a bike
- their apparent use of Internet shills to hype their product.

There are a number of great no name/private label choices in the market now -- Pedal Force, Scattante from Performance, Novara from REI, "no name" frames on eBay, PlanetX from the UK. BikesDirect might be the most aggressive advertiser, but they're not the only option.

I hope over time they tone down the hype and misrepresentation and focus on delivering great bikes at a value.