Originally Posted by
BengeBoy
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.
Every bike shop that sells a bike does this. Unless the word 'group' is attached to it, typically you're going to get the top line mentioned in a FD and the rest one step down.
The shill comment makes me laugh a little on the inside. Mike doesn't even post here anymore, at least I haven't seen him. I just think the negative backlash causes threads in this and other forums to go way beyond their intended life or purpose. And FWIW, this forum of all forums I've been in is the worst when it comes to BD-haters and general cycling snobbery.
I don't see anyone taking sced to task with his post, and I really don't think he is a shill, all you conspiracy theorists out there.