I bought a Trek 1000c "comfort" road bike for my wife last year. It has drop bars, and came with Bontrager tape installed. Soon after getting home I noticed that the bar tape had been wrapped incorrectly: starting from close to the stem and wrapping towards the ends of the hadlebars. I decided to not to make an issue of it thinking that maybe it would still last a few years (she's a fair weather, not particularly high miles, rider).

Here we are a year later, and the wrap job is toast. We went to the local shop yesterday for some other accessories, and I mentioned in passing that we needed new tape because it had been wrapped incorrecty. The salesman's response was that many Trek bikes come with the tape wrapped that way, but that it certainly wasn't right, and he'd give enough of a discount on everything that we were buying that day that the tape would be a freebie. Fair enough I thought...in my mind I let so much time pass that it was no longer their responsibility.

I wrapped the new tape and now everything is fine. I am, however, stunned that Trek would ship bikes this way. Anyone else (bike shop employees?) have this experience? Am I missing something? That is, is there any reason one could argue that tape SHOULD be wrapped that way? I've talked to advocates of starting the wrap clockwise on the left and counterclockwise on the right and vice versa, but always that you start from the end of the bars and work towards the stem...