Hopefully the shop tightened the brake cable pinch bolt enough so that the cable didn't slip. It basically sounds like your cable needs to be adjusted and two day's time is too little for the cable to stretch, for the cable housing to become faulty somewhere and compress or for the pads to wear enough to create that much play. I think you should have taken it back to the shop immediately... there's something not right here.


A properly tuned/maintained folding bike should have a good solid feel and be a pleasure to ride. I would hazard a guess that the majority of people on this forum ride a folding bike most of the time and do so without any more incidences than people riding large wheeled non-folding bikes. You've just mentioned too many issues that arose in such a short period of time after the shop worked on it for the cause to be a Dahon issue, I'd be more apt to question the mechanic who worked on it.

But if you're thinking of switching to a touring or a cyclocross/road bike, then by all means do. What matters most is that you ride a bike that you like best.