Originally Posted by
uncrx2003
A lot of shops have demo bikes for this very reason. It doesn't cost them a thing. At the local Trek store, I could get a demo and actually ride it for 50 miles if I wanted to. In fact, one of my buddies bike broke down at the start of the ride a few months ago, they let him borrowed a demo bike so he could ride with the group. That's going out of their way to make customers and potential customers happy. I was worrying about this Trek store when they started out a few years ago but their great customer service has attracted a lot of customers over the past 2 yrs.
Absolutely agree. As I mentioned in my previous post it's reasonable to have certain bikes set aside for demoing. It's not correct that it doesn't cost them anything though, it's an investment in sales.
In this case, the OP wanted to ride a bike that wasn't a demo bike. Rather than go into a lengthy explanation of why he couldn't ride that particular bike the LBS took a shortcut and used the excuse that no pedals were available. Same thing would happen if a 16 yr old kid walks into a Porsche dealership expecting to drive a GT3.