Originally Posted by Wheever

I've been following this thread, and was oddly unsurprised when the bike in question was finally identified as a Giant Defy. I just went through some similar gyrations when I bought my Defy 1 a month ago! I think Giant has made a Giant mess with their odd sizing.

I'm 5'9", with monkey arms and spider legs. I usually fit a 54cm pretty well, but am also comfortable on a 56cm. The first Defy I tried out was a M/L, and I loved it! The problem was that the LBS where I tried the bike was full of ********, and I didn't really want to buy from them. So, later that day, I went to another bike store where I tried out a bunch of bikes, one of which was the low-end carbon Defy in a size M. Of the bikes--a synapse, an Allez, a Caad, etc.--the clear winner was the carbon Defy. They didn't have a M/L for me to compare it to, and they didn't have any aluminum Defys in M or M/L. Anyway, eventually found a closer LBS that had a closeout on a M Defy 1 and after riding it a bit, bought it. Everyone assured me it was the right size for me, given my height. I rode that bike for two weeks, trying to get comfortable, and I just couldn't! I felt jammed up against the bars, and like my weight was WAY too forward. I tried everything, shy of swapping stems to stretch out. Eventually, after riding around with the saddle shoved all the way back beyond the end of the max marking, I gave up.

(A whole lot of stuff then happened that resulted in my driving to an LBS 80 miles away and swapping the M for an M/L.)

The M/L immediately felt better, and absolutely perfect with the seat slid a little forward, and I've been riding it for all it's worth for the last two weeks in complete comfort.

My point is this, I guess: for whatever reason, people with unusual body configurations end up on Defys that don't fit them well, based on Giant's odd ideas of what size fits what height rider. Their charts make little sense, and when you compare geometries with other bikes, it sometimes doesn't make sense at all. They need to reevaluate who fits what size based on other metrics besides height because, for whatever reason, the Defys seem to flummox people over and over.