Originally Posted by
lostarchitect
To be frank, it is not the smartest thing to buy a $900 parts donor bike without knowing what all the parts are. Sounds like he made a mistake there.
I had a single speed Mercier bike from BD and I was pretty impressed with it for what I paid.
I remember that bike. You did well with it. I'm not against the company or the concept entirely. I'm just annoyed that people are often not informed enough to know the difference between an online bike and a bike-shop bike. I was working as a mechanic in a local bike shop last month. Customers came in with their $200 pieces of doo-doo and proclaiming how well they did. Meanwhile, their bikes were in terrible shape, some salvageable, some not.
It's a fair point you make about [MENTION=21724]cyccommute[/MENTION]'s story.