Originally Posted by
quicktrigger
But a point you are not addressing is, as a consumer, if I'm doing direct to customer ordering, Trek is too highly priced, and too inconvenient. If I am confident enough to order directly, then I expect at home delivery (unlikely from Trek as why would the LBS pay for the privilege to lose money with extra expenses), or wherever I want it delivered, and I'm certainly not paying retail price when others provide similar bikes for much less. As stated by another poster in the FX disc thread, Trek bikes have gotten increasingly dull and generic, so why not go with a much lower cost generic bike?
I recently read that Lexus (the Toyota brand) will include a new "fixed" price model (remember Saturn sales?) because customers don't want to dicker. I loved dickering but I know a great many people that don't. LBS sales are a lot closer to being like old-fashioned "dicker for a price" sales than this new model of sales. I read (imagine) a trend away from the dicker model in these sales but it may be an experiment of sorts. (Saturn sales.... well they weren't great.)
Saying that the Trek is too high priced and inconvenient sounds like your opinion.
Trek won't ship to the customer because they HAD to give the LBS something to compensate for the potential lost P&A sales. Making the customer go to a shop to pick-up the bike offers the LBS a path to recover those sales.