Originally Posted by
pdlamb
I'd look askance at the (bankrupt) Performance shop selling the bike; where are you going to get it serviced?
The Fuji bike itself I wouldn't worry about. Fuji bikes are as well made as any other, and somehow they can sell them for hundreds of dollars less than other brands.
Aside: I spread my Fuji frame to 135 mm rear spacing and didn't correctly adjust the dropouts. 10,000 miles later the frame broke, and Fuji replaced the frame out of a different dealer. The replacement frame now has about 45,000 miles on it. It's my normal commuter, and I'd buy another one if I weren't such a bike snob.
First of all, thanks to you the word askance is now part of my vocabulary, so that's pretty awesome. As far as service goes, I do most of my own work. This year I had some vacation time to burn so I went to a bicycle mechanic school for a week long class. I went back a couple of months later for a wheel building class and built my own set of wheels. That was cool. The local shops by me offer free adjustments on bikes that you buy there, but you still pay full price for a full tune up. I do my adjustments and keep my wheels true/tensioned as needed and out of laziness bring the bikes in for an annual service. As such, I'm not giving anything up in terms of where I buy vs. where I get serviced. I may actually stop bringing my bikes in and just do all of my own work after some of the bad experiences I had this year. Nothing major, just attention to detail stuff that I would have done better myself. I think the bike snob thing is what's slowing me from buying this Fuji. And I have no business being a bike snob....none... I really need to do less internet biking and ride more.