I bought a new bike on Sunday, a Cannondale 2007 CAAD9 Optimo 2 (Ultegra). I think I got a pretty good price on it, $1400. While I love the bike, I was pretty disappointed in the fitting given by the bike shop. In a previous visit, the salesman had done the full set of body measurements (assorted lengths, heights, flexibility, etc.) and had recommended a 56 cm frame; this was not surprising since my previous frame had been a 56 as well. The salesman seemed pretty knowledgable about fit and how this bike would fit me, i.e. what size stem they would probably need to use.

When I came in to purchase the bike, the salesman I had dealt with was not there, so a different one handled the purchase and fitting. It soon became apparent that he was inexperienced and unknowledgable about fitting. For the fitting, he put the seat in the middle of the rails, put me on the bike and asked me how it felt. I said that I wondered if the seat should be moved back, and he argued against that since he felt that the cockpit length was about right and he did not want to swap out the stem. I got him to move it back anyway, but I had to ask him for a plumb bob to see where my knee fell relative to the pedal; it did not occur to him to do this, or to really pay attention to the fore-aft location of the saddle. This is pretty unusual for a fitting, isn't it? When he looked for a shorter replacement stem, he couldn't find one of the type that was already on the bike (Cannondale C4), so he found a more expensive one (a Specialized one with adjustable angles, +/- 8, +/= 16).. However, when I got home, I realized that the stem is the same length as the one swapped out; the only real difference is in the angle.

Needless to say, I feel that I got shortchanged on the fit, and I'm going to contact the manager and ask to be re-fitted. In retrospect, during the fitting, i should have stopped the process and postponed it until my original salesman was in the store.