I would expect to pay for the bike tire mounting, but if you paying for the mounting of car tires its time to shop around. I get my tires mounted and balanced for free. Fixing flats and rotating the tires is also free. I have even taken cars there that I bought with tires from other shops on them and I still get the same service.

(https://www.lesschwab.com/)

Cycle Logik. They used to be on Richmond Road, beside MEC but they just recently moved to Wellington. They converted their concept, they're now only selling racing bikes. The amazing part is they still honour their service waranty on they hybrids and mountain bikes (ie Kona) they used to sell.

We are in the age of commodity buying. People buy from the internet, like people use to buy locally. There is no service with an internet sale and most of the time you pay for freight. Funny thing is, most people do not see freight as a real cost of an item. So for that LBS to survive he needs to find a way to be close to the cost of the web stores. One way is not to build in labor expenses to install tires for free and sell everything A LA Carte. I for one agree with the A LA Carte approach. It rewards the consumers that want to have a local supplier, and does not burden the LBS with the extra expense of labor to install items such as this for free.

Free service is at the LBS' discretion and should be used as a marketing tool. It can be given to good customers to reward the for their loyalty or new customers to entice them to return.

Would you have paid another 10% for the tires if there was free installation? (Most people wouldn't)
Have you been as loyal to this LBS as you expect from them? (Most people aren't)

The LBS isn't there to save you money and do work for free. They exist to make money in an industry, we hope, they love and support. As such, we need to support them or when they disappear we will all be buying online with absolutely no support.

Pardon the punctuation. Need coffee.....

^^^^^ What he says

My wife and I own a small retail shop (bridal, pageant and formal wear) We get very, very tired of people coming in and "demanding" a discount or "what are you going to give me for shopping here" etc. We have return customers that we will try and give something back to, because they have been coming to us since we first opened. Small businesses are a day to day struggle all we can offer is service. We cannot compete with internet or big box store pricing. For every customer that buys something in our store we have 3 or 4 that come in to check sizing or pricing and then either purchase somewhere else or order over the internet. A hazard of doing business in these days. But for every person that does that we have to raise our prices a bit to maintain our overhead. It costs money to keep the doors open and pay the employees whether someone purchases something or not.

That being said...if I were to purchase something from the LBS and I don't feel like installing it I would ask how much and then decide if I want to have them do it or not. FWIW usually I don't have them install stuff, because I am very particular in how things are done on my bikes. YMMV.

If the price is acceptable have them do it, if not decline. If they offer to do it for free, accept graciously, but don't please don't expect it the next time.

Aaron