Years ago, I put over $1400 on my American Express and ordered a fairly nice mountain bike (Trek 8000) from Bicycle Bob’s in Goleta. I wanted to support my local bike shop (LBS) since that’s the mantra that all the bikers live by. If you don’t support your LBS, they’ll go the way of the dodo (threatened by large internet superstores), they’d say. With my purchase, I received a few free tuneups a year (which I took advantage of twice) and 10% off accessories for a year (which I also used). I recommended the store to everyone. Each time I visited they were very nice to me, regardless if I was buying or just looking. This was the case from day one.
Last night, I was cleaning my road bike (Trek 2300) and took off the chain. For those of you who don’t know, Shimano chains are not meant to be removed. Oh well. I went to the Bicycle Bob’s on Hitchcock today at lunch and decided to pick up a replacement pin and a SRAM Powerlink. I paid $1.99 and $6.99 respectively. They are $5.99 for five ($1.20 ea) and $3.99 respectively. I paid $9.68 out the door for these two items.
This is rediculous. If it wasn’t an emergency, I wouldn’t have bought these items locally. Unfortuantely for me, the two largest internet bike sites are owned by the same owners (as each other, not Bicycle Bob’s) and their customer service is practically non-existant.
I wish there was an alternative.
$6.99 seems a hair high for a powerlink, even from the LBS. $1.99 for the pin seems reasonable. Regular shipping from Performance adds $6.00 to your order, and you have to wait for it.
Why did you get a new pin *and* and a powerlink?
Hi Fritz. You’re right, it’s not so bad with shipping. Plus I needed the parts right away. Ok, why did I need both? Well I needed the pin because I took mine out. But I also wanted the SRAM in case I wanted a quick release.
When I got home, I lost the pin and so it made the decision easy. Powerlink it was!
Seems like you didn’t have a bad experience at Bob’s so much as you were unhappy with what they charge for small items with infinitesimal margin for them . . . not to be a jerk about it, but I’d say you should be happy they carry them at all, and let you buy them in such small quantities.
Otherwise, how did they treat you?
R
I don’t get your comment at all. When I say “experience,” it encompasses everything. If I receive bad service at a place, I would not excuse it by saying “Well you actually didn’t have a bad experience at the store, you just happened to catch an employee having a bad day.”
I don’t really care if the part makes them little profit. I also don’t think that I should feel lucky that they carry the parts (chain pin, Powerlink). These are basic bike parts.
Otherwise, they treated me fine. I never said I had a problem with their service.
Come on DVo. Be fair.
I think you know exactly what I mean. You didn’t have a bad experience, you had a fit about spending more than you thought was fair, and you blame the store when it was fully within your power to take your business elsewhere.
Your wording is unfortunate; otherwise and never contradict each other the way you use them (“Otherwise, they treated me fine. I never said I had a problem with their service.”). If you didn’t have a problem with their service, why “Otherwise”? That implies that their pricing was a disservice to you.
Your counter-example is contrived and not analogous.
Rob,
I don’t know what you mean. You are making unnecessary distinctions between pricing and my overall opinion of a store or my shopping experience there when one is directly related to the other. The argument you make regarding free choice makes as much as people telling those who have problems with American policies to “move to another country.”
I have a problem with the pricing (experience). Otherwise, I don’t have a problem with the service.
Experience (All encompassing) > includes service, pricing, friendliness, (all independent).
Let’s get back to Apple vs PC debates where you excel.
You are being (in my opinion) disingenuous. Either that, or the semantics are beyond you (which I doubt).
When you say “Otherwise, I don’t have a problem with the service.” That directly indicates that you had a problem with their service in some specific area. What is it? Pricing. You say that’s “experience” and not service, but then say (paraphrasing) “Other than the pricing, I don’t have a problem with their service.” which explicitly means pricing (to you) is service.
Also – the “free country” analogy is not relevant. Unless, that is, going to another bike shop is or would have been such a burden as to render the idea absurd.
So. Let’s recap. You are happy with everything about Bob’s except the price you paid for two parts, which, to put into proper perspective, was in total about 0.007% of the price you paid for a bicycle from Bob’s some time back (and, if I understand correctly, actually about 90% of the price of parts ordered from Performance although yes, you would have 5 of the chain pins instead of 1). And, that equates to your “bad” experience. If this is actually the way you evaluate consumer experiences . . . um, I think I’ll just stop there.
I am not sure what you are hoping to accomplish here. You are actually posting to somehow “catch” me in some semantics loophole? I mean a victory for you here is me shaking my head in defeat and saying “Yes, I am not fit to judge my own experiences in a store I personally visited.” I don’t even know how to proceed.
This is not a win or lose kind of thing – I’m asserting that your rating of “bad” is unfounded. You keep using weird word games (semantics) to suggest that the overall experience was bad because you were unhappy about the price you had to pay. And I’m suggesting that you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
What about your experience was bad? From what I can gather from your word games, it’s the price you had to pay. Did you compare prices at any other LBS? Or only with online store(s)? If you didn’t compare local prices, what about the price was bad? Your preconceived notion about prices for these parts doesn’t match up with reality. My honest opinion is that what’s bad about your experience is what you brought into it.
There’s no win or lose here. You’re suggesting that your entire experience is tainted because of the price you had to pay, and I’m suggesting that that opinion is ill-founded.
Did you compare prices at any other LBS? Or only online? If not, then your preconceived notion about price is what’s bad here, not any part of your experience.
By the way: I’ve had both good and bad experiences at Bob’s. That was entirely due to service and attitude of the employees. If I don’t like a price, I can go somewhere else.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on whether or not price has any bearing on one’s opinion about a store.
Again, you engage in these odd word games. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t want to focus on the crux of the discussion. Ah well. Oh, and thanks for leaving both of my previous postings up, after I asked you to delete one of them. Cool of you (and by cool I mean passive aggressive)
What word games are you talking about Robert? You mean when you were trying to teach me the definition of “otherwise”? If you can’t already tell, only one of us cares about this topic. The other has been trying to drop it for 2 days. As for the imaginary request for me to delete the first comment, I think we covered that in chat.
Um, yeah. Whatever dude.
I agree with the others. As I read, I kept waiting for the “bad experience.” Ten bucks for emergency parts on your years-old bike, for which you had gotten several “deals” in service and parts already. There is no bad experience here. I’m glad to know that if this is the worst that Bicycle Bob’s dishes out, we’ve certainly got a gem in our community.
Really? You spent a few extra dollars and that constituted bad service? If it really bothered you, why didn’t you ask them to match prices, I know they would have. And besides, buying locally means paying a few dollars more, and that few dollars goes into our community. So really, was it so bad?