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If they are this busy that they can't do a 20 min job, they should have a contingency plan in place.
They could work with other "partner" shops that are less busy, perhaps outside Zone 1 - collect bikes / wheels and get them done elsewhere and bring them back in. Perhaps use a cycle courrier with a Bullitt to pick up all wheels and bring them to another location.
Or even pay overtime for their staff to do the jobs after hours?
Have you ever seen a dry-cleaner refusing to get your suit cleaned? No, they outsource and get it done. And probably make higher margins than they would if they did it in house.
The wheel is now with Condor, who are business minded and don't say no to work & money.
EDIT: Your campervan has a flat tyre while touring Scotland. Do you extend your holiday by 6 weeks to wait for the local shop to have a slot to fix it? My 3 days off turned into a 2 months holiday because I had a flat tyre
Vince-
My campervan has a leak. The number of places able to sort that are fewer in number than tyre shops. I have to wait. The other place i called never answered there phone. I am too busy to have spent more time finding somewhere to do it that is too far away for me to drop it off.
Given what you suggest about partner shops. Why don't you organise it. It would be alot of work. It possible but it would require ideally a website were customers book in a job and it get allocated to shops with the capacity to do it. Or a website were a shop that has too much work can offer it up to other shop that can. That work sharing platform does not exist yet but is a decent idea. Develop it and do all the work signing shops up to it.
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they outsource and get it done. And probably make higher margins than they would if they did it in house.
Seems unlikely. If the margin was higher on outsourced work, they wouldn't do anything in house :)
It's common in the machining world for jobs to get outsourced to people with more capacity, but it's rarely done to save money, it's done to keep an existing customer happy or to stop a new customer from looking elsewhere for himself. In either case, the outsourced job is done at little or no profit in order to benefit from the profits on future orders which are done in house. If the bike shop doesn't see you as a potential future profit stream, why would they want the trouble of doing your job for nothing?
cycleclinic
gbj_tester
You gave a shop a 1 star review because they are busy. That's appalling. It's not there fault they are busy. well it is as it looks like they are doing a good job.
It's not the shops fault that your wheel failed and you then expect them to my be your job to the front of the queue because you are more important than other people perhaps.
Shops can't just hire more staff either as good staff are not easy to find and they increase the cost base. Unless that extra member of staff brings in more work then employing them solely to reduce turn around time then becomes a drag on the business and put the whole shop in jeopardy during the leaner months.
My campervan has a leak. The caravan place that it doing the job has a 6 week lead time booked in 13th June at the begining of may. I have to accept that. they are busy. to give them a poor review based on that would be poor of me.