Evans Cycles

The entitlement is astonishing really.

That was my feeling too. Bunch of sad sacks.

digging someone out on linkedin as well, thats a new low

By curiosity went a bit through the reviews. A lot of them are quite fair. Worked in retail for some good years in the past and I have noticed in the past decade that a lot a companies preffer to adopt the ostrich position and dig their head in the sand.

Comunication is key. From my experience, clients are very understandable with difficult situations and they would accept delays providing that they are comunicated in time, and especially when people inquire about them. There is no point in bullshiting them. Telling them that supplier X has some delay and we expect to happen at this date+/- a few days is a valid and fair explanation and the majority of the people are very understanable.

I went through a good deal of the reviews and the pedal reference is marginal.

I think companies should accept if something is above their posibilities at a certain point and inform about them. Is pointless to promise something and fail without informing the paying customer. If any of us would be in that position we would feel the same.

After my last experience with a bike shops I decided to do everything by myself except building and truing wheels.
Don't want to offend but I have experienced this:
*bought new bike which came with the headtube spacer un-aligned and scratched. When inquired about them I was made to feel the crazy one. The buying came with a lifetime free check-up. I only used it once in 6 years because that first impression made me have serious doubts about their professionalism.
*seen a lady asking to have some strap mudguards fitted only to have them straped around the spokes;

• on my last full service a year and a half ago I replaced BB among other things only to recently find that the threads were bone dry, no trace of grease.
  
  

Not sure how all of you are, but I expect to have a proper service and dont want to feel that I need to check everything. I feel some how that a lot of businesses are failing at things and have the impressions that they are entitled of money with-out making a proper effort. This applies unfortunately for big or small ones.

With Evans, it's always been a bit hit-or-miss with the store or staff member. The bulk of the bad reviews sound like they're related to mail order, which has a lot less scope for the staff to act on their own initiative rather than following potentially dodgy orders from above. A lot of the poor communication and inability to speak to anyone would be all that home delivery stuff. I know a few people in stores, and while it sucks to be working for a company that is undoubtedly getting worse, they're working hard and don't deserve some of the shit that people leaving those reviews would be handing out face to face. With chain stores and buying depts. and everything, the shop staff don't really get more info than the end consumer.

If I had someone moaning about a logo on a headset spacer not being lined up, I'm not sure how well I'd react.

some strap mudguards fitted only to have them straped around the spokes

what?

A bicycle is hardly an essential item

This was literally the reason bikes shops were allowed to stay open. I'd argue during a time when everyone is advised to not use public transport that they are essential.

I agree, if you take bikes out of my life, I am just a chubby indian guy

They wrapped them around the spokes too.
When the lady tried to move the bike she could not do it. The mechanic spent some good time to figure out what's going on. So much that the customer start smiling about the stupidity of the situaton.

It wasnt at Evans Cycle.

E-scooters tho

@jackbepablo

If I had someone moaning about a logo on a headset spacer not being lined up, I'm not sure how well I'd react.

It was not the case. The missaligment was physical, meaning some were to the left others on the opposite side creating lips if that makes sense.

I guess they're defacto legal now. Almost got rode into by one today and a police car nearby didn't decide anything was amiss.

Weird, I can't imagine how that would be physically possible. I guess 1 1/8th spacers on a 1" steerer, which is even more concerning

Comunication is key. From my experience, clients are very understandable with difficult situations and they would accept delays providing that they are comunicated in time, and especially when people inquire about them.

To be honest, working at a bike shop atm i haven't got time to communicate anything.

I've got a template on notepad which I paste into each walk in work order.

'We're booked 3 weeks in advance, it'll be seen as soon as possible, 2 to 4 days, may be longer, no promises'

For those who say 'no rush'

' No rush, as soon as possible, may be up to a week or longer', for this one, had a customer then said, 'Yeah, when I said no rush, I meant this evening'

face palm

@coventry_eagle

'Yeah, when I said no rush, I meant this evening'

ha ha ha, so funny. I guess this is the other extreme, from the customer side.

@jackbepablo I don't know how was that possible. When I noticed the best scenario that I thought of was that of poor assembly. Situation that I could not accepted. I politely asked to be fixed only to be met with some crapy excuses and had to insist a lot to be remedied.

@B0N0R It is a posibility and at this time it is very understandable for me. Missing a day, or 2, or 3 I guess is acceptable, but somebody(manager, owner, mechanic, whatever) should make the time to adress it for the solely reason it is the right thing to do otherwise you get in a situation experienced by Evans.

To bring more justification into it I see it this way. You as a mechanic/shop have a better insight of both worlds. In both professional and non-professional life you are a customer. I could say that you are more often a customer than is you client a mechanic. And if you understand the customer situation it should be quite easy to approach it. Being pro-active/active and even re-active of its fair expectations is the right approach.

This terrified me because I can see my shop being overwhelmed (and it already struggling with order).

We’re lucky we’re smaller and have an actual customer service team (don’t think a lots of indies have those).

Big shop like Evans, Halfords, etc. taking the blunt as their customer service team is way too small to deal with the increase in demand.

To bring more justification into it I see it this way. You as a mechanic/shop have a better insight of both worlds. In both professional and non-professional life you are a customer. I could say that you are more often a customer than is you client a mechanic. And if you understand the customer situation it should be quite easy to approach it. Being pro-active/active and even re-active of its fair expectations is the right approach.

You're missing the fact that everyone i know who's worked behind the curtain in "retail" will let sooooo much slide when we are customers because we know how shit it is.

Also the feeling of you bike being in the shop for 2/3 days to you is what it your bike being in the shop for 2 weeks feels like for me because i have 30 people who'd like a call in 2/3 days.
Believe me i'd love to get your pain in the arse job out of the store room asap but it's just not possible atm

I'm having so much of the classic "we've got to order in those parts and our suppliers are running a bit slower than normal currently so i'll give you a call in a few day'

next day at 8am "is my bike ready?"

“7 working days” have been my blanket respond.

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Bike shops seem to struggle in Birmingham city centre for some reason. Evans has now joined Cycle Republic, Bicicielo, Cycle Surgery and On Your Bike on the casualty list.

No bike shops left in the city centre now.

Totally agree in respect to the current situation, but people using that as ammunition in reviews to shit on every person working in that business stinks of selfishness really.

@bujalarab not saying none of what you’ve said is valid, but the pay gap vs quality of work void is massive, I’ll do the best I can to attend to your bike in the most thorough way, but if you come to me about a mis-aligned head badge, I honestly can’t take you seriously. What exactly do you expect a staff member to do about something like that exactly?

This goes both ways tbh. Customers always think ‘we’re fleecing them’ of money, and bike shops barely make enough money from servicing.

@Chak

If head-badge is the manufacturer logo and is somehow mis-aligned I guess it would be a far fetched expectation to have it perfect as it would depend on the manufacturer and less to the bike shop. But I would argue a refusal or replacement, as for me difference is in details.

If head-badge is a reference to the situation experienced by me with the extra details given in reply to jackbepablo I would say my point is valid.

There is no point in picking on the odd customer that expects everything perfect. Looking at Evans's reviews for me some question marks should be raised. Probably they wanted more they could handle and got out of control?

I find edscoble aproach very good. You give yourself some leverage time. This way customer know what to expect. If you manage to sort it earlier that is great. Customer would be very happy.

I don't consider a valid explanation busy times and low fees a reason to decrease quality of a service. I don't even think that any of us, when it comes to accepting a service, would expect a lower quality just because of those 2 reasons. Not to include here quality of materials used.

I just dealt today with to local shops. Asked what I need it from them. One told me that the waiting time is 4 weeks. Told him that I will look a round to see what is the local situation and I will return if I get similar answers. We parted very politely with the shop understanding the situation.

2nd shop told me that about a week will be the waiting time, but for my kind of request there is a chance to be happening in a few days. I told him I am happy with 1 week time, if its earlier would be great.

My point is that the person in charge of a shop is the one that knows the situation best. He knows very well what is going on around the industy(this applies for any business). If you gave a customer a time window and you fail to fulfill it and ,even worse, you ignore the customer's plea for information than the problem is with the business/shop. If you corectly inform the customer, even with the risk of him not being pleased, there is no way so many will leave negative reviews.

This is just a short blip anyway at the moment and won't last.
I hope people didn't just buy crap bikes and there will be decent options on the second hand market soon.
https://road.cc/content/news/motor-traffic-levels-double-lockdown-low-274713

Effect of being a motor city, I guess? At least On Your Bike moved rather than closed, but that is a bit shit.

If you corectly inform the customer, even with the risk of him not being pleased, there is no way so many will leave negative reviews.

I'll guarantee you now that that is utter fantasy. This week alone, and despite repeat updates to customers regarding warranties that we have near no control over, almost all got pissed off and decided to complain.
We can't control when Madison gets replacement parts. We didn't break the parts. Half the bikes weren't purchased from us even, so why is the onus on us to suck it up and take both the verbal battering and the demand to facilitate it faster than is feasable.

You seem to preface a lot of statements with 'I'. Your experiences are no less valid, but it's no indicator of the whole picture. We have a total of two full timers, and two part timers building a backlog of hundreds of bikes company wide. The only thing we can do is say within 10-14 days to delivery. All orders need to be booked in, built, packed, re-booked, and loaded up. Oh yeah, this isn't including bike repairs and warranties by the way.

Your implication that we have very concise time frame on how this is accomplished, with lead time updates for customers to give ourselves leverage is far from reality.

I'm gonna go on a limb here and say no one wants to ignore customers or make them wait for shits and giggles; that's absurd. It's simply the reality of it at the moment that doesn't reconcile with peoples purchase habits.
You tell people delays should be expected, what most hear is 'I can't be arsed'.

The whole idea that the 'customer is always right' needs to fucking die. We're doing our best and getting paid pittance for it.
There's more to the whole chain then the person your talk to.
Support your local bike shop big or small. Stop moaning online. Maybe after this shit is over things will change for the better.