You are reading a single comment by @M_V and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@M_V
While working in halfords i bought a bike from Evans and it was so poorly built i had to take it straight over to halfords and spend about 45 min setting up the brakes, truing the wheels and tightening things up.
Did i spend that long pdiing bikes for customers in halfords?
No.
I would have liked to but when you come in after a day off to find a list of usually around 10 bikes that should have been built the day before and you know the customers could walk through the door looking for them anytime you can only do so much.
Add to that incompetant management who have no concept of the length of time it takes to build a bike or do repairs or shift deliveries of 75-100 bikes each weighing 20kg+ up a flight of 40 stairs and put them away in the warehouse and whose only concern is that their shop is "faced up" every 10 minutes.
Oh yeah and then there's the employment criterium. I think it is "can you write your own name son?" "Yes? Well theres your uniform my boy, away and build some bikes for kids to risk their lives on." in halfords.
I can only speak from experience of working in halfords but i think its no wonder that "superstores" like halfords and evans turn out below par workmanship.
The whole pricing thing i don't think is a case of the stores saying "if you can't do it yourself you deserve to be fleeced" but more "we don't care if you come back because we have the volume of custom to always be able to replace you" whereas an LBS is more likely to value your custom and spend the time talking to you, do jobs for lower cost or free etc because they don't have 300 people walking though the door every day.