So p@&&ed at LBS

Hi. My husband bought me a Specialized Amira Expert for my birthday last September and being a non-cyclist he relied apon the opinion for the LBS that I had been riding with for over 2 years. I was very close to the owner and his wife, they considered my son (who I had during the riding period) their nephew. Anyway I rode with the specialized rep the week before the bike was ordered. The rep told the owner to order the medium (51cm) but the owner outright told him that it would be too big and I needed the small (48cm) frame. So I got the 48cm one on the day of my birthday. Which I said straight away wow, that's tiny. LBS dude said no its the perfect size. So I rode it, got sore knees and complained and said I wanted the next size up, everyone else's opinion was the same thing too including the other LBS. he ended up swapping the cranks from 165mm to 170mm to try and make me happy but that wasn't going to change the fact I felt like I was riding a monkey bike and it was impossible for me to get out of the saddle to sprint, being a track cyclist too that is kinda something I do a lot of.

I then found out that his employee said to a friend that he'd been in my ear about the different length cranks, also one of the other riders was talking to someone else saying that I didn't know anything about cycling and then another person told me that him and the LBS owner were talking sh!t about me in front of him, which he told them to shut up about me. I then found out that the LBS owner had told my friends wife that my husband was arrogant and treated me like sh!t. So obviously I was not happy at this stage. I also found out he had rung the specialized dealer 100km away asking them if they wanted to buy my bike off him coz he'd sold the wrong size. Meanwhile telling me every time he saw me ride it that it was a perfect size and I look comfortable on it.

3 and a half months later I finally registered my bike on the specialized website and they asked for feedback on how I like my bike and also the shop i bought it from which I answered 1 for very dissatisfied for both. Within 10 mins I received an email asking if I could explain why I was unhappy. So I wrote them a long email leaving the personal stuff out of it but in this time I'd started training with the other LBS and gone from a getting dropped in d grade standard on the road to almost b grade standard. I then rung the specialized dude to ask if he'd received my email and he said he had to ring the specialized rep of the zone and give him a day or two to get back to me because he didn't want to leave it with me thinking specialized is a bad company, but he wasn't sure what he could do because it had been so long. A few hours later he rung and told me they were sending a 51cm frame to my LBS that sold the bike to me for them to swap the frame. I asked if they could send it up to the other shop 100km away and they said no because they wanted to rebuild the relationship the with shop and I replied it has got too personal for that and I'll send someone in to get it done and I explained that just because I didn't deal with this specialized dealer doesn't mean I won't buy specialized products from elsewhere.

A week later someone rung the shop to ask if the frame was there which it was and told them I had to take my bike there and leave it for a week to get done, so I booked it in and they said bring it is in this day and we need it for a few days which I knew he would deliberately do it so it wasn't ready on the Friday afternoon so id miss out on the hardest training session on the Saturday morning. Meanwhile the other LBS had the talking to the other specialized dealer (they are friends, hence me knowing about the phone call trying to sell the bike) and they told us that specialized can't void my warranty if a qualified mechanic was to build it. Which I found out the specialized dealer in my town isn't qualified. So I rung specialized and said I want my qualified mechanics to rebuild my bike and I'll be paying them myself and he went on about rebuilding the relationship with the shop in which then I had an emotional breakdown on the phone to him and explained everything to him then his reaction was like oh ok then u can do that then. Next day my bike was stripped down and my husband took the frame, forks and seat post in to swap. He came back with a frame and forks and no seat post and he told me that I had to take the head set and spacers back to get the seat post. I instantly got on the phone to specialized and they said I had to use my old seat post, which is fair enough songs the head set and spacers and got my employee to do a drug deal kinda swap other wise I would have no seat post. A couple of hours later I get a phone call from specialized saying that we've been told you are in the possession of a 2nd seat post which I replied what am I meant to ride with no seat and seat post now because I rung u and u said that I have to use my old one. He then replied oh that's ok. Your first phone call makes sense now but then he tried to reply and say that it's hard for them to honour warranty coz a trek dealer built it, I straight out replied to him that's fine if you don't because I have my own business and I know about warranties and I also know about the office of fair trading too. Everything was then sorted. But still I was and still am furious. Sorry about the rant. Had to get it off my chest and if u managed to read the whole thing and understand it. Thank you.

Good lord, what a mess! I'll never understand, in this day and age, why an LBS would deliberately treat a good customer badly.

Wow. Sounds really infuriating.
Try to move past this event as soon as you can! Ride your bike. Love your bike. Forget about the rest. It won't do you any good to fume.

I'm sorry that you've been through it. I did read the whole thing and I'm glad you have friends in the other shops so that you could figure out what was going on in the first place! A real newbie would have no idea and just simply give up on riding.

It's a shame the first LBS wasn't kosher with their practices and that it took Specialized to come in a save the day. I understand that they wanted to rebuild the relationship with the first LBS, but I think at some point they have to give that up and just admit that it's not going ot work and to try to save the relationship with the customer -- you.

:(

<Sigh> what a drama. The LBS has really stuffed up this time. And shame of them for having to rely on the supplier/wholesaler to fix the mess.

Have you said anything to the LBS directly after all of this? I probably would write a polite and factual letter to them outlining why you won't be using them anymore. They may or may not read it or act on it but I think for your own sake you need to finish this former personal relationship with the owner of the LBS

I'm sorry you had this terrible experience.

Your post is a bit dense, so I'm not sure I got all the details. Since you had ridden the 51 and were happy with how it felt, why didn't you insist that a 51 be ordered for you?

He has been known to sell wrong sized bikes just because he had it in stock. He has also been known to take a warranty frame, keep the replacement and give the customer an earlier year model, lied to them to say they sent a time trial frame here's this one instead then a few years later admit the correct one is in is storage area. He also said to my husband he was doing a discount for the ultegra pedals and sold them to him for $160, but didn't give the cleats with them, so paying $40 for cleats plus the $160 for the pedals. The pedals retail at $199. He never said to my husband without the cleats because he would have paid extra for them.

I raced him this morning in a criterium, in c grade, and the a graders were racing at the same time and the first time they come past us he tried to jump onto their group, didn't make it (he's over 160kg) and was leading so I casually rode around the outside of him and picked up the pace, so now I'm a little less angry apart from him sorta trying to cheat. He started to get rude to me when I was still riding with him coz I'd started to improve with my extra training. For example I'd to 10km on front then as I'd go to the back he'd pull a dirty face and say is that all you are going to do, first time can be a joke but repeating it with the look it wasn't a joke anymore.

I have long legs for my height but a friend who is 4cm taller than me with shorter legs was told by him that 175mm cranks were th right size for him.... Because the owner was selling this person his old dura ace stuff so he could get the new series of it. The owner is 6"2 the other person 5"4. A little difference.

I'm moving forward and training properly now and riding hills coz the owner always says u don't need to train on hills, what a joke that is. Sure some ppl don't but I do and now I ride steep hills :)

Sorry. I did write him an email saying I wanted the 51cm but he didn't do anything about it and just kept telling me it was going to be too big. The LBS I ride with now even tried to organize it thru the other specialized dealer but they couldn't do much. I even rung specialized at the time to complain.

I'm sorry but this particular "gentleman" seems to ha ve delusions of adequacy and he is I am sure King of the World, at least in his own mind. If it were me I would ha ve washed my hands of him by now. I'd rather ride and train alone any day than put up with spoiled insecure individuals like him.

By this time I hope your have your bike issues settled.

just sayin.

marni

But he's not alone. I have heard and know other bike shop owners who do similar things, both to suppliers and to customers.

See my comments on "Broken Bike Shop Model" thread but LBSs taking advantage of systems the suppliers have to feather their own nest is VERY common. Normally customers NEVER find out about what happens behind the scenes but swapping components on bikes as they are being built, warrenteeing items and keeping the replacement item and passing on a older item, yeah there's a bit of corruption out there as they work the systems to their advantage.

And also reps often work it for both sides so to cozy up to a LBS so their sales increase. Find a loophole in a policy, and the rep will know about it.

This is the true dark side of the cycle store industry.