Tired of Bike Shops?

[Sky King]

We went from owning a medium sized bike shop with minor online sales to a very tiny bike shop with major online sales for several reasons, some listed in your frustrations. Staffing was always a challenge so feel your pain on the customer service end.
Love when customer's set appointments and I agree with you, setting an appointment should mean uninterrupted attention - kinda like going to the Dr but again can be a challenge if the shop suddenly gets busy, we schedule those for before we opened or after hours, or when we knew we have enough staff to handle the unexpected.

As in any relationship communication is the key and I too get frustrated when the person helping me can't understand my needs or I can't seem to express my needs.

We did have someone blast a negative Facebook post about our previous shop because my DH refused to drop everything and fix the flat tire on her cruiser bike. Her comment that there weren't any customers in the store so why should she have to leave her bike and come back really irked the DH as he was in the middle of building a bike for someone who did have an appointment and if he dropped everything for a $20 dollar flat repair the person who just invested $3,000 in the bike wasn't going to be to happy.

Now we enjoy sending out information via our blog, providing some fun bike gear to people all over the world and keeping our small shop to provide service to a very specific set of local bike riders. I will say, the DH spends quite a bit of time emailing and talking to potential customers and we like to think we are a niche in the online world because we do provide a real bike person on the other end of the transaction.

[Bethany1]

I had made an appointment for the first fitting and called beforehand to make sure they weren't busy for the other pedals I just bought. I didn't just walk in and ask for them to put the pedals on and expect them to drop everything.

I had gone over the reviews of the Speedplays after I bought them and everyone gave great reviews. I figured I was good for my appointment and even he couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong while I was on the trainer. There are tons of information via the web but until I bought the pedals and tried them myself I wouldn't know. He did a great job of fitting me as everything just seemed to fall into place comfort wise for my feet once he made the adjustments. It was just getting in/out that wasn't working.

I was happy to fix my flat tire w/o help. I figure that's a waste of time for a bike shop if you already can do it yourself. Normally I call up beforehand anyway to stores because an hour and half trip is a long way to find out they can't work with you when you get up there. I figured since I was the first one in the door at the shop, he'd have a few minutes to help me. Apparently I should call beforehand regardless.

I'm learning how to work with bike shops as it's not even close to retail. I'm sure getting bombarded with bikes all day long with different needs gets overwhelming especially if you are a small shop with a couple of people. Just from being in the store and watching, 95% of the people needed a simple fix like tires or a quick check on shifting/brakes and they are good to go.

I kept thinking, Why don't they have a quickie guy (if they have several mechanics) back there doing the KISS simple stuff so people can come in/out and not wait 2-3 days for a tire to be put on. Most of these people are regular people that have no idea that they even have to wait 2-3 days for a tire and the look on their face is of confusion. Calling ahead to see if they can get a tire fixed isn't what most people think of doing.

I do know shops don't carry everything out there or know about all the stuff. Most of what I find is from bike forums and then go up to my LBS and ask. He'll order something for me and a couple of days later I'm good to go.

I did get the Crankbrothers cleats on my mountain bike shoes and tried them out on my bike. They are a piece of cake to get on/off and I love them already. I've got 3-4 sets of clipless pedals that are worthless to me and plan to sell via Craigslist.

I really don't expect special treatment and hope I don't come across as needing it. I was okay waiting for guys to help out the "quickie" customers but then it started getting out of control and my appointment took forever.

From now on I'll just buy it myself if it's the store or order it online and do it via a book or YouTube if I want it done on my time schedule. It's too far of a trip even if I've called ahead to find out they really can't do it when I get there.

Now to put on the Speedplay pedals on my other bike and see if they work and then call up to see if I can return them if needed. Heck, I might as well sell them on my own instead of having to make a special trip up.

Thanks for letting me vent.