Halfords - What a shower of ******(insert appropriately)

foregoneconclusion

Fecker wrote:

Going by the post quality in here id say the members of this forum and the halfords guys are actually the same people :P

LOL!! Just checked your other in depth post......what time you due back in boystown?

pittpony

I've only used my local Halfords out of desperation when i got some wheels through the post and realised i didn't have a chainwhip tool at about 7pm :oops: It took a little while to get his attention, but the guy was pretty helpful when i asked him how to use the tool. However it snapped the first time i used it And i paid over the odds for it too!

Ah well, i'll know for next time to be a bit more organised :roll:

mookboy

Picked up the bike today (really chuffed with it) and I have to say I dealt with a different assistant who was a lot more helpful, knew what I was talking about, and seemed to know his stuff too. The manager guy who helped out was also spot on. I left pretty pleased with the experience considering the bike was 4 days late and it was an absolute ball ache to order.

I'm still unsure about taking the bike back for the checkup they advise after 6 weeks though as I just feel a smaller bike shop might have the time to do a better job.

supersonic

The check up is free, and irons out any minor niggles and adjustments from 'bedding in'. Another shop will charge you obv. Learning to do some basic checks and adjustments is essential, I'd put the money into a good book like Zinn.

Panasonic

Hello I am bikehut manager in Halfords in Tottenham. We are more like a "proper" bike shop than many bikehuts, our Mechanic used to be a professional racer and raced for his country, he and our main bike builder also used to build bikes for Eurobike, and had their own shop in Czech republic. While we do have staff that are newish to cycling most are all well clued up and all have bikes that they maintain and upgrade they are constantly learning and improving all the time. We normally build any proper adults stuff asap, we also sell very very few of the cheap full sus stuff, most adults leave with at least a Carrera. We also have a extended range with extra commuter bikes from kona and dawes in store. Most halfords dont do repairs at Christmas time! We are too busy building bikes or serving! If we had more staff we could carry on doing repairs, but when you have 17 bikes to build a day the mechanic needs to help us build to keep us up to date with builds. Oh and I have built all my 9 bikes that I own, and have very good knowledge of general bike stuff, I won the Kona "make it shonky" bike competition with my Kona Humu 29er (google it!), I have met Chris Boardman and had a chat with him about frame material, and why there is no track bike in the Boardman range... he admitted he hadnt really thought about it! We sold the most boardmans in the first few weeks when they came out, including I think one of the first in the country (the bikes had just been delivered minutes before!) So I think if you visited our store you would served properly. I am sorry it sounds like I am blowing my own trumpet, but I get annoyed with bikehut bashing sometimes (although many seem to deserve it!), and want to let you know that some bikehuts have good staff!


PS always have your 6 week service, in many shops it will void parts of your warranty, spokes need tensioning, cables, cranks bolts etc..... need tightening......

Nitro080490

stubs wrote:

My local halfords (southport) is rubbish for buying a bike but is useful for buying lube and those little yellow packets of bike bolts and bits and pieces are very useful However my local bike shop (formby cycles) makes halfords look like paragons of efficency I have tried to order parts 3 times from them and they have never come up with the goods so now its chain reaction for me they are the the fastest to deliver and if you make a mistake its dead easy to send stuff back

That is abit unfair because your stereo typing every single halfords from your local store
basically halfords as a whole are abit silly at times but there are a few stores who really do try hard to become an actual bike shop for example my store we do get the head office coming up with stupid ideas but then we have no control over that prime example in a week we managed to sell 80 bikes in a day what local bike shop does that we do admittedly sell some shit ass bikes like shockwaves but we do also sell van Nicholas
are staff personal bikes are
personally i have a custom built titanium airbourne my department manager has a orange patriot excel , a kien palamino, an on one imbred, a lemond titanium road bike , a giant mcm carbon my fellow colleague also has a custom built airbourne, are machanics have rocky mountain bikes

The Big Cheese

nope - still not convinced.

stumpyjon

Nitro080490 wrote:

That is abit unfair because your stereo typing every single halfords from your local store

That's the point isn't it, Halfords is a chain, one of things they sell on is consistency of brand, you expect them all to be the same. If you read through a lot of the threads on Halfords you will see people praising individual stores but on balance you're more likely to end up with poor advice and a heavy and dangerous bike not fit for purpose.

I'm with Cheesey, I'm sticking to my LBS (where I get good advice / value for money pretty much every time) and selected online reatilers when appropriate.

headspinner

Nitro080490 wrote:

That is abit unfair because your stereo typing every single halfords from your local store
basically halfords as a whole are abit silly at times but there are a few stores who really do try hard to become an actual bike shop for example my store we do get the head office coming up with stupid ideas but then we have no control over that prime example in a week we managed to sell 80 bikes in a day what local bike shop does that we do admittedly sell some shoot ass bikes like shockwaves but we do also sell van Nicholas
are staff personal bikes are
personally i have a custom built titanium airbourne my department manager has a orange patriot excel , a kien palamino, an on one imbred, a lemond titanium road bike , a giant mcm carbon my fellow colleague also has a custom built airbourne, are machanics have rocky mountain bikes

So you work in Halfords - Fair enough. The point is that not all stores are rubbish, but sh*t sticks, and bad stores give the whole chain a bad reputation. In one of your other posts on here you say

I work in a bike shop we had a customer come in bragging about the bike he just bought which was a specialized Comp titanium

as we brought the bike out i looked at ti and realized its not actually titanium the only thing thats titanium on that bike is the paint i brought out my bike and showed him what titanium looks like he refused to believe me even my colleague at the time sagested it was titanium
we had a look on the website and it says specialized comp titanium then later on that day my colleague had a closer inspection online and found out only that the bike was infact aluminum
and the only think titanium on i was was surprise surprise the PAINT !!!!
So know we are going call the customer up and let him now that his bike is infact aluminum
And that he got owned !

I've commented in that thread too that I think your customer skills are lousy. You need to realise that you could be one of the reasons why so many people have such a bad view of Halfords.

Personally, I've never bought anything large or expensive from them, but I have bought bits. Most (but not all) of the times I've been in my local store, I've been served by the kind of person I wouldn't want anywhere near my bike. The trouble is that Halfords will give these people basic training and then call them technicians. I did visit them this morning, and whilst they didn't have what I wanted, the guy was very helpful so it was one of those rare occasions where a decent member of staff was on.

I'm sure that you are a keen biker and probably good with tools too, but you need to brush up on your customer skills. If you stick at the job long enough you'd probably be an asset to them as you like biking. It's the love of cycling that can make all the difference. Learning people skills is the easy bit - Making someone who doesn't care about bikes interested in them is a lot harder.

Essentially, however much some people may protest, Halfords are a car accessory store, that also happens to sell bikes. The fact is that they sell more bikes than most LBSs. It's a bit like Dixons/Currys and an independant hifi shop. One is cheap and staffed by students and the other is a specialist.

I know which of the 2 will probably give better service, and the other will be cheaper. You can't have both.

Shame really

HS