CBoardman bikes DONT BOTHER !!!

nikrad

Hi just a quick message to all you guys who have been tempted with buying a CBoardman bike from halfords .
Don't bother my experience goes as follows .
Bike was purchased via Royal Mail cycle 2 work scheme after reading great reveiws in the cycling press . The only problem with a review is that that the reviewer does'nt have to use the bike on a regular basis and experience Halfords poor quality of service and repair .
First time the bike was properly used to cycle to work the shimano tiagra shifter broke .
Took the bike to my local halfords was told the ratchet had broken and a part needed ordering which would take between 2 to 3 days to arrive .
Five weeks later !!!!!!! and many phone calls and visits and my bike was ready great i thought .
Got the bike home pumped up my flat tyres and discovered a bolt missing from the handlebar stem . Bike now booked elsewhere for a service as taken it to halfords is pointless . I have learnt my lesson and never again ! Next bike will be a trusted brand from my local bike shop who know what they are doing . Sorry for the rant just hope people learn from my and others poor experience of CBoardman bikes and Halfords
poor service

Brian B

The people who work for halfords are either quite young or retired. Most know nowt about quality road or mountain bikes and quick technical question to any staff in most 'bike hubs' should be enough to warn most people away.

There is nothing really wrong with CB bikes its just that they are set up by inexperienced people. A good LBS could fix it up no probs but then again why bother to go halfords in the first place then!

bilsea159

I agree with the above post. I bought a Carrera Gryphon on the strength of cycling plus review and it is a great bike. Halfords staff have been hopeless at sorting out my niggles though. When I took the bike in for the free 1st service, the staff mucked the bike completely up. I took it back to another branch and it got sorted to a point, and then I decided to take it to a LBS who sorted it out properly. Nothing wrong with the product it's the staff that let the side down.

malc101

Halfords are hopeless, but they do seem to be stocking some pretty good bikes.

Other than the halfords element, how do you find the Boardman bike now its been fixed by a proper bike shop?

I am waiting for my first road bike which i am buying through the ride to work scheme, gone alittle bit overboard though, i will post pics when i get it.

giant_man

Well what can be expected from a chain of shops where you buy your spark plugs for your car? I have always said it about Halfrauds. I don't buy into the 'Bikehut' is a separate entity thing either.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

nikrad

Not been done yet getting it checked out this week at local bike shop .
Funny thing is when picking up wifes new bike from LBS there was a boardman comp getting serviced too so im not alone .
Bike is quite nice and everybody at work loved it only problem was really halfords dodgy set up . Good tip if you are doing cycle 2 work vouchers is to get it serviced straight away at your local bike shop mine only wants 15 quid which aint bad .

meagain

Yes in the main the staff are woeful - but you pay peanuts you get monkeys. In my experience many LBS staff very little better. The solution is obvious - set it up and service it YOURSELF. When I bought a Subway 8 in a H'fords sale (excellent bike and vfm) it was on strict condition that it came in box, untouched by them.

tonyw43

I have to admit to being a little confused here, but it may just be me. Yes your shifter broke, but that component is manufactured by Shimano, not Halfords or Boardman. Tiagra shifters are fitted to the bulk of sub £1000 bikes, so could generate the same problem on a Specialized, Giant et al. If you had bought one of these bikes from your local LBS would you blame them for the problem if the shifter had broke.
Five weeks for the part to arrive is definately too long, personaly I would have asked for the full shifter to be replaced. But again, this could happen at an LBS. For the stem bolt to be missing is totally unacceptable, if you hadn't noticed could have caused an accident so am with you there.

As for Halfords and bikes, they have been selling bikes for over thirty years. The quality of staff is an issue I agree, hence when I bought my Carrera Valour, I set it up myself, and do all the servicing myself. This is despite the fact that I have an LBS not two minutes ride away. I used to get work done there, but reviewed this when a wheel that I had paid for to be trued, came back in just as bad a condition.

davelakers

Well Ive had nothing but great service from Halfords at Lancaster. My bike was set up perfectly when I collected it. I have not used them for servicing it, I have taken it to my LBS, but purely because I live 27 miles from Lancaster.

Having ridden over 2000 miles all through winter in all conditions, the wheel bearings became worn on both wheels. I spoke to the Halfords mechanic, himself a TT rider, and he said that even though it was wear and tear he would replace the wheels FOC. I took the bike up yesterday morning and he swapped me 2 new wheels out of stock. Easy as that. All I had to do was swap the cassette over to my new wheels and my bike is back to original. (I had been riding on Shimano R500's for the last few weeks and hated them)

If this service was from the OPs LBS, Id like to bet he wouldnt have started a thread about it!!!!!!

steedmaster

found out something amusing about boardmans road bikes the other day whilst having a browse in halfords............

i like most have read the marketing garbage about the spec and design being choosen by boardman himself using all his pro knowledge ect. bla bla bla !!!!

so imagine my surprise when chatting to a long time friend of mine who's a specialist full time on the bikehut stand......... he told me about the first batch of the team and pros that came into the store (these modles both have carbon forks with carbon steerer tubes) THEY CAME WITH STAR FANGLED NUTS DRIVEN INTO THE CARBON STEERERS !!!!!!!

he phones head office to make someone at halfords know about it and they said and why is that a problem.........

clueless idiots who should stick to making cheep crap bikes for the masses and leave the higher level stuff to those who know better and should once and for all dissprove any of the bollox that these bikes are expertly overseen by boardman himself he's got more sense than that.

nikrad

Agreed the problem could have happened on any bike that is true .
But it was more an issue of poor service that got to me 5 weeks is to long to wait and i know they said it was out of there control but when there are bikes on the shop floor with the same shifters you wonder why nobody could have used there head and got the bike back on the road sooner .
As for the stem bolt not being fitted sorry but that was the final straw .
Once again these are properly a good range of bikes but with poor set up and back up this spoils them .

meagain

"are expertly overseen by boardman himself he's got more sense than that."

:shock: :? You mean he doesn't actually build up each one himself from a pile of parts?? Whatever next. Shan't have one then. If H'fords claim that he does, straight to Trading Standards, I say.

davelakers

As expected, its turning into another thread taken over by the bike snobs!!

nikrad

lookin good

top_bhoy

davelakers wrote:

As expected, its turning into another thread taken over by the bike snobs!!

Bollocks...in what way? All I can see is a lot of Halfords knocking which is more than justiifed. The bike itself may be decent but infortunately it needs to be considered within the overall Halfords package. The anecdotal evidence is that anyone purchasing a bike from Halfords needs to include an additional 100 quid or so too the budget to have it serviced independantly.

Does it then look such good value? All the evidence points towards Halfords being useless. There have been threads on LBS being useless in the past - just that Halfords seem to make an artform of it so receive more publicity. The gripe of the OP is more than justified. If it had been a car and after a service it had been found that the nut holding on the steering wheel was missing, it would have been a court case.

steedmaster

yes i do like nice shiny expenive bikes but i am not a bike snob....... star nuts in carbon steerer tubes is not vanity or predjudice it is plain stupid and could cause sudden failure resulting in serious injury. there has been no recal so i wonder how many people out there are riding them,

i never suggested that boardman hand built the bikes but the people who are are clearly clueless incompetent idiots, even dave hinde wouldnt put a star nut in carbon forks.....this is a serious safety issue nothing to do with halfords staff knocking, my mate happens to be very good its the lack of knowledge at design and manufacturing level that shocks me.

meagain

davelakers wrote:

As expected, its turning into another thread taken over by the bike snobs!!

Nicely put!

£100 to have an LBS service it? Jeez, the buyers are as slack as the H'fords employees of whom they complain!

top_bhoy

meagain wrote:

davelakers wrote:

As expected, its turning into another thread taken over by the bike snobs!!

Nicely put!

£100 to have an LBS service it? Jeez, the buyers are as slack as the H'fords employees of whom they complain!

tosser

giant_man

davelakers wrote:

As expected, its turning into another thread taken over by the bike snobs!!

It's nothing to do with being a bike snob. If Halfords are selling half decent bikes in their stores and servicing them, they should be up to the task and make themselves as approachable, customer friendly and professional as the next LBS down the road.

All evidence so far over the years suggests to me that they are not. People are attracted by the Halfords name because that's where they have always bought engine oil for their car and so are confident about buying a bike from there, because well, Halfords are supposed to know what they are doing. They shouldn't be in business!

meagain

"tosser"

How charming - such a way with words. Point proven I think.

top_bhoy

meagain wrote:

"tosser"

How charming - such a way with words. Point proven I think.

Yes, point proven - one word is all it takes to sum you up.

TheBoyBilly

So, getting away from this little bit of in-fighting, what's the answer? Do Halfords/BikeHut top brass ever get to know about this poor service. Do they care as long as they are shifting bikes? Obviously they should but I think a better way would be to get a campaign going to boycott the stores. Then Boardman/Dawes/Kona/Rocky Mountain etc will want to know why their bikes are not selling and get them into LBS's. And Halfords get hit where it hurts.........it's called competition I think.

meagain

:roll:

feel

TheBoyBilly wrote:

So, getting away from this little bit of in-fighting, what's the answer? Do Halfords/BikeHut top brass ever get to know about this poor service. Do they care as long as they are shifting bikes? Obviously they should but I think a better way would be to get a campaign going to boycott the stores. Then Boardman/Dawes/Kona/Rocky Mountain etc will want to know why their bikes are not selling and get them into LBS's. And Halfords get hit where it hurts.........it's called competition I think.

If you get poor service you should let the "top brass" know - i am sure that they will be delighted to know so that they can do something about it. After all their jobs depend on Halfords being successful. The British way seems to be never complain just go somewhere else. If you ask for the manager/head office with a genuine complaint you will get satisfaction and often compensation for inadequate service.

I still reckon that the Boardman bikes look ok whatever the inadequacies of Halfords may be.

Hugh A

steedmaster wrote:

yes i do like nice shiny expenive bikes but i am not a bike snob....... star nuts in carbon steerer tubes is not vanity or predjudice it is plain stupid and could cause sudden failure resulting in serious injury. there has been no recal so i wonder how many people out there are riding them,

i never suggested that boardman hand built the bikes but the people who are are clearly clueless incompetent idiots, even dave hinde wouldnt put a star nut in carbon forks.....this is a serious safety issue nothing to do with halfords staff knocking, my mate happens to be very good its the lack of knowledge at design and manufacturing level that shocks me.

Although normally I would agree with you, I think this has been answered by Halfords (in a previous thread or maybe another forum?) who say that the extra thickness and composition of the steerer tube allows the safe use of a star fangled nut. 'Least that's what I heard - apparently all the Boardman bikes have them as they are cheaper and lighter than the bung type ones we all use.

letsride

I visited a Halfords store this morning and wondered why there seemed to be nobody over the age of 12 working there, of course - all four of them were on work experience! Now i know we need to give kids a chance but this was ridiculous. One of them was assembling a boardman urban the other 2 were finishing off assembling a mtb and the other went to get help when i asked him a question; how do i go about buying a boardman? "we're not allowed to use the tills" he said. I left and looked at Yell.com for a LBS but there isn't one around here for miles.

redddraggon

letsride wrote:

Now i know we need to give kids a chance but this was ridiculous.

They've got to do it somewhere, and Halfords is better (and probably safer) workplace than most to do it. Don't suppose they were any worse than the normal monkeys.

letsride

They told me not many places offered w/e so hats off to Halfords on that score.
The boycott idea would never work... we all need/want stuff from Halfords including their bikes and due to their exclusivity deals with big brands people ie.consumers buy into the brand. nuff said

redddraggon

letsride wrote:

The boycott idea would never work... we all need/want stuff from Halfords including their bikes and due to their exclusivity deals with big brands people ie.consumers buy into the brand. nuff said

Do we? I don't

schlepcycling

steedmaster wrote:

so imagine my surprise when chatting to a long time friend of mine who's a specialist full time on the bikehut stand......... he told me about the first batch of the team and pros that came into the store (these modles both have carbon forks with carbon steerer tubes) THEY CAME WITH STAR FANGLED NUTS DRIVEN INTO THE CARBON STEERERS !!!!!!!

This isn't news, cycling weekly covered this in their review and they spoke to the Boardman Bikes people who said that they had done extensive testing and it was OK, also the 2008 models have a new fork anyway which has a carbon bung.

Anonymous

Why is halfords so bad I just dont get how nearly every staff member at halfords that is in the bike department knows nothing about bikes, I remember my Saracen bike, infact the one before that, I had gear problems, took it to halfords, got it back, I still had gear problems, in the end I just gave up.

Now with my Carrera Vanquish I had a wobbly head set, had it taken to halfords, got it back, the handlebars was not very stiff!, apparently could lead to damage, had to get my dad to fix that, also when I got it back the rear break was not on right, god knows what they done but that had to be unscrewed and re positioned .

Apart from that my Carrera bike I bought from halfords for 250 quid seems like its doing well, 1000+ miles on it since I got it in feb and I am cleaning it every week before the bike saturday/sunday rides and its all going good, needs some maintanance now but wont be taking it to halfords.