what do you think of this bike

romore

its for a 14 mile round trip to work and back everyday, whats your opinion on it.

http://www.littlewoods.com/rf/navigatio ... =489048467

romore

anyone?

Doobz

looks nice mate. I wish I had one of them to get to and from work

bigmat

I reckon you could get better for the money - have a look at the boardman bikes at halfords, ribble website or decathlon have a good £400 road bike.

wilkies80

try this;
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=14988
or this
http://www.cyclexpress.co.uk/Products/SCR_4_0.aspx
or this
http://www.evanscycles.com/product.jsp?style=86698
hope this helps as these guys know about bikes, ideally go to your local bike shop and see what they've got for your price range, as they will A: give you good advice on sizing and set up. B:let you have a test ride , C: be available if something goes wrong, and probably give you discount on the bike and anything you buy at the time, helmet ,clothing, lights(you'll need them !) tubes etc...... Do a bit of local research, you'll be surprised.

romore

the thing is i need to get it from the caterloge, ive not got the option of going to a shop.

i just dont know if this is a reasonable bike or not, thats all i want is a reasonably good bike.

wilkies80

listen mate most of us have ticked a bike on at one time or another , that's not a problem ! how do you know what size will suit you ? what happens if it goes t!ts up ? or isn't set up right ? who will cop for the returns ? I know the bikes i posted are mail order also, but as I said these guys know about bikes.Check the figures out.

blorg

romore- it is probably just about OK, although overpriced- you will get that exact same Raleigh bike for less than £380 (I saw it for £315) or alternatively a better bike for around the £400 mark. If you must buy from Littlewoods it is probably about the best you are going to get (why do you have to buy from them- gift voucher or something?)

redddraggon

That Raleigh isn't very good (for the money), it's no better than my Virtuoso that cost me over £100 less.

Previous posts in this thread have offered far better alternatives for the money.

daniel_b

if I was in the OP's position, and genuinely my only option would be to buy from Littlewoods, I would choose to try and pick up an 2nd hand roadbike, or hybrid (cheaper 2nd hand generally) from ebay, or more likely Friday-ad or similar website.

Cycle to work on that for 6 months, save all the money I would have been spending on petrol/train tickets, and then around Christmas/new Year, look to get myself a nice bike from a shop, or online retailer if you wish, then either keep the previous buy as a spare/winter bike, or look to moev it on.

Apolgies if you have already accounted for these costs, but you'll be wanting to purchase items such as mitts/gloves, shorts, helmet, pump, bottle cage/bottle etc etc

It's a reasonable bike, but more in the £250 bracket me thinks.

Dan

acorn_user

Do you have to buy from Littlewoods due to credit? Some bike shops offer 0% finance on bike. That would be a lot better than Littlewoods.

il_principe

Would not touch it with a barge pole. You can get much better for the money. Do you have to buy from littewoods?

romore

yea its that bike from littlewoods or nothing. all cash is going on getting two cars through an mot.

just interested in what is bad about the bike?

is it not good enough to do the job of getting me to work and back everyday?

il_principe

It's good enough for that I'm sure, but the cheap componentry will doubtless cost you more in the long run. It's just sad that you have to go with littlewoods when as others have pointed out you would be able to buy a much better bike elsewhere for the same money:
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/ProductDetail.aspx?Cat=cycle&ProdID=5360032317&n=GT%20GTR%204%202008

Get rid of one of your cars and buy a decent bike!

romore

Get rid of one of your cars and buy a decent bike! Laughing

i wish i could mate but no one wants a car with no mot.

i really dont know what to do!!!!

romore

ok what about this its cheap and local is it better than the raliegh.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Big-Cat-aluminium ... dZViewItem

redddraggon

romore wrote:

ok what about this its cheap and local is it better than the raliegh.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Big-Cat-aluminium ... dZViewItem

That actually looks pretty good, far far better than the Raliegh (it would still be far better than the Raleigh at the Raleigh price).

feel

THIS link shows that the littlewoods price is not good value. The first one is currently only at £50.

meagain

I'd have thought that even Littlewoods probably know nearly as much about bikes as most cycle shops, except that apparently believe that only one size - " Inside leg: 32-37ins." Is it stretchable or what? Withthat range should fit between about 5'8" and 6'5" !

Assuming you live in UK, 14 miles each and every day likely means that m'grds would be a good idea!

What everyone else said; nothing intrinsically WRONG with that bike - except the price. Buy a 50 quid rigid mtb for now and stick a 10 quid set of 'grds on it. It'll do the same job.

luke2792

I have the 2005 version of this bike and love it - prefer the old colour scheme (used to be red and white)

got mine for about £300 though so i should look at somewhere else to buy it, maybe lbs

Ash_

For what it's worth, I think that eBay bike is being offered at a very decent price. OK - it's clearly been used a lot by someone so is more than a little tatty (look at the pedals for example). But as long as it's servicable it'll be a much better buy than the Raleigh, for a fraction of the cost.

Also, you said it's local to you, which means you must be somewhere round Sheffield. This bike is the (former) own brand of J.E. James Cycles in Sheffiled, so if you needed any help / maintenance they should be pretty useful...

At 160 quid, you wouldn't have to do many commutes on it before you'd saved yourself a fair bit of cash in petrol!

blorg

That eBay bike looks good as others have said. Much better than the Littlewoods Raleigh. Only question now is whether you want to "buy it now" or risk that no-one else will bid (unlikely!)

thamacdaddy

Chain reaction
Wiggle
All terrain cycles etc all do finance options some do 0% buy now pay later.....

If its about spreading the payments and you are not tied to littlewoods due to the fact you have estblished credit with them and feel no one else would lend to you then I would check those out first. Plenty of better priced options for you in that case.

romore

If its about spreading the payments and you are not tied to littlewoods due to the fact you have estblished credit with them and feel no one else would lend to you then I would check those out first.

right i;m on here for info on getting a bike, not for financial advice,but thanks anyway.

daniel_b

Well I guess the general concensus of the thread is that:

The bike will likely do the job, but things may break in the long run.
It's priced at about 50% more than it's worth

That's about it really

redddraggon

romore wrote:

right i;m on here for info on getting a bike, not for financial advice,but thanks anyway.

Don't get that bike from Littlewoods, it's overpriced and rubbish for the price, plenty of cheaper better bikes around. People are only trying to help.

It's better to get a bike from somewhere that at least pretends to be a bike shop (like Halfords) than a catalogue. You get a problem? What are they going to do about it? Not much not very fast I'd expect.

biondino

If you have to buy from Littlewoods - you have a (sizeable) voucher, or (sizeable) employee discount or whatever - buy the bike, it's fine. Not cheap, but fine.

If you have ANY alternatives, then don't buy the bike. You're considering eBay, so you have alternatives.

So, our survey says: DON'T BUY THE RALEIGH FROM LITTLEWOODS.

I hope that's the kind of help you were after.

sicrow

for the same spec as you get with the raleigh at £379 you can get one at Decathlon for £199

if that doen't suit and you can raise a ton then with a bit of routing you would get a second hand bike of similar spec from a local bike shop

giant_man

Shame you have to buy from Littlewoods, cos for 400 quid the Merida 880-24, C+ rated it highly. And I have to say it would be my choice for a first bike right now.

http://www2.merida-bikes.com/en_GB/Bikes.Detail.127

romore

thanks everyone for your replys.

im taking your advice and not going to get the bike from littlewoods.

unfortunatly someone bought the bike that was on ebay before i did.

but ive got my eye on this one, what do you think?

is it any good?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... =p3907.m29

Ash_

The Giant you´re looking at is a very well-specced bike. As a beginner´s / intermediate road bike (I´m guessing I got that right?) then there´s nothing on it that you´ll be disappointed with and nothing you´ll really need to think about upgrading, maybe ever. It´s a bike you could ride for a long time 'as is' and be perfectly happy with.

It´s much better than the other two you were looking at - sooner or later something would have needed repairing on the Big Cat and you´d probably have found out the Raleigh´s limitations pretty quickly...

I think you're going to have to be prepared for the price to go up as fair bit though, similar specced OCRs have gone on eBay recently for around the 300-400 quid mark.

Good luck if you decide to go for it!

Let us know how you get on...