cyclescheme voucher turnaround times

gbrnole

I've just returned a hire agreement to my employer for the cyclescheme, anyone know how long its going to take until I get the voucher?

Rich Hcp

Not long, depends when they decide to process it.

A week, maybe?

I applied and got a reply from work saying HR (Bless them) would process them at the end of the month.

After a load of compliants they batched the applications on a weekly basis and they went through pretty fast.

Now you've sent the hire agreement in, it is work ringing the shop and reserving your bike, you don't want to arrive and there is no stock!

Megatron-UK

It was a week for me.

GibboGT

I've applied through evans, was told by evans that it would be 5-7 days after the BACS transfer had cleared as the company needs to have paid for the bike before they clear the voucher to go out.

Bleedproof

Once you've filled in the form your end and sent it back to HR (or equivalent) it's then up to them to get the money sent to CS. It's often the speed of your HR girls.... and or boys

My employer have just sorted out a voucher for a colleague and it was a week in total.

However, when he tried to reserve his bike at Merlin they refused, saying that 'what happens if you don't get your voucher'. Which I would normally agree with, however my company called them and told them it was definite as they'd sent the money already... but merlin didn't want to know.......... plus he paid his 10% extra on a sale bike...

So in the end it's good to know that you're able to reserve a bike as you don't want the disappointment .. my colleague had to wait for his voucher to arrive and hope the bike was still available.

gbrnole

Bleedproof wrote:

So in the end it's good to know that you're able to reserve a bike as you don't want the disappointment .. my colleague had to wait for his voucher to arrive and hope the bike was still available.

Well i've paid a £1k deposit on the bike, its been a hard one to get hold of and the shop would only order it in if i made a non-refundable deposit of a grand as they didn't want it sitting around if I didn't complete the sale.

gbrnole

So its only taking a lot of you guys a week to get your voucher, I returned my hire agreement on Monday so i guess ill be lucky to get it for the weekend then

Bleedproof

alex.hulme wrote:

So its only taking a lot of you guys a week to get your voucher, I returned my hire agreement on Monday so i guess ill be lucky to get it for the weekend then

Thats fair enough, but when a bikes in stock and backed by the Cycle Scheme I think shops should be willing to reserve bikes - especially when the voucher is tied to their store

DevUK

Took a couple of weeks for me. £1k!? My employer only allows up to £750 spend on the scheme

gbrnole

my employer got the consumer credit license so the limit is £7k, hence the £4k bike i bought lol...

tjm

on the other hand, I know some colleagues who had to wait 6 weeks for theirs!

But we have been told the problems are now sorted out......

rob cole

Thats fair enough, but when a bikes in stock and backed by the Cycle Scheme I think shops should be willing to reserve bikes - especially when the voucher is tied to their store

that doesn't mean anything - until the money is cleared into the shop's account they are not going to take the risk of releasing a bike or reserving a bike

put it this way, another customer could walk into the shop tomorrow with cash or a credit card and take that bike, which is a done deal and puts money into the shop's till

we have had people ask to "reserve" bikes and then take 3-4 weeks to present their Cycle Scheme voucher

first come, first served, especially at this time of year when stocks are running out on 08 models

Bleedproof

rob cole wrote:

Thats fair enough, but when a bikes in stock and backed by the Cycle Scheme I think shops should be willing to reserve bikes - especially when the voucher is tied to their store

that doesn't mean anything - until the money is cleared into the shop's account they are not going to take the risk of releasing a bike or reserving a bike

put it this way, another customer could walk into the shop tomorrow with cash or a credit card and take that bike, which is a done deal and puts money into the shop's till

we have had people ask to "reserve" bikes and then take 3-4 weeks to present their Cycle Scheme voucher

first come, first served, especially at this time of year when stocks are running out on 08 models

Fair enough. The shop in question did all it could to make the process as difficult as possible. I appreciate the first come first served basis but if I had experienced what my colleague had with voucher in hand I would have told them to stick it.....

GibboGT

DevUK wrote:

Took a couple of weeks for me. £1k!? My employer only allows up to £750 spend on the scheme

Standard is between £250 and £1k unless a company has special allowance for more through applying.

Company is allowed to limit it though to whatever they want as obviously for a while it puts them out of pocket.

rob cole

the problem you will find with the cycle scheme is that shops balk at giving 10% of their margin to the people running the scheme who are not really doing much for that 10%

this is why you pay retail price on both cycle scheme and 0% finance - the people organising these plans take around 8-10% of the RRP which stings the shop margins

unlike the rag trade (clothing retailers) the bike trade does not enjoy the 200-400% mark up and so anything that reduces an already tight margin, compared to a customer wandering in with cash or a credit card, will often see a shop being less than enthusiastic

there has also been a lot of misinformation about how the scheme works, delays in processing people's vouchers, and delays in shops receiving their BACS transfer, which hasn't endeared the trade to the idea...

hucking_fell

Returned my completed form a fortnight ago. Phoned the cycle scheme people yesterday (01225 448933) to chase it up. Got told it was processed 5 days ago and it can then take up to 10 working days to get to my house. So 2 to 3 weeks seems to be how long you need to wait. Seems like forever though.