Is This Unreasonable? Or Am I?

submityournentries

last wednesday i booked my bike into my LBS for it to have its brakes bled. (i can do it myself, but i dont have the tools, and i am not near the shop i used to work at, so gotta get someone else to do it). the earliest they can do it was tomorrow, so i said find, they booked it in, and i took the bike away, to be taken back in today. i took it in at 2pm and they chap working said okay we can have this done by friday. i said well its booked in for monday, surely then it gets done monday. so he wandered off to ask the mechanic, who said maybe thursday. i was abit miffed, and said well surely why book it in for monday if your cant do it then? and his reply was, well come in tuesday, it probibally wont be done but ahwell.

is that poor service? or do i just expect too much?

lawman

imo thats abit poor unless they have an large amount of similar work to carry out on other bikes then its pretty unreasonable. how much are they charging you?

submityournentries

£17.99 (hopefully, if nothing else needs doing and no parts are needed). and when i booked it each day in their diary had 1 job written in, but i suppose in a week that might have changed. but even then i would hope to be at the front of the queue.

Anonymous

awful service and not nearly good enough. but what can you do? it needs to be done, you cant do it yourself o my advice is to bend over and take it up the obvious whih is exactly what the bike shop is expecting to get away with doing.

Briggo

sheepsteeth wrote:

awful service and not nearly good enough. but what can you do? it needs to be done, you cant do it yourself o my advice is to bend over and take it up the obvious whih is exactly what the bike shop is expecting to get away with doing.

That may be the service he is looking for though.

Anonymous

well, if he is going to wait until tuesday he might as well pop round tonight cause i'll get 'er done

camerauk

Very bad service if you booked a mot or service on a car, you would get it done on the day book it should only take longer if any parts are needed, that they do not keep in stock
take it to another shop or buy the bleed kit

Anonymous

camerauk wrote:

, you would get it done

agreed

MountainMonster

Why not just buy a bleed kit, have it delivered before you can bring bike in, and do it yourself every other time.

That service seems terrible to me, would be sure I wouldn't go back there ever again.

submityournentries

yeah i definately wont be going back. and i will buy a bleed kit soon. actually ill say the C word, ill ask for one for christmas.

weeksy59

unacceptable if you ask me.

If i book it in on a particular day, that's when i want it done.

supersonic

they should have told the 1st time when the likely finish time was. Everyshop i have worked at you leave the bike with them, and you get an estimate of time, can be several days if busy.

MountainMonster

weeksy59 wrote:

unacceptable if you ask me.

If i book it in on a particular day, that's when i want it done.

Very valid point. Especially if you've been waiting a few days for a very simple job.

submityournentries
Sounds like a plan mate! Their quite cheap so may even consider getting one before hand.

MountainMonster

weeksy59 wrote:

unacceptable if you ask me.

If i book it in on a particular day, that's when i want it done.

Very valid point. Especially if you've been waiting a few days for a very simple job.

submityournentries
Sounds like a plan mate! Their quite cheap so may even consider getting one before hand.

nicklouse

supersonic wrote:

they should have told the 1st time when the likely finish time was. Everyshop i have worked at you leave the bike with them, and you get an estimate of time, can be several days if busy.

agreed.

submityournentries why did you take the bike away?

Anonymous

if they booked the bike in for monday though, shouldnt they have kept a slot for monday?

specialized989

£17.99? sounds like a standard Bike Care Plan from halfords to me... if you took it in and had difficulty, bike shops that sell cheap bikes are MENTAL at this time of year because of the winter phenomina thats called christmas, so im not TOO suprised, although they should stick to their promises :shock:

supersonic

i dont know too many shops that work like that. The booking in probably referred to free storage space.

Anonymous

supersonic wrote:

i dont know too many shops that work like that. The booking in probably referred to free storage space.

how hard is it to book a service slot and honor it? it must be the only mechanical service industry where this is a problem and lets not forget, bikes arent exactly the most complex machines.

supersonic

have you worked in a bike shop? They rarely work that way. The bike goes in, it works in a stacking system. Me and nick agree on this, and we are both bike mechs.

Anonymous

supersonic wrote:

have you worked in a bike shop? They rarely work that way. The bike goes in, it works in a stacking system. Me and nick agree on this, and we are both bike mechs.

i havent and i understand what you are saying but i have worked in a workshop fixing lots of machines. i spent over 10 yrs doing it and the way it works is to book a time slot, figure out which machines are needed first and make sure the work is done in time for that dead line.

nothing would have got in the way of a pre set order of work unless operationally imperative.

we worked on the system of "bad planning on your part doesnt constitute an emergency on mine" this meant that vehicles were submitted on time in the correct condition for work to be carried out by my team of mechanics.

we would also carry out a triage of the equipment to give a quick assessment of what was actually wrong which allowed us to order in spares and whatnot in time for the work to be carried out. this way my shop floor wsnt littered with vehicle which were waiting for spares and i only dealt with machines that could be fixed according to the time scale i submitted.

if the shop couldnt honour a time slot they shouldnt have said so but if they say it can be fixed on monday, they should allot a time in that days schedule to get it done.

i genuinely dont see what is harder about working on bikes than any other machine, i would have thought it would be easier.

submityournentries

it is at halfords, but i didnt wanna put that cause i knew it would result in halfords bashing, rather than just crap service bashing. and i worked as a bike sales guy in the halfords in my hometown for 2 years, and we would always do the bikes the day they were booked in (not brought in mind, but when they are booked in in the diary).

NICKLOUSE i took the bike away between wednesday 29th and today as i wanted to ride it abit between, and see if the problem sorted. plus i didnt want them to have my bike for 10 days before even looking at it.

weeksy59

supersonic wrote:

i dont know too many shops that work like that. The booking in probably referred to free storage space.

Fortunately my LBS does.

For example i wanted them to swap all my drive components over for me, rung them on the Monday...."What day would you like,we have a slot on Thurs morning if that's any good?"

I agreed, took it Thurs morning, they did the work and phoned me about 11am. Done.

Anything else is completely ridiculous IMO

supersonic

Most LBSs have one, maybe two mechanics - and these mechanics also build bikes as the shops sell, and a good shop may be selling 50 in a weekend. So there are rarely fixed workshop slots for set jobs, just rack and stack. Often when working the manager will often take you off what you are doing, maybe to get a delivery in, assess a bike that has come in etc etc. Small scale stuff many of them. Most people can build a bike. However many bikes that shops get coming in are old wrecks with obsolete parts and this is where it gets difficult and the knowledge of the mechanic to work out how to solve a problem. New, expenesive bikes are mostky easy for a mechanic. BSO, and ancient stuff are certainly not.

I agree the shop should have been more communicative about time scales.

monkey186

supersonic wrote:

Most LBSs have one, maybe two mechanics - and these mechanics also build bikes as the shops sell, and a good shop may be selling 50 in a weekend. So there are rarely fixed workshop slots for set jobs, just rack and stack. Often when working the manager will often take you off what you are doing, maybe to get a delivery in, assess a bike that has come in etc etc. Small scale stuff many of them. Most people can build a bike. However many bikes that shops get coming in are old wrecks with obsolete parts and this is where it gets difficult and the knowledge of the mechanic to work out how to solve a problem. New, expenesive bikes are mostky easy for a mechanic. BSO, and ancient stuff are certainly not.

I agree the shop should have been more communicative about time scales.

I was going to ask when you said on the previous page - what's the point of leaving your bike for several days at the shop to do the job that takes 1-2 hours - but the above explains that this is how the system works. (I'm total newbie still!)

Still though, while i appreciate that the system with bike shops does work in this way, it obviously doesn't seem ideal. After all, the customer knows that the job he wants to be done on his bike takes 1-2 hours, and suddenly he is being told the bike has to stay in the shop for a week. This is quite aside of the inconvenience for many people of having to part with the bike for such long time.

My point is surely there are shops which opt for a different system, say keep an extra mechanic person to deal with booked jobs in the exact time slots allotted. This would mean an additional expense for the shop (an extra salary to pay etc), but it seems to me that many people would prefer to take their bike to this type of shop if they had the choice - thereby making the shop's business better effectively enabling it to afford keeping this extra mechanic person.

Just a thought, as i said i'm still newbie and can be wrong

Anonymous

monkey: you are not expecting too much, bike shops are just failing to deliver a what i would consider a proper service if they work the way sonic is suggesting. if it is the way it is and people are happy, there is no need for a shop to change its practices.

mind you, if a shop says "we will take your bike and let you know when its done" it is up to you to decide if thats good enough. it wouldnt be for me, id find that shoddy, unreliable, un professional and i wouldnt trust a shop which couldnt even run its service floor efficiently to run it's spanners around my bike.

supersonic

Mostly it is the way it is unfortunately. Not ideal I know, but many shops simply can't afford to take more staff on so can operate long service slots. And people don't want to pay more than 20 quid to have your mech fixed ;-) If they did have hour slots in the day, how many would pay 50 quid per hour, even if it didn't use all that hour? Possibly a market for it in some areas, I dunno.

Anonymous

hmm fair point, the "better" service would cost more so it is upto the customer to decide whther they want to pay more for an improved service or pay less and make do.

the cost of servicing was a big factor in me deciding to buy my own tools and learn it all myself. it helps that im mechanic though i suppose. and that i enjoy the mechanical aspect of owning bikes.

Danny-T

If there were two bike shops, one operating how supersonic describes and one how sheepsteeth describes I know which I'd choose.

It's not a case of "this is the way it's done in bike shops", they're the same as any other business, be more efficient and deliver on customer expectations = get more customers.

Not the fault of the mechanic being oiked off to take a delivery, it's the shop owner/manager/supervisors responsibility to get things running smoothly.

If a shop can get things finely tuned to be an in-and-out process they'd free up a load of storage space which they could use to sell more bikes!

supersonic

Yeah, I think if you have the nouse for it then investing in your own tools is a good investment: in fact I urge all people to learn the basics about their bike and get a few spanners etc.

Maybe some shops could compromise though, and offer say 2 or 3 'premium' slots a day?

submityournentries

i can do it, i just cant afford the kit and as i already had a Bike Care Plan, i figured it was worth a shout

also, after all the hassle, i got a phone call at half 1 today saying okay your bikes ready to come and collect. so after all that its all sorted anyways , so happy bunny.

oh and even more happy bunny, as my rear tyre had a huuuugggeeee thorn in it, and it only went down in store, not on london to brighton so happy.