Mosquito bike fitting

on-yer-bike

Anybody had a bike fit at Mosquito Bikes? Was it good?

sungod

yes, excellent, takes a couple of hours, it's a dynamic fit, so after the initial interview, assessments and measurements, you'll be on the turbo quite a while, go prepared!

btw as i then bought a bike from them, they knocked the price of the fitting off of the final bill

on-yer-bike

Which fitter did you have? I am looking to buy a bike from them.

flanners1

on-yer-bike wrote:

Which fitter did you have? I am looking to buy a bike from them.

you are smitten by it are you not?

Hopefully their in-house service is better than their mail order and sales via the telephone my frame was meant to be here today and guess what it ain't no call no name of courier company, tracking number nowt. :roll:

sungod

on-yer-bike wrote:

Which fitter did you have? I am looking to buy a bike from them.

it was roger

if you haven't seen it, this review gives a good idea of what happens...

http://www.mosquito-bikes.co.uk/images/ ... ing.ex.pdf

it is dangerous to your wallet to enter the shop, there are usually some really nice/special bikes crying out to be ridden away, i just got my custom xcr a couple of weeks ago, it all started when i saw one in the shop, one look and i was indeed smitten

Flanners1, fwiw i know they were at their stand at the bike show last week and were still putting the shop back together when i popped in a few days ago. so maybe they are catching up a bit - there's no call centre/offices etc.

mrushton

Think there was something on TWMP a while back. Go thro' the site or email Brian

www.thewashingmachinepost.net

or Jez Hastings

http://www.u2needyourheadsfixed.info/

flanners1

sungod wrote:

on-yer-bike wrote:

Which fitter did you have? I am looking to buy a bike from them.

it was roger

if you haven't seen it, this review gives a good idea of what happens...

http://www.mosquito-bikes.co.uk/images/ ... ing.ex.pdf

it is dangerous to your wallet to enter the shop, there are usually some really nice/special bikes crying out to be ridden away, i just got my custom xcr a couple of weeks ago, it all started when i saw one in the shop, one look and i was indeed smitten

Flanners1, fwiw i know they were at their stand at the bike show last week and were still putting the shop back together when i popped in a few days ago. so maybe they are catching up a bit - there's no call centre/offices etc.

Cheers matey, just a tad gutted she ain't here for the weekend

Black

A friend of mine had taken his high end Bianco in for a service
there and fooked his bottom bracket.

Ive also been in there for a bike and found them to be much up there own arsss
also i wanted a sportive type bike and tried to flog me out and out road bike
but to put a stack of spacers on the bike and reverse the stem.
I ran out the shop.

Hoopdriver

Mosquito - Jesus! Avoid as you would malaria. Sure, they will do you a decent fitting and be very personable about it. Once they get your money, you're dirt. Their customer service and communications is beyond merely being bad. I know I ordered a custom Pegoretti through them and the hops I had to jump through to get their attention, return calls, respond to e-mails was unbelievable. Promised delivery dates came and went without explanation etc.

But their poor customer relations is nothing compared with their mediaeval workship and mechanics that ought to be building bikes at Asda - and then only under the closest of supervision. I took my expedition tourer in there for their deluxe service and they butchered it to the extent that I had to cancel a planned week-long tour of Wales. They acknowledged mistakes had been made and offered to put it right and I gave them the chance - their second try was better than the first, but I still had to go back and re-do much of it myself.

I would not normally take my bike into a shop for a service, as I am not a quaified bike mechanic myself, but I work in a different field, was busy as hell ahead of my planned trip to Wales and also wanted to get a new headset installed and I didn't have a headset press - and so I took it to Mosquito. Some time saving that was. No trip and had to re-do it all myself.

And oh yes they charged me about 40% more than rrp for the headset.

Outside of all that, hell yes, great shop.

Hoopdriver

One other faintly humorous thing. After they messed up my tourer, I went to look for reviews of the shop to see if others had the same experience. I found a string of one star reviews on a site called Urban Path. I pointed this out to the owners when they tried telling me my experience was very unusual and all their customers were happy.

Well, within 48 hours of my pointing out this site to them, by golly a five star review popped up! And have done so intermittently throughout the past year, to mingle with the one-star reviews the rank and file tend to give this awful shop.

flanners1

I wondered why they lost the Milani dealership status. I do hope my frame gets to me ok. My initial impressions were not far out then!

wicked

Hoopdriver wrote:

Mosquito - Jesus! Avoid as you would malaria. Sure, they will do you a decent fitting and be very personable about it. Once they get your money, you're dirt. Their customer service and communications is beyond merely being bad. I know I ordered a custom Pegoretti through them and the hops I had to jump through to get their attention, return calls, respond to e-mails was unbelievable. Promised delivery dates came and went without explanation etc.

Unfortunately you have just described most business's in this country. All too common story. In fact I have yet to find a bike shop that is unlike your experience.

Hoopdriver

It's true that it is an all-too-common thing, but by no means universal. I am getting a bike built by the guys at Enigma and the contrast between them and Mosquito couldn't be greater. The Enigma folks are friendly, engaged, knowledgeable and enthusiastic - their customer service couldn't be better. I've been buying bits for my new built from an on-line shop called Hub Jub - again, wonder service, not just in promptness but in ready and intelligent replies to queries and requests for advice. Rapha is another company with exemplary customer service. They are out there. As are competent mechanics.

Mosquito are just out and out pirates...

on-yer-bike

Does anyone else sell Pegorettis?

greasedscotsman

Hoopdriver wrote:

Rapha is another company with exemplary customer service

Are you kidding? I ordered a year's subscription to Rouleur and had to call them every time an issue came out to remind them to send me one!

flanners1

on-yer-bike wrote:

Does anyone else sell Pegorettis?

Simon?

Hoopdriver

I take your point regarding Rouleur - their service is pretty bad. Rapha themselves (although the two are associated) are pretty good.

Alas, nobody in the UK other than Mosquito handles Pegorettis. I friend of mine who wanted one, and was tired of getting dicked around by Mosquito (and this was a guy who was, or thought he was, a friend of one of the owners!), actually went to Italy to see Dario and try to buy direct. From what he told me - and this is second hand now - Dario said that since it was going to go to the UK market, and he had given Mosquito exclusivity, he would have to send it via Mosquito.

He did and my friend had an awful wrangle with Mosquito over the bike, and its pricing, with Mosquito coming out ahead by quite a few hundred pounds - to say nothing of the lost months when no one at the shop could or would tell him anything about its delivery. He's never set foot in the shop again.

on-yer-bike

Flanners1 wrote:

on-yer-bike wrote:

Does anyone else sell Pegorettis?

Simon?

Too big apart from anything else.

flanners1

Positive result from Mosquito!

Had a phone call to apologise for the late delivery of my frameset they are refunding the £20 del charge. So that's good of 'em I think. Now to build it up..............

sungod

Flanners1 wrote:

Positive result from Mosquito!

Had a phone call to apologise for the late delivery of my frameset they are refunding the £20 del charge. So that's good of 'em I think. Now to build it up..............

fwiw many italian companies are interesting to deal with, not just bike ones...

my frame was delayed and it was all cinelli's delay, the uk distributor was no wiser on dates and couldn't get answers - i was listening sometimes when mosquito tried, not just for me, there were others stuck too

six of the people in my team are in italy, i go there for business sometimes, things can be really urgent, with only a few hours to fix, but that doesn't stop/shorten the 3 hour lunch - and that was our customer taking us to lunch while their 'urgent' problem was put on hold!

much of business just shuts down for august, don't even bother trying to get a status update

then they have a half day when they're back, probably to recover from august

lucky sods

Davidius

Slighty off topic & a thread Hijack but since Mosquito are the UK distributors...

Does anyone have a/seen a/ know of someone with a Fixie Inc. Betty Leeds? Looking for a Steel road bike...

Thanks

mhwood

Yes, I had an expensive bike fitting at Mosquito Bikes. £180 for 2 hours work!

First off, in my experience, they measure you for a new bike really, not fit your bike to you.

I you do go to them, my advice is to ONLY see Roger. I was attended to by another of the business partners but at all times she seemed unsure of what to do and kept going to ask Roger what to do. What I ended up with was a set of drawings that bore very little relationship to my own bike and I was expected to adjust my own bike, they didn't even want to raise the seat height!!

When the drawings arrived by email 6 days later, it was obvious that I needed to speak to them. Roger was available and tried to be helpful but the drawings I was sent had drop handlebars, when I use TT bars, and Roger thought my bars and stem were one-piece where they are are not, my stem is even an adjustable one and they didn't know that.

I ride as low as I can on the bars for aerodynamic reasons, but the drawings and instructions I got wanted me to ride 50mm lower! I'm 60 this year, my back just won't bend like that. The set up on the tri-bike had me in a higher position that I was riding anyway so it bears no relationship to the information they later sent me.

When fitting me on their try-bike, a lot was made of checking sideways knee movement with a laser-beam. Some spacers were placed between both pedals and cranks and everything was supposedly better, sadly no mention of it was made in the report so I haven't got a clue how to replicate it.

All in all I paid a lot of money to this shop and got very little information that I could implement, and a lot that that I couldn't, plus of course I was told my bike was the wrong size for me and I should change my full carbon for one of their titanium ones.

I shan't be going back.

Hoopdriver

Very typical of that shop

wishitwasallflat

sungod wrote:

Flanners1 wrote:

Positive result from Mosquito!

Had a phone call to apologise for the late delivery of my frameset they are refunding the £20 del charge. So that's good of 'em I think. Now to build it up..............

fwiw many italian companies are interesting to deal with, not just bike ones...

my frame was delayed and it was all cinelli's delay, the uk distributor was no wiser on dates and couldn't get answers - i was listening sometimes when mosquito tried, not just for me, there were others stuck too

six of the people in my team are in italy, i go there for business sometimes, things can be really urgent, with only a few hours to fix, but that doesn't stop/shorten the 3 hour lunch - and that was our customer taking us to lunch while their 'urgent' problem was put on hold!

much of business just shuts down for august, don't even bother trying to get a status update

then they have a half day when they're back, probably to recover from august

lucky sods

Dear me, no wonder Angela isn't keen to pay off their debts!

bobinski

Rouler has a revealing interview this month with a rather well known Italian frame maker and the difficulties he has with suppliers in Italy.