Evans bike shop replaces BMW dealership!

DonDaddyD

Does anyone even know why its cool to hate Evans cycles?

They aren't ripping you off, they aren't a danger to the environment and they don't advocate child labour. (Starbucks does all three and is/was almost Universally loved).

Sure the service or knowledge of an employee can often be substandard but when you get to a stage where you can service/build your own bike, is this really a surprise?

Example:
If I go into a comic shop chances are I'll have more knowledge about everything in the store compared with the combined knowledge of the people running the shop.

So if I ask them a question should I be disappointed that their knowledge isn't and mighty as mine?

Same with Evans cycles, they aren't specialists.

Still, I tend not to shop there unless its an emergency...

BenS999

The place was empty for a year or two (soon after I moved to Wimbledon actually)

There we have the reason, too many cyclists in Wimbles and not enough motorists.
You should have bought a beemer...
[/quote]

notsoblue

To be fair to Evans, I've never had a problem with their pricing or staff knowledge. And they're ubiquitous enough to be handy for when I need a spare inner tube or new tyre at short notice. Their stock of clothing isn't great though. For that I tend to use Wiggle or Condor London (great shop for clothing btw, excellent selection).

unixnerd

I don't hate car dealerships as a whole, but i do hate BMW car dealerships. Never had anything more than grief and an empty wallet post sales.

Have a look at my BMW site www.unixnerd.demon.co.uk/bmw.html and look on the garage review pages. Some of the dealers have 15 or 16 zero star reviews! I imagine many other marques are just as bad though. One charges 150+VAT an hour for labour. Generally the independents are better for BMW servicing.

Valy

Wow, here's internet for you.

How can Evans rip ANYONE off? Unless it is too much trouble to google your product of choice and take a picture of course...
Fucking internets....

What I wanted to say originally was PICS or GTFO.

suzyb

DonDaddyD wrote:

Does anyone even know why its cool to hate Evans cycles?

They aren't ripping you off, they aren't a danger to the environment and they don't advocate child labour. (Starbucks does all three and is/was almost Universally loved).

Sure the service or knowledge of an employee can often be substandard but when you get to a stage where you can service/build your own bike, is this really a surprise?

Example:
If I go into a comic shop chances are I'll have more knowledge about everything in the store compared with the combined knowledge of the people running the shop.

So if I ask them a question should I be disappointed that their knowledge isn't and mighty as mine?

Same with Evans cycles, they aren't specialists.

Still, I tend not to shop there unless its an emergency...

So those working in comic shops aren't almighty geeks who know everything about every comic book known to man. Stupid TV and it's stereotypes

Alphabet

well, it could be argued that they're ripping people off by marking up their products in the first place. The fact that they'll price match shows that they know they're actually higher and it's not as if a company liker that won't keep an eye on competitors pricing. I just dislike them because they staff know sod all and their servicing prices are laughable. they prey on the stupid commuter and those not lucky enough to have a good proper LBS

Butterd2

On BMW's. I do see them as one of the companies that convinced/conned the status concious middle class that it was necessary to drive effing great SUV's around our towns and city's. So if closing BMW dealerships is an indication of less X5's on the roads of London then I do take pleasure in that.

On Evans. I got my Scott there on the CWS and was happy with the price/service. However I twice had to take it back due to the freehub failing. The first time they fixed it, the 2nd time I had to have a stand up argument in the shop (Spittalfields) whilst the numtpy of a Deputy Manager tried to tell me that rear cassettes were meant to rock (perpendicular to the plane of the wheel). Eventually they took it in a fixed it again but that left me with a bad feeling about their customer service.
I also get that they do a price match but that just strikes me as trying to rip off customers (as their price labels a comical at times) but being willing to cut if necessary to prevent business going elsewhere. I think we owe it to the likes of Wiggle who drive down prices to support them, without Wiggle, CRC etc we would all be paying Evans face value prices.

Alphabet

Butterd2 wrote:

I think we owe it to the likes of Wiggle who drive down prices to support them, without Wiggle, CRC etc we would all be paying Evans face value prices.

^THIS. Plus you can shop from your desk at work and leave your lunchtimes for beer and pies.

hatbeard

so far I've used evans exclusively for all my bits but that's by and large for convenience (and my C2W voucher had to go through them).

it's handy to be able to google something find a cheap price, print it off and pick it up on the way home with no postage hassles (or waiting)

the quality of stores/staff/service varies a lot though

to date my experiences are

st pauls - awesome, they went out of their way to help me when my voucher was delayed for two weeks and they were holding on to the last 54cm tricross sport the company had in stock for me. they've also price matched everything unquestioningly (and without making me feel like I'm doing something wrong by asking).

canary wharf - younger staff, bit more bold and brash but ultimately quite helpful. were a bit less happy to pricematch but did so from the screen of my iphone.

spitalfields - service was imo subpar. first time I went in there hunting an in-stock tricross it took me 20 minutes to find someone to help me. unacceptable I think.

DonDaddyD

suzyb wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Does anyone even know why its cool to hate Evans cycles?

They aren't ripping you off, they aren't a danger to the environment and they don't advocate child labour. (Starbucks does all three and is/was almost Universally loved).

Sure the service or knowledge of an employee can often be substandard but when you get to a stage where you can service/build your own bike, is this really a surprise?

Example:
If I go into a comic shop chances are I'll have more knowledge about everything in the store compared with the combined knowledge of the people running the shop.

So if I ask them a question should I be disappointed that their knowledge isn't and mighty as mine?

Same with Evans cycles, they aren't specialists.

Still, I tend not to shop there unless its an emergency...

So those working in comic shops aren't almighty geeks who know everything about every comic book known to man. Stupid TV and it's stereotypes

Oh they are geeks, each with their little quirk that makes them slightly different. Such as one will only read Indy comics, another will only read anything written by Sean McKeever, one will have a vampire thing going on...

Me? In response to who can beat Superboy-Prime, read on:

In 2008 Dondaddyd wrote:

NO ONE!!!

Yeah I said it! Certainly not anyone on Marvel Earth (including Thor, and only Mr Olympia loves Thor more than me) and I'm not considering beings like Galactus Eternity, Death, the Celestials or any other non-corporeal being.

Firstly before I get on my horse, Prime has shown no weakness to magic, given the fear he installed in Mxy.....something.... I'm of the thought that his super durability extends to magic and I wouldn't be surprised if he was super resistant to psychic attacks as well. He is super everything else - Like Pre-Crisis Superman thats: Super strong, fast, durable, agile, intelligent etc. For all those that question his intelligence he rebuilt anti-monitor's armour just by looking at it once.

Prime is Old School Pre-Crisis Superman strong, the character isn't limited to rigid power structures like modern age and to a lesser extent silver age characters are - as part of their character bio's and power descriptions. Prime is as strong, smart, agile, fast, durable etc as the story needs him to be, a proper Golden Age character where psuedo-scientific explanations of how he does something is secondary to the fact that he can.

In many way's we all laugh at trying to fathom let alone accept any description of the power, 'A million exploding suns' but Sentry can be looked upon as an allegory to the Golden Age and ultimately Superman. Sentry is a retcon character created to stem from the classic era of yester-year and that is what Prime is. His abilities don't have to make sense (punching reality, being able to fly between realities, pushing planets), beyond the fact that they necessitate the story.

He is everything Superman is from the Goldern age, so there is no point claiming that he is weak against anything, beyond Kryptonite from his reality, which doesn't exist anymore and didn't exist when his reality existed.

Everything we have seen of Prime in DC leads me to the conclusion that he isn't supposed to be defeated by any single hero one on one. Yes he was stopped by Superman but he flew faster than anyone towards Oa, slowed down by a wall of pure will-power made by numerous Lanterns, killed many Lanterns, was flown through a Red Sun, fought two versions of his older adult self (a fit and healthy teenage me could never beat up one fit and healthy adult me let alone 2 adult me's), killed one of his older adult counterparts and then was stopped by the other Superman - kid was tired...

I'm not seeing how any single corporeal Marvel hero could defeat Prime, dude just survived an explosion that killed the immortal Hank Henshaw, and greatly injured the Anti-Monitor and then squeezed a Guardian of the Universe to death - the subsequent explosion (which he survived) seperated his atoms and forced him somewhere else in the Multiverse, and the result in that is he is now even more stronger than ever...

Butterd2

Alphabet wrote:

Butterd2 wrote:

I think we owe it to the likes of Wiggle who drive down prices to support them, without Wiggle, CRC etc we would all be paying Evans face value prices.

^THIS. Plus you can shop from your desk at work and leave your lunchtimes for beer and pies.

And that is an even better reason, I bow to your superior logic sir.

Valy

Yeah, their servicing costs are silly.

As far as changing things that are faulty, they do that without questions asked, which for me is pretty good as I mainly buy accessories from them.

One time I bought a rack, which was a on sale for about £17.99 {original about £30), After a week or so it bent as the design was basically flawed (rated up to 30KG, my bag was max about 10) so I went in and said "look at this".

They did not have any of those in stock. As it was on sale and the other disk-compatible rack they had was about £34 he said that I would have to pay the difference from the sale price, in return I said that I came there during the week and the guys said that they would change it regardless. Not sure if they knew that it was on sale, but either way - I ended up getting a far better rack for no extra cost. They also changed some mitts which were too big for me, even though I said that I rode with them for about 30 minutes and you could see a little bit of feathering going on at the palms.

richred_uk

DonDaddyD wrote:

Example:
If I go into a comic shop chances are I'll have more knowledge about everything in the store compared with the combined knowledge of the people running the shop.

So if I ask them a question should I be disappointed that their knowledge isn't and mighty as mine?

Stop going to Forbidden Planet and start going to Gosh!

And on why Evans is hated - I don't get it.

On the one hand, the guys at the Cut branch were great on sending me out on multiple test rides, price matching every item on the natty spreadsheet I took in to them, and talking me though a few things.

OTOH - they did tell me that SKS mudguards would fit my Caad8 and they don't. The service centrally to confirm when delivery would take place was pretty poor, but they threw in a reasonable amount of freebies for the world's smallest paintchip.

So for me at least, they beat the LBS 5 mins walk from my house whose new bike recommendation when I said I was looking to spend £700 - £1000 on a road bike package was "they'll all be OK for you".

Rich

Rich

waddlie

I can never get my head around the hatred for Evans.

They're a large chain of stores. Renting all that shop space and hiring all those employees is expensive. Ergo, their prices are almost always going to be higher than the likes of the Wiggle Warehouse. But given their size they can afford to take a hit and sell some products at a loss or a vastly reduced profit margin without going belly-up, hence the price match promise. I like to see my widgets in the metal before I shell out, so I often shop at Evans and use the price match. If they don't have what I want, I use Wiggle or somewhere else. It's no big deal, and no one's getting ripped off.

As far as the quality and attitude of their staff goes - show me one business, anywhere, in any field of anything, where 100% of the employees are as knowledgable and professional as they should be. Some Evans staff are great, some aren't. I've used almost all the major bike shops in Bristol, and some of the trendier and more well-respected ones have turned out to be diabolical. If a sales assistant's waffling, you don't have to buy anything from them. (You could always do what a friend of mine did in Field & Trek a couple of years ago and drop the line "please could I talk to someone more knowledgable about rucksacks than you? 30 minutes into a fitting...")

The few times I've had problems with products from Evans, they've replaced or refunded there and then without the hassle of re-packaging, going to the post office, and waiting several days or more to get it sorted.

SamWise72

I don't have a local Evans (that I know of) and I live near two good independents (excellent in one case, good but grumpy in the other), for mechanical work, and I tend to buy my gear online. I have hard bad things about Evans aftercare on web orders (some people I know on another forum bought Dahon Hammerheads on a close-out deal, and could barely get Evans to admit they existed). OTOH, I had to use the Paddington one to buy tyre levers, and then to change my tube for me when the tyre levers bent, and the experience was excellent. Anyway, anything which is a sign of bike sales climbing compared to car sales is ok by me. I don't hate cars (love old ones, in fact) but at the moment the balance is wrong.

Zombie_donkey

I'm a bit of a petrol head and I can appreciate the irony of a BMW dealers becoming a bike shop and I think it great!