Potential difficulties with employer and cycle to work

portland_bill

Morning all,

I've had an e-mail from our accountant this morning to say that my boss has given it the go-ahead, but when she's approached head office about it, they aren't happy to go with ribble.co.uk (where I want to get my gran fondo from) because they're not part of the bike scheme whereas Halfords are and that we have to go through a scheme to be able to do it. :shock:

I've sent an e-mail back to the accountant explaining that you don't actually have to go through a scheme and as long as you have the right paperwork you can buy the bike from any shop you like and it makes no difference to the employer at the end of the day where the bike comes from. The only person it makes a difference to is me since I'm the one who will be using it and essentially paying for it over the next 12 months.

I can't stand it when people who know less than you about something discount what you tell them and go looking for information elsewhere when I've spent so much time over the last few months looking into it.

The closest Boardman to a Gran Fondo or Focus Cayo 105 is £1300 which I won't be able to get.

EdLHKOM

this is why accountants should not run a business!
hope you get your wish!

gbsahne001

hmmm boardman

joenobody

But they are part of a scheme - Cyclescheme?

portland_bill

Exactly...

portland_bill

Sh*t! Good point!

I forgot the only reason I'd sorted out the paperwork myself was to avoid the £65 admin fee...

Bollocks!

rolf_f

Yep, I got my Gran Fondo via Cyclescheme.....

seward4or5

Aren't Halfords part of a different scheme - Cycle2Work. Has you company subscribed to this one?

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... yId_173020

Which could be why you can't use Cyclescheme suppliers.

beverick

Halfords should be able to source a Ribble bike for you.
If not you may find that Ribble can accept Halfords voucher.

Bob

portland_bill

Really?

Having waited two weeks for my boss to come back from holiday, apparently the lass at head office left early today and is now on leave for a fortnight, so that's another two weeks before I hear anything. Summer's going to be well and truly over by the time I get so much as a sniff of a bike.

No doubt when she gets back from holiday, the owner will disappear on one of his indefinite holidays around the world that he seems to go on every few months. :?

CakeLovinBeast

beverick wrote:

Halfords should be able to source a Ribble bike for you.
If not you may find that Ribble can accept Halfords voucher.

Bob

They can't.

I recently got my bike through Halfords C2W. When on the phone to them, multiple times (as I wanted a Cube, which was a special order), I was told that they could get most bikes, but they couldn't get: Ribble, PlanetX or any of the Focus models from Wiggle.

desweller

These days you're far better off waiting for the big end-of-line discounts anyway IMO...

medoramas

Oh, you lucky people... I wish I had such a problem like arguing with my employer about who to sign the scheme with. I work in quite big company which is a part of big group. It took me a year of trying to get us to the scheme. No chance... They just can't be bothered at all. Everyone, from line manager to the account office. Not even that, it seems they are trying to do everything to make cyclists live more difficult! I was the first guy who was cycling to work there whatever the weather, after few years few other fellas joined the club, now its about 6 of us. We used to use an empty office room downstairs that nobody used for ages as our bike shed. The "big people" started moaning at that few weeks ago. Now they installed cheap bike rack on the car park, with no cover against the rain and stuff... After my complaint one of the bosses said he didn't know the weather can damage the bike. :-\ So no chance for the bike scheme, instead we've got the awesome rack and we are banned to use that empty room as our changing room. Bastards...

cyberknight

Halfords run their own C2W scheme, i just had a bike from them as my employer runs the same scheme and i went through the process of trying to source different bikes.

You cannot get a ribble, guy at work tried.

You can get trek`s, specialized, cannondale i know for a fact at list price, if you phone up Halfords C2W they should be able to direct you to a bike they can get. Heres the phone number

Call our cycle2work Special Order Helpdesk on 08450 77 88 50

In the end i went for a Boardman comp as it offered the best bang for my buck at the price i wanted to pay and the geometry was right.

skdotcom

cyberknight wrote:

Halfords run their own C2W scheme, i just had a bike from them as my employer runs the same scheme and i went through the process of trying to source different bikes.

You cannot get a ribble, guy at work tried.

You can get trek`s, specialized, cannondale i know for a fact at list price, if you phone up Halfords C2W they should be able to direct you to a bike they can get. Heres the phone number

I bought a Trek through the Halfords C2W scheme. The only problem is that Trek dont allow bikes to be couriered, and Halfords outsource Treks to specialist dealers. The nearest to me was 150 miles away!

defy3man

I work for an NHS board. Someone started looking in to the cycle to work scheme and started the ball rolling to see how many were interested. Guess what, as soon as she took it to meetings the board would not take part in it so we don't get it. This is meant to be the NHS who insist on healthier lifestyles, save the planet, energy saving etc!!!! On top of that there has been no pay rise for a couple of years and probably none in the near future also increase in pension contributions likely, talk about kicking staff in the teeth. They don't even provide anywhere for staff to park their bikes out of the weather.

cooldad

My company decided the official scheme was too hard (small company, lots of paperwork), so we made up our own scheme.
Interest free loan over a year as a salary sacrifice so we get all the tax savings, plus any cash discounts, and we can buy from anywhere. But own the bike outright from the beginning, as it's just a loan.
Also installed some showers and let people park their bikes inside (we have a big rec room with a pool table etc. Plenty of space for bikes.)
They also supply mounds of fruit in big bowls all around the office to keep us healthy.

Nice place to work. Now the MD has bought a bike and started commuting. As the resident 'expert' I've done a bit of indexing and adjusting for him (I sort out bits for most of them anyway).
Obviously made it sound like a difficult job - can't do any harm to my prospects.

mouth

Portland Bill wrote:

Summer's going to be well and truly over by the time I get so much as a sniff of a bike

no wanting to rub salt into the wound, but don't Ribble have a waiting list anyway? No chance of a ride this summer.

t4tomo

EdLHKOM wrote:

this is why accountants should not run a business!
hope you get your wish!

no - its why you should make sure one of the accoutants rides bike, that way you get an in house administered fully flexible passing on all tax advantages to the empoyee scheme