LBS increasing price on Cyclescheme

chrisold19

Hi,

I am signing up to the Cyclescheme through work and have been doing some research about potential bikes.

I have spotted a bike I like at the price of £450. Here if you'd like to view;

http://www.ukbikesdepot.com/m15b0s2p507 ... _Bike_2011

However when I enquired with the store about purchasing the bike they advised that because I was using Cyclescheme vouchers, the price would be £500 not £450. This is apparently due to the commission the scheme takes from them. Obviously, this has miffed me a bit to say the least.

Is this normal practice? Is this legal to sell a bike at a certain price then bump it up because of it being purhcased via Cyclescheme?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

pdw

They have to pay Cyclescheme 10%. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they pass that on. If they don't, then the implication is that they weren't offering you the best price in the first place, as they can afford to lose 10% and still make a reasonable margin.

If you have influence over how your company runs their cycle to work scheme, then you should look into running it internally, rather than using a commercial operator like Cyclescheme. Our company does this which means get free choice of suppliers and there's no 10% going to a middleman.

handful

I had the same trouble, in one case I found a bike that was £700 reduced from £1000 and I rang for a Cyclescheme price. They said that they don't allow sale prices (which I expected) so the Cyclescheme price was £1000 :shock:

I could understand them making it £770 but that was taking the proverbial imo. :evil:

lockstock666

I found that the smaller chains were happy to offer any bike at the price shown where the bigger ones wouldn't let you buy sale bikes without adding the 10%

I say shop around until you find something you are happy with.

mmuk

my colleague tried to buy a bike through CTW - administered in the company - when he told the bike shop thats what he was doing, they refused to sell it to him at their sale price!

He had to go back the next day, see someone else, and not mention the scheme!

Bizarre!

prawny

Quite common now unfortunately.

Anyone know if evans will price match and do their own ride2work scheme? I fancy a dawes mono but would rather pay out £300 in one go from another retailer than £650 over 12 months

Initialised

Businesses cashing in on government subsidies. What do you expect them to do with an opportunity to inflate prices?

handful

prawny wrote:

Quite common now unfortunately.

Anyone know if evans will price match and do their own ride2work scheme? I fancy a dawes mono but would rather pay out £300 in one go from another retailer than £650 over 12 months

Yes Evans have their own scheme and also allow you to buy sale prices as well, presumably because they don't have to pay 10% to anyone else. If you buy in the sales their's is the best value scheme. Another bonus is they have no problem with you paying extra towards a more expensive bike as long as your employer is ok with it and most are.

jack_ammo

I had a similar experience when I almost bought a Trek from Action bikes. I was told that since it is a Halford letter of Collection they can't sell it to me at the sale price as they have to pay Halfords 10%.