Newbie asks "what do people have against Halfords bikes?"

steveplymouth

Most of the kit in halfords is OK, its some of the staff thats the problem. i was in the one in Plymouth city centre last saturday picking up some cable ties and oil. i over heard the two guys on the till talking about a rear casette/wheel rebuild job that came back in to be done again and the one of them didnt have a clue why he'd messed it up! had to stop myself from having a little chuckle!

Benrad

Hi all, I'm new here too. Got to agree I'll be buying a Voodoo Hoodoo next week or so. Mostly based on this review that I read in WMB which I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else yet:

http://www.bikeradar.com/mtb/gear/categ ... o-12-46194

Been going down some rocky bridleways on my old Saracen (before they were any good) full susser (read jack in the box) with my friend who struggles to tame them on a Kona dawg supreme. Looking forward to getting my hands on something with some damping See you on the trails!!

I would say though that I'll be picking the bike up in a box and assembling it myself as the halfords near me is one of the ones that resembles a zoo.

rockmonkeysc

Halfords biggest problem is that paying staff minimum wage means that they have very few good bike staff though my local shop has a great bike mechanic who is just too lazy to get a proper job and a teenage lad who really knows his onions and is just there part time while at uni. If you find a good branch & know which staff to avoid they can be good.
Spares are massively overpriced though. My local shop had a SRAM PG970 chain for £29.99, I got the same one online for less than half that.

bazza333

When I was looking for a hardtail I was swayed by all the anti-Halfords chat and went for a Giant instead of a Boardman. 12 months later when I decided to add a FS I went straight for the Boardman. As much as I love the Giant it's been nothing but trouble and never seems to be running more than a few weeks at a time.
If anyone has concerns about how it's assembled then just do what I did and ask for a boxed one - it's 95% finished anyway. Can't fault the staff - even helped me carry it to the car.
However I think Oxocube makes a very good point - I've recently put my hand up for a redundancy package so was looking for a "nice" little job when I saw Halfords wanted someone for the bike dept. Great idea I thought as I'm good with bikes but when you looked into the hours why would you do it. If I remember correctly it was a couple of hours a day - at really odd times????
They seem to want to employ lots of people for a couple of hours each rather than few people for a reasonable period - no wonder there is a lack of expertise.

grl

Tim
Bikes are not bad but the service can leave a lot to be desired

Giles

MDobs

last time i used halfords for a service the youngish guy working there booked it in for 2 months ahead, instead of the following week like he was supposed to... i turned up expecting my bike and it hadn't even been looked at, and nobody had noticed the wrong date had been put on until i turned up and they went to look why it hadn't been done. so it had already sat around for best part of a week without anyone thinking "what's that bike still doing here?". bike was in for over two weeks in the end :shock: :x

a month later i needed some more work done outside a general service so took the bike to the LBS only to find the same kid who'd checked my bike in wrongly at halfords was working there now! luckily the rest of the guys there seemed ok, the mechanic was available to chat to and the work done seemed fine.

CarleyB

I think generally it depends which branch of Halfords you use. Up near me, when I go out and do bikeability, quite a lot of the kids have their forks on back to front!! And it is VERY common! But you may get a good branch where they have a qualified mechanic.

The Rookie

I see lots of forks back to front, but none have been halfords, most are supermarket self build.

Have been told my Manitou's areback to front once as well......

stubs

Have to give some good views when they are earned. A mate bought a bike off ebay at weekend but couldnt get the pedals off for love nor money, he tried eveything I suggested but they werent moving. Took it to a couple of bike shops and they both wanted him to leave it with them till next week before they would even look at it. In desperation he took it to Halfords in Southport and the lad there stopped what he was doing got out the BIG pedal spanner and had the pedals off in a couple of minutes. He wouldnt take anything for the job said it wasnt worth putting it through the till.

One very happy customer bought a new set of pedals to keep him going till he gets something CNC machined and blingy.

anj132

oxocube1 wrote:

You have to remember that as Halfords is such a big company, they have a Customer services deparment that can take feedback from people who visit their stores. If someone has a good experience it is very rarely relayed to customer services.

Found the opposite with their online reviews. All online reviews are approved before being put on. I did a fair review but stated some of the build problems I had with the bike when it was collected but was rejected for 'mentioning a competitor' which I hadn't done! Escalated it as a complaint mainly due to the pathetic rejection reason and all I got really was they would relay the complaint to the local store. Narks me off that their online reviewing system isn't objective at all - perhaps I was too naive.

oxocube1 wrote:

However, if somebody has a particularly bad experience, they will most likely notify customer services. Local bike shops do not have such customer service departments and so often do not find out about any bad customer experiences.

I don't think you need a customer services to make a complaint and people do complain about them. The thing is, a LBS doesn't get the same customer turnover as a national chain so their will be a larger volume of complaints. Sometimes it's also easier to slag off a large faceless chain than the LBS owner - it's more disconnected.

Halfords pricing structure annoys me. Increasing bike prices before putting on a sale to make the sale look better. BSOs RRP at £400 and then in a 'sale' at £150 when £150 was their true worth really (if that).

I do agree with what you say otherwise though, some of the bikes are good value for money and the customer service can be hit and miss.

waby1234

I think everyone is saying pretty much the same thing, not sure where else this thread can go now really!