New Bike cycle to work scheme

zippy483

Hi All

A little advice / opinion if you will

Having commuted for the last year on a cheap decathlon mountain bike (which to be fair has served me well), or my Cube road bike, I'm looking to purchase a new commuter / winter bike the following are being considered

Ribble Audax/winter trainer (£696 with Conti GP4 seasons and admin fee)

Focus Mares 4.0 (about £750)

I have to admit to being a little put off by the £65 "admin fee" Ribble charge, although all of my other dealings with them have been great

I'm going to cross post this in the Road Bike General forum aswell

Any thoughts ??

supersonic

What sort of features do you want from the bike ie position, gearing, racks mounts etc?

zippy483

Well as my commute is fairly short and I have shower etc at work I drive in one day a week and take all the clothes I need so no racks required

I was thinking of the Ribble as it does come highly recommended in the mags, also as a winter trainer / bad weather weekend bike, (don't want my carbon fibre bike to melt in the rain ), the admin fee puts me off for some reason, I e-mailed the sales team and apparently by charging me a £65 admin fee I can spend the maximum amount on the bike seems funny to me as all that seems to mean to me is I can spend £65 less

To be hones I'd not even thought about the Mares or a CX bike come to that until I saw one on the Leisure Lakes site today and seemed like a decent bit of kit esspecially for the crappy winter weather (Disc brakes appealed)

Maybe I'm just cheesed off with the admin fee from Ribble, although I suspect they arent' on there own.

daddy0

I'm guessing that they're just passing on the fee that the scheme charge them which is 10%. As they're an online shop they're probably cheaper than your LBS and work on narrower margins, so they probably can't afford to take the 10% hit. If your LBS is competitive after you've added the 10% on to the online price, then I'd buy through the shop.

I'm currently sorting out a work cycle scheme, but doing it independently. Several LBS's have said they'd be willing to pass on the 10% saving to my company if they don't have to deal with any official schemes.

BTW - If you're buying a bike privately from a LBS then always insist on a discount from the advertised price - the LBS will have bumped up their advertised price by 10% to cover all the people buying on official schemes.