It was time to order a new bike! I went to a few bike shops in Coventry, and even spent an hour in Halfords inspecting their gear. The problem was I couldn’t make my mind up between buying a decent bike I was going to look after, or buying another dirt cheap one that would hate me for abusing it.

I looked around online, and whittled it down to two options: A nice looking sporty Claud Butler Trekker or a slightly more hard-wearing Dawes hybrid. The Claud Butler certainly looked the part and the Dawes certainly didn’t. In fact, it would look more at home with a grandad. There was very little price difference, and so that was no discriminator.

After much deliberating, I decided to go for the more hard wearing one, bearing in mind the abuse that I tend to give my bikes, and it would stand up to towing 40kg of shopping too.

It arrived a few days later a few minutes before a lecture, and I manged to put it all together in super-quick time. However, when I came to adjust the rear brakes, I noticed that the back wheel was not true. There was about 3mm variance around the rim which meant that the brakes could not really be used.

I decided that as I had spent more than I really wanted, it should be right. I decided I would be better off not using the bike in case they wanted it back or were funny about sorting the wheel out.

I sent the guys a couple of emails, and waited nearly a week without hearing anything. In fact, I have still not heard anything! I rang them up, and spent 10 minutes in a call queue: “Your call is important to us” AKA “We are cutting costs by not having any service staff and really don’t care about after-sales service”.

Eventually I did get through to a very helpful chap, who suggested I take it to a local bike shop to get the wheel trued, send them the receipt and they would refund me upto £10 for getting it sorted.

The next morning I took it to my local bike shop (Jardine Cycles), who quoted me £12-15 for sorting it, telling me I would have to bring it back the following week. On the way out I mentioned that it was a new bike, and they turned around and refused to have anything to do with it – saying they couldn’t work on it. I should have asked them why, as even now I have no idea why not.

I eventually got round to taking it to another bike shop in coventry, where the most helpful guys sorted it out later that afternoon for £7.50. Qudos to Albany Cycles.

I have emailed the receipt to the firm I purchased the bike off, and surprise surprise I have not heard anything. I must ring them up sometime soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 9:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.