Australian Cycling Forums - Bicycles Network Australia

Not sure what contravenes the forum guidelines, but when a work colleague (who is new to cycling commuting) is charged $25 by his LBS for an overnight replacement of a tube, I get angry.

Can we name and shame them?

EDIT : After looking at the receipt (which was $24) and the division of parts and labour..I'm still angry..but I shrug my shoulders and think 'that's life in the big city'.

Yes this is fine as long as there is no naming or obvious indication of which shop it is.
Reason being that I get the angry phone calls and mails - even if the complaint is justified and still have to deal with it. Also - we are aiming to promote and name the good shops - so this is the preferred approach to make referrals and recommendations to benefit the good guys.

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To contribute - my shameful experience was at a shop overseas where I wanted all the gears setup properly on an old Bianchi road bike. When I went to pick it up they said that the frame was bent (rear dropouts) and essentially so it was unrideable until fixed.... but they decided to do the gears anyway and attempted to charge me for it.

I had a word with the boss and ask whether it was logical that they would spot that a frame was unrideable - but continue to do the gears anyway knowing that it couldn't be ridden. To the shops credit, the manager agreed with me.

It seems a lot initially. However does that include the price of the replacement tube? If that is the case then after paying full retail for a decent tube that leaves about $15 for costs. That will then be the cost of labour, employee super, sick pay, holiday pay, business rates, overdraft, business loans, utility bills etc etc and finally, shock - horror, some profit for the lbs.

I think we sometimes forget about the sheer cost of running a business in Australia.

I'm sure it won't happen to your friend again as they will very quickly learn to change a tube themselves!

__PG__ wrote:Not sure what contravenes the forum guidelines, but when a work colleague (who is new to cycling commuting) is charged $25 by his LBS for an overnight replacement of a tube, I get angry.

Can we name and shame them?

Price of tube would be about $15 in an LBS, is that included? Even though changing a tube is an incredibly easy job, that seems about the normal price of replacing the tube.

*lol* I think I'd be angry at my friend for dropping a wheel in to get an overnight tube replacement....!!

Did you not offer to do it for him? I've done that a few times for new-ish commuters here at work. They've said they have a flat and not sure what to do - I just get them to bring the wheel in and show them at lunch time how easy it is to change over the tube...

If your mate couldn't figure out a tube change I think it's justified.
My LBS has a $15 minimum workshop charge and ship $10 for a tube would be about right.

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I don't understand why we can post the name of online retailers that we have bad experiences with but not bike shops.

After paying my LBS to change a few tubes for me, I asked them to teach me how to do it myself, which they did, and without charging me.

With many jobs there is a fixed cost for just being there, so for an short job like a tube change, the cost seems high. For bigger jobs, the fixed costs are spread over a longer period.
Tell your mate that next time I'll do it for $24.

BTW my dad taught me how to change and patch tubes 45 years ago when I was about 11 and there was no such thing as an LBS. Once you learn you never forget (like riding a bike!).

When I was contracting as a Sparkie, I had a minimum charge of $70, which bought half an hour of my time (plus travel to your house).
If it was just a powerpoint that needed replacing, it would be covered by that fee (not including parts).
I think $25 is reasonable as a minimum charge, especially if it included parts.

Give a man a fish yada yada yada...

I think its justified. My tubes cost $11 and thats from overseas so lets say $15 for the tube from the LBS, then $10 for labor. Very reasonable.

Dont like it change the tube yourself.

Sparx wrote:I don't understand why we can post the name of online retailers that we have bad experiences with but not bike shops.

Yes I have not heard one valid reason for this contradiction.

TraceyG wrote:After paying my LBS to change a few tubes for me, I asked them to teach me how to do it myself, which they did, and without charging me.

What I don't understand about this is that you have posted this while having access to an information source that contains a great proportion of the entire knowledge available to humanity. Why not use it instead? There are written descriptions, pictures, videos all explaining most things you would want to know about.

Don't get me wrong TraceyG, this is not really aimed at you, but in general it baffles me that people just seem to look at photos of cats.

simonn wrote: Don't get me wrong TraceyG, this is not really aimed at you, but in general it baffles me that people just seem to look at photos of cats.

What? People look at pictures of pussy on the internet?! Well, I never...

They replaced the tube with a 'Schwable Shop Tube' for $12.00

Labour was $12.00, charged out one quarter hour of the $48 hourly labour rate.

Total cost was $24, not $25 as orginally posted.

Oh well...that's inflation for you. I've told him to bring his old tube into work tomorrow, buy a puncture kit and I'll show him how to patch tubes.

$25 seems fair.
It costs me $12000 per month of sales to balance the books.
that's not a cent for me and in a tight month, I work for free !

Running a small business in Australia is hard work, anyone that thinks otherwise is a <language>
If you don't want to spend $25 on a job, DIY or learn to DIY !


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Mod Says: Here are the Forum Rules - we have a family audience and thus appropriate language including acronyms or semi-blocked language.

AUbicycles wrote:Also - we are aiming to promote and name the good shops - so this is the preferred approach to make referrals and recommendations to benefit the good guys.

Is there a thread for good ones? Ive had a few positive lbs experiences latley.

I posted this tale of woe a few years back but I'll add to this thread. My two LBS's in the Caboolture area are actually pretty good, but one day I was coming home from Brissy, needed a sealed bottom bracket in a hurry, so stopped in at a major chain bike shop that was on the side of the main road on my trip home. The sales guy went out to the workshop to get me my bottom bracket and it came out in a rather dirty box, i thought nothing of it and went out to the car. In the carpark I thought I should probably just check that the bottom bracket was actually what I was after so opened it up to find a very dirty, very second hand bottom bracket which I promptly took back inside, they then came out offering others for me to look at and they were all the same. I got my money back after giving them all an ear full. I am assuming their plan was that if they replaced a bottom bracket on a bike and it still felt ok they would either sell it to a walk in customer or install it onto an unsuspecting customer's bike. I ended up detouring and dropping in to my LBS afterwards and confessed my sins of going into a chain shop, he sold me a brand new one for $8 less than what the chain shop was charging.

Hey Paddles, PM me the !! BAN ME NOW FOR SWEARING !! ones names as my shop is local and sometimes drop in for bits and peices from "local bikes shops" here and want to avoid that one.

IF they do this, it should be allowed to be public knowledge.

__PG__ wrote:Can we name and shame them?

AUbicycles wrote:Yes this is fine as long as there is no naming or obvious indication of which shop it is.

this made me giggle

I reckon if we have a shame file for the LBS that's fair enough.
And the LB Shops should be able to have a whinge about all the time wasters that pick their brains for various things, bikes, prices and then buy overseas.
It's kind of a two way street, no?
We don't have a clue about who a negative forum member is, completely unknown. Yet because a member claims to ride a bike he can go all out and ruin a LBS?

I would say just name good folks and be happy with that. Just on opinion of course, many may disagree.

Perhaps a positive feedback thread as per above...

The Buying a Bike section, the Great Shopping Experiences is where we encourage the positive stories and recommendations and referrals.

Regarding online shops - a good question. Typically I have been more open to overseas shop complaints because they are over there - but still like to see it as constructive or factual criticism. The difference is the little local bike shop run by Mr Goodguy and then along comes an anonymous Mr Vindictive who signs up and will stop at nothing to trash the reputation of Mr GoodGuy.

Fair enough though, the online part has become a grey area though most members are great so we don't have many problems, sometimes online retailers ave become involved and respond in the forum or directly with the customer to resolve a situation.

simonn wrote:

TraceyG wrote:After paying my LBS to change a few tubes for me, I asked them to teach me how to do it myself, which they did, and without charging me.

What I don't understand about this is that you have posted this while having access to an information source that contains a great proportion of the entire knowledge available to humanity. Why not use it instead? There are written descriptions, pictures, videos all explaining most things you would want to know about.

t'internet isn't always the best source of information for even simple tasks like changing a tube. It's best to learn from the hands on experience of people skilled in the art.
That goes for cats on the web too

And well done to that bike shop that showed Tracey how to change tubes.