Cycling UK Forum

Halfords are realising that people are buying cheap tatt from supermarkets and their own stuff costs more.

It's all about making money, it's not about providing a decent service to the customer and providing a bike for life. They would sooner it came back every few months for repairs as that makes them even more money.

gilesjuk wrote:Halfords are realising that people are buying cheap tatt from supermarkets and their own stuff costs more.

It's all about making money, it's not about providing a decent service to the customer and providing a bike for life. They would sooner it came back every few months for repairs as that makes them even more money.

The cost of repairs though, will often outstrip the bike's value, so they may simply sell another BSO.

But what often happens is that the pile of garbage on wheels is so wrongly sized and uncomfortable that the owner gets fed up, leaves it at the back of the garage to rust away and never touches a bike again.

I have 2 "halfords " bikes

A Carrera Virtuosso which is a great entry level bike and a second hand TDF 08 which i got for £110 ( i think) off ebay.

The TDF had a sunrace rear mech on it which i have burned through in about 1500 miles over winter,the bike is at the LBS as we speak as i had a spare mech but it is not meshing with the bike due to age or just pure bad luck.The rest of the bike is doing fine and it will last more miles of fast ( well it is to me ) commuting.

The Virtuosso goes head to head with other entry level bikes like a trek 1.1 etc and compares very favourably to them.

Boardmans? what can i say but drool

I think as long as a bike is put together well and has a certain level of componentry then to the average person who buys a bike for a weekend pootle around the park with the kids then it will not receive the abuse that more serious riders that tend to post on forums will give a bike,if they have a £90 that last them 1500 miles i think they would be very happy with it.

CyberKnight wrote:Boardmans? what can i say but drool

Many people seem to be under the impression that Boardman bikes are just frames out of a catalogue. No involvement of anyone with any experience of bike design. They are good value on paper though.

a skilled mechanic spend an hour or more assembling the bikes

A bit off topic but in the '60s Fred Williams who had an LBS in Wolverhampton told me that at Viking Cycles the time allowed to assemble a complete bike was 12 minutes. Aparently all the bits were to hand and "just" had to be put together.

Hmm well..... Was out with someone on a Halfords bike today, top end 1k cb mtb, it's already been back in once to have bottom bracket looked at and today it was waggling around all over the place (bb that is), and was being taken back this afternoon..... it was only purchased last weekend!

If the owner of a 1k bike has a problem then of course they should take it back !!

Plenty of reports about many well known bike brands having problems and having to issue recalls, a quick google gave me a list including trek, specialized,cannondale,felt and Raleigh to name but a few.

Linky if your interested ..

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bicycl ... 22d6deed39

You cannot put down an entire brand based on 1 experience i work in the car industry and i know what the global allowed defects per vehicle target is for a very well trusted and reliable brand is .....Sure i would not trust some of the staff at halfords to put it together as i have seen what they do not pay their staff and i would demand a refund or take it to a LBS for a proper repair and get Halfords to foot the bill.

Like I said, its how good a job the mechanic does who assembles the bike before you wheel it out of the shop that determines how well the bike works.
You can call it a "pre delivery inspection" if you like, but you have to pull the cranks off to make sure the BB is tight. Do you then take the BB out and grease the threads, 'cos its been put in dry? Not when margins are cut to the bone, you don't. Likewise, you don't rebuild the machine built wheels.
Dawes for one say they won't warranty their bikes unless they are assembled by a shop mechanic, ie. they won't take responsibility for the stuff they supply, or for its assembly in the Far East.
Halfords are a bit stuck, of course, they have nobody to pass the buck to.....they have the bikes made in the Far East, they sell them through their shops, their employees assemble and check them.....or maybe not.

Grandad wrote:

a skilled mechanic spend an hour or more assembling the bikes

A bit off topic but in the '60s Fred Williams who had an LBS in Wolverhampton told me that at Viking Cycles the time allowed to assemble a complete bike was 12 minutes. Aparently all the bits were to hand and "just" had to be put together.

We were trained to put a bike together and inspect it in 15 minutes......

We was also told 10 minutes over the Christmas period!

As we are all well aware, new cables stretch and will require adjustment early in a bikes life, that's why Halfords give you a further inspection after 6 weeks. This is the source of a lot of complaints by those who don't bother to go back. I can write a multi page horror story on our large well known LBS, its not just Halfords that gives bad advice, bad pdi's and rotten service.
Halfords fail to convince serious cyclists that their quality bikes are worth buying despite heavy advertising, le tour tv ads as an example. IMO they never will because buying a bike is a fashion thing for most cyclists who know nothing about design, materials, manufacturing processes and make purchases using their hearts instead of their heads. Having decent quality bikes in the Carrera and Boardmans ranges at low prices is not enough. You don't turn a small casting or molding from crap to a quality product by putting a heavily marketed name on it but many cyclists seem to fall for it again and again.

Al

A couple of years ago I was trying to get a specific freehub for a Dawes mountain bike. On tour I tried many bike shops south of Glasgow and got no help until I got to Halfords in Dumfries where the guy there went to considerable lengths to help me. He even phoned Shimano for info. He knew that I was not local but still went the extra bit to help. That I call good service and an incentive to recommend this particular shop at least.

My partner's friend asked me to breathe some life back into her Apollo cycle, so I agreed to take a look. Admittedly it has been stored in the open, but it was hardly ridden at all prior to storage. I found the front wheel bearings to be drum-tight and greaseless, the front brake pads in back to front, a loose bottom bracket and a loose headset. The headset bearings also had no grease to speak of. If Halfords seek to go even lower, what will their bottom end bikes be like?

How anyone can expect to get ANY bIcycle for £100 is beyond me: the price of a good dinner for two.
jonty

Jonty wrote:How anyone can expect to get ANY bIcycle for £100 is beyond me: the price of a good dinner for two.
jonty

You can get dinner in pied a terre for not much more, lovely as the food is there and the lunches are a bargain I'd still rather have a cheap bike from Halfords as it would satisfy the needs of someone who wanted to get into cycling without having spent a fortune. They are perfectly good hand me down bikes too.

Any bike that gets left outside is going to need some maintenance, kids are especially bad for this and many parents just can't be bothered to sort things out.
If the Apollo that was last mentioned was awful from first bought then the owner had an opportunity to take it back and get it sorted. Did they actually get a pdi and a 6 week check?
Often people buy bikes in a box, certainly an Apollo I bought recently for a friend the owner had put the forks the wrong way round, the brake pad alignment meant it was impossible to ride as it was set up.
Absolutely no chance that a shop would let it go like that and adjustments like that don't go awry if the bike hasn't been ridden.

I can't see how a new bike can sell for £80 unless it's made of recycled cardboard and assembled by child-slaves in a third-world country. Why as a nation do we buy so much cheapo tatt which ends up in a skip in a few years?
Generally you get what you pay for. If you pay Micky-Mouse money you get a Micky-Mouse bike. And the same applies to everything else. However, one can get an excellent used bike for £80.
If you can't afford the buy something sensible, save up for it or do without.
jonty