which was?

Tight bloke so shocked at having to open his wallet that he had to share on internet, apparently.

Brake cable for £3.99? Wiggle are knocking them out for 79p….

*walks away whistling*

I’ve never been in the shop nor do I know the owner. £27 to fit the cable is expensive but not ridiculous. If the OP is an engineer he would know that its not a 5 min job for a shop ( or really for anyone)

So mr engineer – how much do you get paid an hour?

TJ it’s not how much is he PAID by his company, but how much does he COST to get the comparison with the £27.

Here’s Evans’ price list

https://static.evanscycles.com/production/campaign/static-pages/Servicing/Servicing_pricelist_2016.pdf

No specific mention of replacing a brake cable however

“We will undertake any other stand-alone repair charged at £15 per 15 minutes (£15 minimum).”

So they’d be charging you £15 minimum plus parts therefore £27 is entirely possible

On the flipside, here’s Willy Bain in the southside. He’s a one man band operation working out of a shoebox sized shop in a shabby part of town.

http://www.bicyclerepair.co.uk/brake-service.htm

He’ll charge you £7.50 an end and I’d assume parts are extra

£10 at Southwest Community Cycles: http://southwestcommunitycycles.co.uk/bike-maintenance-repair/#1483975044585-28666cfb-6650

£25 front and rear at Dales: https://www.dalescycles.com/servicing

“From” £20 to adjust gears at Cyclelane: https://www.cyclelane.co.uk/workshop.php

So in short, there’s no right or wrong price for this. It varies

correct BR – just trying to show him the comparison.

Aye but he’s an engineer! Who works for free!

Granted, you can buy the bits from CRC for about £3 and wait a week and fit them yourself, or pay lbs price of around £7, and fit it yourself, or you could pay the guy a not out of the way £20 for his Labour and not inconsiderable overheads.
So the op begrudges giving a twenty spot to someone digging him out the shit?
I’d drop some random a 10 or 20 spot if they fixed a mechanical at the trailside if I couldn’t fix it myself – but I ain’t a Tightwad!

10 ways to be a dick in your local bike shop

(it’s heavily ironic that the shop in question is the shop in the article and video 😆 )

No-one mentioned the cost of qualifications.

My Son has just completed his Cytech and I could say the cost is a bit steep! He is really keen to learn and all the local mums would bring no end of awful bikes around for him to fix. They would never offer him even a fiver for his troubles (he would often use all the bits from my spares box), but I got a bit annoyed when I had to fix a puncture only to find all the patches used up.
He politely says no now, and the kids ride around using their toe caps to stop.
I think people look at a kids bike and assume prices are somehow cheaper, they probably only paid £50 for it.
I once had a VW polo, that my wife removed the door mirror on a post, a replacement was nearly £250 the car was around £5000 new, I was shocked, that did not include fitting it!
Learn to do it yourself, I have often had my day ruined when I’ve managed to unseat the bead on a tubeless set up and failed to get it back on, had to go home early.

Nobeer – there were a few of us riding there yesterday morning and popped in as usual for a natter with Keith. He had seen the thread before we went in and asked for some ‘special brake cables’ 🙂

Good morning everyone,
Can I firstly apologise to Ronnie’s brother in law, we did over charge him. The charge should have been £17 not £27, unfortunately Ronnie’s swearing and abuse put us on the backfoot and we didn’t deal with the situation properly. If Ronnie can get his brother in law to get in touch we will gladly refund him the difference.
But what I won’t put up with is any kind of abuse in my shop, whether that be verbal or any other kind, I’m sure Ronnie won’t be returning anytime soon but if he does I for one do not want to hear that kind of language and attitude(especially in front of kids).
I can only apologise for our part in his day but hopefully when the toilet refurbishment is complete and we’ve had more success with getting the council to back more cycling trails up here, he’ll come back and have a better experience.
All the best, Richard Turpin.

Call it a tenner t**t tax?

+1 mcc01

Maybe you need a ‘folk on this list are barred’ like they use to have in pubs? 🙂

Of course they could have just continued riding with one brake, I used one brake for years as a kid (as did most people – having 2 brakes was not cool).

Also no legal aspect presumably as they were not on the road. Then just fix the cable when you get home.

Commendable effort to avoid being a Dick. 🙂

Fair play OP. Good to read that things have worked out now that both sides of the story are out there. 😀

Kicking off and swearing not cool !! But as it happens £27 for the job was overcharging, something that so many on this thread seem to have missed. Or maybe they didn’t but just wanted to join the queue to put the boot in to the Op.

Route of the ‘problem’ here is now clear. OP is tight, and acted like a dick about it. At least he has now apologised, which is more than I would expect from some on here.

Kudos to the shop owner (who I don’t know, I’ve never been to that part of the world) for his measured response.

Jesus wept. Sounds like OP and his BILneeds to go on some anger management classes.

Well maintained child’s bike breaks at the start of an unsigned ‘non’ official trail. LBS nearby helps out by fixing straight away, charges customer unfairly who then blows up over £10! Bloke the slams the shop, facilities and trail online. Largely because he was too aggressive in the shop to sort the issue out there and then….then to cap it all off plays the ‘im and engineer card’

Perhaps a strongly worded letter to the Mail next time?

Made my coffee break entertaining thanks