Is it just me or is the bloke who works at Bike Art at the High Lodge visitors centre in Thetford forest a real miserable git who needs to work on his customer service skills?
I was there yesterday as I was doing Go Ape with my partner's nephew. We popped into the bike shop so I could ask about demo full sus bikes seeing as I'm looking to replace mine in the relatively near future.
Straight away he's on the back foot, moaning that I have to pay to demo a bike, they don't just give them out otherwise everyone would just ask for a demo, rather than hire a bike. At no point had I mentioned I expected a free demo, so quite why he started ranting I'm not sure.
I thought that maybe he gets lots of people coming in asking about all the expensive bikes without actually buying stuff, so mentioned that I was looking to replace my Stumpjumper & ride it locally and in Wales, Scotland, the Peaks etc. as well as once a yr to Spain. His response was to screw his face up like he'd just ingested a bit of dog poo flicked up from his front wheel & say 'well, never mind' in response to my comment about owning a Stumpjumper. I asked what he meant by that, as in what's so bad about them, and he just shrugged his shoulders & went quiet.
At that point I almost told him to forget it and I'll spend my money else where, but tried to perservere a bit longer. I told him I wanted it for general trail riding, in the places I had described above & for doing the odd race on, but that I didn't want anything 'XC race oriented' as such. To this he just waved his hands at some Giant Trances that were hung up, mentioned a couple of Scotts & then pointed out the New Kona Cadabra in a brochure.
But, there was just a real dis-interested tone to the whole conversation. He didn't ask anything about budget, when I potentially wanted to demo one, find out anything more about what i am looking for.....
So that's that......there's no way I am spending my money in that place. I would rather drive further afield to get one from a place that shows some enthusiasm and actually seemed interested - not like I was being a pain by making some enquiries in his shop.
And it's not a one-off incident either. I have been in there a few times for different things and it's always the same.
???
