Ok i work in sales….

Now the product i sell is bloody expensive so don’t get much natural interest from potential customers so every sell is a hard slog

So why when i walk into a bike shop after buying a new bike for my lad i explain to the guy serving me i’m interested in buying a 29er hardtail

I would have thought he would be happy to explain what they have in stock, what he could recommend, or maybe whats coming in new 2012 stock wise

Nope just looked at me as if to say you boring ****t….. move on!!

You go to the wrong bike shops. 😉

Did you tell him that you frequent STW?

He’d have upped his game pretty sharpish if he knew!

singlespeedstu – Member
You go to the wrong bike shops.

Living in the midlands there aint much choice

Low paid hourly rate sales assistant in not being very motivated shocker?

Midlands bike shop sweepstake.
I’m going for Leisure Lakes, Wolverhampton.

Living in the midlands there aint much choice

❓

geoffj – Member
Living in the midlands there aint much choice

❓

nope none decent round here

Living in the midlands there aint much choice

You’re kidding?

Living in the midlands there aint much choice

Hmm, I’m going for Evans in Brum.

Nope not kidding, where’s decent near you then??

Leicestershire BTW

you boring ****t….. move on!!

Living in the Midlands gives you loads of choice.

Well it does for me anyway. 8)

Maybe the above poster has hit the nail square on the head.

Leicester is pretty rubbish for mountain bike sales full stop. Now if you’d walked into Julie’s on Clarendon Park Road (oooh, it wasn’t Julie’s you went in was it?) and asked for £3k of italian carbon roadbike they would have probably have baked you a cake! 😀

Dunno about the rest of the county. Is Rutland cycling still open?

Leicester not near my Midlands i’m a bit more central 🙂

Some bike shops just don’t help themselves out, I’ve used some Mega ones in Cardiff and the staff there are now my best mates. In Derby however they do the whole looking down at you – I’m cool because I work in a bike shop and you don’t know ‘owt kinda thing…

I went into a well know bike shop in Derby with money for a new road bike virtually burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to get a Colnago Master X lite and was interested in what kind of a deal they could do on a build.

“I’m sorry we don’t do those”
“but you do Marzocchi?”
“yeah and?..”
“Well its the same supplier”
“No its not”
(This went on for some time, with the staff member inferring more and more that I was an idiot and didn’t know what I was talking about until finally I went on the Windwave website on my phone and showed him the frame.
“well its not in the catalogue we’ve got”
“So can you get me one or not – I am serious by the way”

He went away, reluctantly came back and went through the build with me.
Next day another guy rings me up with the prices on the build – every item was at full RRP and rim tape, inner tubes and cables were all charged. Inner tubes at £5 each On £2500 build? I know what they buy them for FFS. I was fully prepared to spend quite a bit of money but I could have done that myself – why ask them what price they can do on the full build? I’m not surprised they are losing out to online retailers, it was like pulling teeth and then a piss-take frankly. I bought a carbon frame and bits from CRC in the end, groupo from Merlin. Saved over a grand. 3 years later, still got it and its ace.

I can’t believe they would actually charge you for all of the components…the cheek of it 😐

A bike shop that charges over the odds for each component, has poor service, and poor choice compared to online? I wonder why I don’t use my local bike shops any more?

Rorschach – Member
I can’t believe they would actually charge you for all of the components…the cheek of it

Would you have paid full price in his situation then ??

They’re quite entitled to charge what they like, but its no way to sell expensive bikes in a market place where people have a lot of choice.

I went there and asked because I do, where possible, like to support my local bike shop but if they act like they don’t want your business and patronise you, what do you do?

I think sometimes it just luck.

I live in Derby, and work in Nottingham, so popped into a well known shop in Nottingham for a few bits, and the guy that served me didn’t seem overly interested at all. Still bought a few tubes and patches, but didn’t feel like staying around. Went in again last week, and got some great service!

On the other hand, in my LBS in derby. When I wanted to buy a new road bike. I got served by a great bloke. He was pretty young, cant have been older than 20. But was 100% interested, helpful, and knew what he was talking about. Helped me make a decision on a bike, that was actually more money than i was looking to spend..
To me that makes him a pretty good sales person, and am still over the moon with the bike!

So, i think some times, its just luck of the draw..

In defence of bike shop sales staff, having had the displeasure of being one myself for a bit, you are expected to have years of knowledge of stuff, loads of enthusiasm and passion for the job, yet you are paid crap wages, relatively. So, most bike shop staff are just folk doing it until something better comes along.

Me, I did it cos I needed a job and I could get stuff cheap. I din’t do it for the sake of any customers ffs! All I asked was that people gave me a bit of respect and I’d respect them back.

The amount of crap you get off tossers who come in, and for what? Six quid an hour or so? Sod that.

‘Where’s my bike/stuff I demand it this instant!’

Mate, do you genuinely think I really care? Seriously? Hold on, I’ll just go out the back to have a look for it (and to chill out for 10 minutes or so, make a cuppa, have a poo maybe, chew the fat with the grease monkeys…) Nah sorry it’s not in you’ll have to come back next week.

If someone had come in and asked me about a flippin hybrid 29er, I’d probbly have sworn at them….

Frankers – Member

I work in sales….

the product i sell is bloody expensive

i’m interested in buying a 29er hardtail

just looked at me as if to say you boring ****t….. move on!!

Bike shop sales staff quickly develop a highly tuned boring/annoying ****t radar and probably had you sussed before you opened your mouth. I’m afraid there is a very real chance you are a boring ****t. Sorry.

Couple that to £4.97 an hour, sh*t hours, horrible customers with worse attitudes, no career prospects, and having to work for some prick who probably hates cyclists and you by extension and you’re on your way to figuring out why some *might* lack enthusiasm from time to time.

Your lucky the staff didn’t beat you too a pulp and dump you in the alleyway behind the shop
Count yourself lucky you live in Leicester not Hora’s manchestar

Another ex-sales monkey here: no money + long hours + long weeks + no bank holidays/weekends + customers expecting to pay nothing + not allowed to sit down = drone. Next time take cake! 😉

Your lucky the staff didn’t beat you too a pulp and dump you in the alleyway behind the shop
Count yourself lucky you live in Leicester not Hora’s manchestar

Whose Manchester?

I went into my LBS a week ago to see if they had a cheap road bike.

Miserable lot claimed they had nothing suitable for me.

All they could offer me was a half-price full-carbon road bike, with Shimano 105 groupset.

Which obviously I couldn’t really refuse to buy! Been riding it every opportunity since!

EDIT: my wife wasn’t entirely happy when I showed up with it….

EDIT: my wife wasn’t entirely happy when I showed up with it….

Typical! Does she not understand that it’s not how much you spent, it’s how much you saved?

I work in a LBS & I do it because I like bikes

I don’t care about the crap wage, it pays my bills & leaves me a bit left over for bike stuff, I don’t care about career prospects. So long as I’m happy I really don’t give a shit about all that material crap that so many try to gain and fail to achieve

Yes you do learn to fine tune your tw@-o-meter and your tyre kick-o-meter with certain customers, but they may well end up spending some cash in your shop. There’s no need to be rude, obnoxious, lazy or abrupt with them IMHO

There are those customers (quite often Engineers, who do like telling you that they are an Engineer, so they cannot be wrong) who can be a royal pain in the arse, think they know it all or they’re just plain arrogant. I find a that being polite and courteous to them more often than not gets right up their noses

If a customer gets to be too much of a pain in the arse I just politely excuse myself and tell them I have other stuff to do and if they need any more info or help feel free to ask later

http://www.jccookcycles.co.uk

I’m sure some of you may have heard of us already 😉

(quite often Engineers, who do like telling you that they are an Engineer, so they cannot be wrong)

Oh bugger 😉

I think you know what I mean though! Some of them just don’t understand some of the very simple bike related stuff and then wonder why their ‘fix’ won’t work or why you can’t mix and match X and Y and make it work

I’ll stop now…. busy day tomorrow, I’m expecting a bus load of engineers to turn up now I’ve said that. I think I might use lap dancers as my next example of a customer, see if anyone posts up pics of those or if any turn up in the shop…

Agreed, definitely the worst phrase that can be uttered in a bike shop that! I was explaining how an Epic worked when they first came out. The guy kept telling me I was wrong (I wasn’t). Then said “no no, that’s not right, you have to understand, I’m an engineer, I design tanks”.

What was that rushing sound? Ohhhhhh, that was my desire to help you leaving the room. Damn.

So anyway, i still want to know what shop it was. If it was leicester itself then it was either Websters, Julies or possibly south wigston cycles. Theyre the only ‘serious’ bike shops round here. And i use that word in its loosest possbile sense.

Im guessing it will be Julies, they used to be great but now proper nobby.
Would be surprised if its websters, they have been great for a long time, even more so now in the new place.

It’s not the rubbish LBS’s that bothers me about Leicester, its the god awful riding!

i love the engineer comments – i worked in a bike shop(..okay halfords) for 18 months and the engineer line comes out quite regularly. Once every 2-3 months and i only did 8 hours a week! I hate to think what its like for full time bike shop staff.

I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to excuse crap shop staff attitudes. I’ve been there and done that and I did what I was being paid to do with good grace. When I got fed up with it I went off and got something better.

I mean I understand all the reasons why people might not be super-motivated but while you’re there you might as well be professional, rather than sulking about thinking you’re too good for it.

But it’s true that customers with bad attitudes deserve nothing but bad attitude in return!

dasilva – a brand such as Colnago is not available to everyone who has an account with Windwave. To be a stockist of a high end road brand such as that you have to sign up and show support for the brand, not just phone up and order one whenever you want. So that could be why the sales lad probably didn’t know much about Colnago.

Sometimes the customer isn’t 100% right.

Couple that to £4.97 an hour, sh*t hours, horrible customers with worse attitudes, no career prospects, and having to work for some prick who probably hates cyclists and you by extension and you’re on your way to figuring out why some *might* lack enthusiasm from time to time.

Oh boo-bloody-hoo.

I’m with Mr Salmon on this.

I worked in Halfords in my yoof and whilst at uni for some extra cash. I could’ve got a job somewhere else for the same rate but chose Halfords as it sold bikes and I liked bikes. I think the range of customers you get in somewhere like Halfords is probably wider than most shops. But I did my job and did it well, no matter who the customer was (engineer or otherwise – but being an engineer myself this was no issue). I openly told people how crap £80 Apollo bikes were and they usually bought something more expensive, thanking me for my honesty.

There’s no excuse for poor customer service if you work in any retail environment. If you asked for the job, knowing full well what the wages & conditions are, you do what’s expected of you. Simple.

i agree with mr salmon aswell. professionalism costs nothing. if a customer is being an arsehole the best reaction to that is professionalism, not being an arsehole in return. makes you as bad as them in my opinion.
if you dont like your job, leave. if you cant leave, then suck it up.

i agree that julies used to be a good shop. went downhill about 8-9 years ago. coincidentally around about the time i stopped working there!! 😉