Last weekend I went to Halfords after checking stock online in my local branch.
They had it.
The staff were friendly.
Job done.
Pleasantly surprised.

Went into Selby Halfords a while back while doing a charity ride. Needed a new BB and they fitted it for free. Immediately. LBS wanted to charge us more and couldn’t do it same day.

Halfords are an easy target. My local H are better than the lbs I’ve spent £4k in

My local Halfords (Washington) is great. The bikes are on plans and the guys at the shop go out of their way to do a good job, they’re bike nuts and know their stuff. I can’t see why Halfords usually get slated, not my experience at all TBH. The other local LBS’s (2 of them, in Newcastle) are absolutely rubbish, I’ve tried with them and they couldn’t care less!

Shout out to the Halfords lads!

I’ve almost always had good service from my local Halfords- better, on average, than some of the LBSs.

I was really pretty impressed with the build work on my Voodoo. Not quite perfect, but better than I usually bother to do on my own bikes.

For balance, I used to work in the bike bit of a branch of Halfords and was pretty appalled by how incompetent the vast majority of the staff were, as well as lazy, extremely impolite and generally unprofessional. The whole operation at that particular store was a bit of a shambles, although I understand it’s much better nowadays after extensive staff ‘redistribution’…

Another + for Hlafords from me.

Ive had better service there than other LBS’s round here (apart from Rat Race who are awesome !)

(And the Parts Dept (car) manager is more knowledgeable than every main dealer parts depts I’ve ever used)

Halfords Merryhill (Dudley) is also excellent, there are a couple of serious bikers in there, the one guy has a Santacruz Carbon Nomad, the other a spicy, their bikes are so dialled mechanically I guessed they’d be able to look after my little blender, they love it when so one takes a good bike in to work on they seem to make an extra effort and do a sterling job.

Cheers

I was really pretty impressed with the build work on my Voodoo. Not quite perfect, but better than I usually bother to do on my own bikes.

I was so pleased with mine that I was convinced the shop had just fitted the pedals and straightened the bars…

They come part-assembled but there’s more final assembly required than that.

TBH I only got them to build it because it was free, and I figured I’d either get a quality build or a good laugh. But I really could have gone for a proper offroad ride straight from the shop, no worries.

I gave up on my local halfords after dropping a bike in and they didnt have to tools to remove a cassette 😯

My girlfriend lives in Blackpool and to the branch there when I go to see her as they are brilliant, much better than any LBS Ive used.

Then again, I was out the other night and got talking to a lad whilst riding and he was the bike manager at my local halfords and he seemed really switched on so I might give them another go.

If you accept they’re not a specialist bike emporium they’re ok, and dead handy for those little bits and bobs you need halfway through building/fixing a bike on a Sunday afternoon or early evening in the week,
Cheapest GT85 round here for miles as well… 😀

at (one of) my local Halfords, i pointed out to one of the workshop lads that the forks on a bike were the wrong way round.

he didn’t have a clue what i meant, but he was very keen for me to explain.

i’m going to guess that Halfords will struggle more than other ‘bike’ shops to retain staff. If i was a Halfords grunt i’d be keen to move to a different shop as soon as possible – where my staff discount would get me shinier stuff.

The Halfords store here in Caerphilly is pretty good too.
Always helpful and compared to other LBS – their prices are comparable.

I would recommend them to others.

Pretty handy for shock servicing too…takes a few days extra but I just handed it over the desk, and I didn’t have to faff about queueing at the post office, and then queue at the sorting office to pick up my missed delivery later in the week. The only downside was TFT didn’t bother ringing me (number was on form) to ask if I wanted a marked shock body replaced as they did when I last went to them direct, instead they just made an exclusion to their three month warranty as I had apparently instructed that it wasn’t replaced.

This had filled me with more confidence in my local store my nearest (decent) bike shop is 20 miles away by train where as halfords is a few miles away. I was planning on taking my Blender in for them to look at the rear mech and bleed the rear brake. Just wasn’t sure how good they would be.

My local Halfords has been revamped, and the cycle section now takes up about 75% of the ground floor, rather than a small mezzanine. Camping has a fair section. Car parts seem to be a sideline now. Not sure if the service is better, but a good sign surely?

So it’s basically pretty variable across branches of Halfords- so just like across branches of Evans, or Cycle Surgery, or across LBSs then?

I wouldn’t trust the Halford lads to touch anything on my bike. They are just bolt tightners. They are not a pro shop. Anything like adjusting gears you can simply learn to do by watching Youtube vids. Most bolts on a bike only need a few Allen keys.

Just bought a Boardman roadbike for my wife. Had a ring round to check on stock which highlighted (highlit???) differences between branches.
Winchester-no hope
Andover-but that would have meant going to Andover
Sailsbury-couldn’t have asked for better, concentious bike set up- would have done it differently but no better. Excellent followup. And a small handed fitter put bulbs into places that I couldn’t have reached (on the car) while we waited.

I worked in the bikes dept of halfords in Edinburgh in the mid 90’s. It was staffed exclusively by club level cyclists, one of which went on to ride for Scotland and GB in the commonwealth and Olympic games. I like to think customers got pretty good service from us (I certainly remember a few customers who came in for a £99 Apollo special but left with a decent £500 carrera and a few trail ideas – a number of them became regular customers.)
The guys that worked on car stereos and turtlewax were not cyclists. We all covered each others areas. I dare say it’s the same today.

“Cheapest GT85 round here for miles as well… “

Cough Tesco’s 😆

Anyone know any good Halfords stores round the M25/Surrey/Berks?

Here a good story about irrationality of big stores:

Popped into my local Halfords today, to buy a tool chest.

They had a deal on, so I said I’d buy one.

The lady said it was an online offer only and I’d need to reserve it and then collect.

I asked if they had the stock, she said yes.

“So, you have the item I want, and I could collect it from this store today, but you won’t actually sell it to me unless I drive home, click my mouse and drive back”?

Yes sir.

Great.

I work part time at Halfords and all my colleagues know exactly what they’re on about. As a result, we get customers coming from other nearby towns to buy bikes and get them built rather than their local store.

On the flip side, we’ve had bikes from other stores that have obviously not been built properly.

It’s easy to slag off the whole chain because of a bad experience at one store, but some of us actually know what we’re doing.

Local Halfords sent my fork off for a service, and paid for it, when I took it in with the bike (foolishly) a week outside warranty. Then promised to do a deal when the fork finally dies (yet to see how that goes). Even if they renege (and there’s been some staff turnover) they still did well by me.

They ARE my LBS.

I use to work for Halfords years ago. The 3 things i always thought let the company down was:

1. Some of the ‘promo’ bikes are really cheap nasty things that no matter how well set up they just bend and fall apart.

2. Not enough staff and too many people wanting bike built while they wait which we just couldn’t do.

3. Special parts ordering system was too slow (may have changed now) several weeks to get hold of BB’s, brakes etc for bike we had in stock

Anyone know any good Halfords stores round the M25/Surrey/Berks?

last time i went in the Bracknell branch were pretty good, try to make sure you give your bike to one of the tattooed chaps as they know their stuff but the ginger chap who was there last time inspired no confidence.

the one in farnborough gate is pretty dire.