So, there I am overhauling the drivetrain on my road bike when I get to one very reluctant bottom bracket. My isis tool isn’t all that and I needed it out to get the HT cups and other bits in.

The nearest bike shop is Halfords, I thought I’d pop in and they’d sort it. Then when I’d ask how much they’d say..”err, a couple o quid?” like a normal lbs.

No, he consulted a f*cking chart and it was £9.99!?

I should have walked the extra distance to a proper shop 😐

Seems fair to me

can’t think of many shops these days where it wouldn’t be £5-10

tight geyt

Just in case this isn’t obvious – if it is like my cheap isis bottom bracket tool, it has a hole in the middle. Usually you can just bung it on and spanner off the BB, but if it is tight, you can put a rear skewer through the hole, tighten up the skewer to hold the tool on, then give it a good hammering (or I have an old piece of metal pipe that gives me a 3 foot level on the end of the spanner).

Without the skewer, I couldn’t get one side off at all, and was pretty close to damaging the BB bits. With the skewer and the pipe it was dead easy, off in no time.

Joe

Jusk ask to quickly borrow the tool… you tool.

Maybe it’s the generosity of my usual LBS then. Seems a bit tight to charge a tenner for a 10 minute job (he made a meal of it), which would have been 5 minutes at Baker’s. They’ve done small jobs before without wanting any payment.

Tracknicko, you may want to lube your hinges if your gate’s too tight. It’ll probably seize soon. I’ll do it for £9.99 if you like?

Couple of quid to remove a BB? Workshops doing jobs that cheaply won’t be around for long.

JM it was pretty seized. My remover sounds the same but it wasn’t happening. The lad had to give it all he had with a fairly sizeable spanner.

TSY 🙄

Maybe it’s the generosity of my usual LBS then. Seems a bit tight to charge a tenner for a 10 minute job (he made a meal of it)

As oppose to how well you were doing it but you thought you’d give it to Halfords just so they can get some practice? 😉

its people like you expecting work done for **** all that wrecks small bike shops mate.

countless times you have people bringing a bike with a stuck bb into the shop, expect you to take it out for £1.20, and then when the shitely maintained heap of crap strips the threads in there it’s most definately the shops fault.

sorry mate but i think you’re wrong on this one. if £10 is too much, buy better tools.

buy better tools.

this.

plus you’re not paying for the 10 minutes you’re paying for the experience that meant he could get it out and you couldn’t.

^ which given that you went to halfords is a double fail on your part!

I’ve never heard of Halfrauds being defended on here but I guess it’s more the pricing.

I personally think a bike job’s price should be largely defined by the time taken to do it. Baker’s sorting out my rear wheel for £12 seemed like a bargain as it must have taken a little while to finish, therefore a 10 minute (should have been 5) job for £9.99 is inconsistent to me.

And yes I am cheap, I can’t afford to be otherwise!

Ok fine, better tools.

Are you ready……………………………….I was wrong.

if you came in any of the shops i have worked in and asked me to get a stuck BB out. i guarantee you would have been quoted AT LEAST £10

But fwiw double fail=win.

He had the tools, experience and where-with-all to complete a task that you couldn’t. £9.99? Bargin!

Maybe it’s the generosity of my usual LBS then. Seems a bit tight to charge a tenner for a 10 minute job (he made a meal of it), which would have been 5 minutes at Baker’s. They’ve done small jobs before without wanting any paymen

and this is why it’s worth supporting your LBS otherwise all you get is BS

Maybe you could have sent it to CRC?

CM, that’s what I was getting at. Unfortunately Halfords is nearer than the shop I usually use and the bike I would ride there on was not a bike.

Lesson learned.

The price charged reflects not just what it costs them, but the value of the work to you. If you don’t want to pay ten quid, do it yourself. You can’t do it yourself, you say? That’ll be ten quid then, mate.

Bloke comes out of his house and walks across the road to the corner shop, asks “a bottle of milk please.” Guy behind the counter says, “that’ll be £2 please.” Bloke replies “two quid? It’s only 89p at Tesco!” Shopkeeper tells him, “well, go there then.” Bloke says “I’m not trailing all the way across town for a bottle of milk, what do you take me for?” Shopkeeper replies, “fair enough. That’ll be £2 then.”

Ultimately, they’re a business, not a charity. An LBS will do a five minute freebie in order to secure repeat custom, and it works; you’ll tell all your mates, and go back there when you want a new bike. Much as you like to think so, they don’t do free work out of the goodness of their hearts. Halfords et al work to a different business model; they’re more like a supermarket, they don’t need customer loyalty because they’ve got a bloody big warehouse on a retail park that’s open all hours.

I fail to see the correlation between someone asking for a favour to remove something they can’t and LBS’s going under.
IME if an LBS is kind enough to not charge me £10 for a 10 min job, the more likely I am to return to said shop and buy stuff I would have got elsewhere because I know i’ll get good service.

I think a lot of people only go their LBS for jobs thye’ve tried (and failed) to do themselves.

Fair enough if you’ve been there before and they know you. but to turn up and expect them to do you a favour, that if the thread on the BB shell gets kjnackered you’ll blame them for, is a big ask.

I don’t use my lbs very often at all – I’d rather buy the right tools and learn to do the job myself. But if I fecked something up and went to them I’d expect to pay top dollar to get it sorted out.

We are currently in the W2W coast to coast route. Last saturday evening MrsPPs front tube blew up at a campsite and blew the tyre with it. We need to be moving on Monday. The LBS in Barnard Castle doesnt open Sunday or Monday so we took a bus into Darlington. 3 proper bike shops. ALL CLOSED. Only Halfords was open and they had just what we needed…..

🙂

to turn up and expect them to do you a favour, that if the thread on the BB shell gets kjnackered you’ll blame them for, is a big ask.

I get this a lot in IT. Have-a-go heroes turning a five minute job into a day’s work. My cousin used to ring me up, “my printer wasn’t printing blue properly, so I reinstalled Windows, and now…”

An LBS will do a five minute freebie in order to secure repeat custom, and it works; you’ll tell all your mates, and go back there when you want a new bike. Much as you like to think so, they don’t do free work out of the goodness of their hearts

Nope, don’t agree. LBS is answerable pretty much to themselves, so will often do a favour with no expectation at all. Same way I would if a neighbour knocked on my door and asked for a hand with their nbike.

thanks wwaswaswas.

you arent asking a shop to fit some new bars, or a bell.

you are asking them to remove a BB that YOU COULDN’T REMOVE.

if ever there was a job with potential pitfalls…

how much would you expect to pay for a stuck seatpost?

bout £2.20 no doubt.

But fwiw double fail=win.

With that attitude, no wonder you went to Halfords to get a job done you couldn’t do yourself, you champion amongst men

Good old Halfords.

if you came in any of the shops i have worked in and asked me to get a stuck BB out. i guarantee you would have been quoted AT LEAST £10

Yeah, but you’ve only ever worked in Harrods and Fortnum & Mason

Nope, don’t agree

Depends on the LBS / individual, of course. So we’re both right, or wrong, depending on context.

Depends on the LBS / individual, of course. So we’re both right, or wrong, depending on context.

Yup, in the context of you, you’re wrong. In the context of me, I’m right

You speak for all mechanics in all bike shops across the land?

Wow.

No, I speak for you!

You know even less about me than you do about bike shops.

If the price menu chart said £10, and if Halfords, like most big shops, use mystery shoppers, then the guy doing the repair could have been disciplined for not charging you.

£10 = fair price. Telling you “a few quid” then charging you £10 = a bit cheeky. This is not a Halfords exclusive though.

Personally I’ve better experiences on average with Halfords than with LBSs, I’ve had incompetence from Halfords but never deceit and I prefer fools to frauds.

Biggerbutslimmer bloke; I was trying to add some humour to an oddly serious discussion about something in the past. I had already acknowledged being wrong but noticed the double negative. Lighten up, no need to be condescending.

You know even less about me than you do about bike shops.

I really doubt that is true