This made me chuckle: bike shops (allegedly!) offering receipts with considerably lower value for bikes purchased so that spouses (not just wives!!) won’t get too mad. Reminds me of a couple of guilty moments myself!! 🙂

some men are such pussies

This shows everything that is wrong with modern marriage and consumerism

/sanctimonious

I used to work with a bloke who offered to do this for punters

We’re almost back to the Brant ‘you have won first prize in a beauty contest’ letter that went out with a frame (no names, no pack drill).

A good friend has a bike shop and regularly does this. However I have another friend who’s bike buying was cited as part of the unreasonable behaviour in his divorce when she found out how much he’d been spending. I had two of his frames at my house. Very nice they were too.

Didn’t On-One used to offer a ‘congratulations on winning this bike in our competition’ certificate for about a fiver?

Gah, too slow 🙂

I use my ‘spouse’ as a sounding board otherwise my bike buying would get out of hand. If I can justify it to her then it’s probably an ok buy.

If I can justify it, I buy it. My Missus trusts me. Strange relationships some folk must have.

I don’t have a problem with my spouse and bike buying either (looks ashamed at the current eleven bike collection) although I probably should 😀

I think On-one also did a ‘pre-muddied’ option on delivery so you could claim it was not, in fact, a new bike 😀

Didn’t On-One used to offer a ‘congratulations on winning this bike in our competition’ certificate for about a fiver?

They also offered a “ride your bike in the mud so it’s 2nd hand” service IIRC?

[edit]how many seconds slow was I!

24 minutes, a bit slow.

About 15yrs slow.

love the on-one certificate idea.

surely honestly is the best policy with bikes? my wife doesn’t understand the first thing about jones bikes and i don’t understand the first thing about ‘alexander mcqueen collectibles’. we both understand what it means when the piggy bank doesn’t rattle though…

I did wonder why people have such affection for on one, seems they weren’t always Sports Direct.

I operate a one in, one out policy. When Mrs slowjo sees bikes or a procession of bike bits being posted she knows another one is on the way. I don’t go silly with my bike buying and she doesn’t ask apart from questions like: ‘I haven’t seen this one before, when did that arrive?’

ATM the one in, one out policy has slipped a bit. I need to get over to Classifieds to try and shift a frame.

Mine positively encourages me (as if I need it!).

I’ve considered the converse – I had my wife’s bike mended again the other day after the latest “smash up the drivetrain on a waterbar” incident, but, bless em, my LBS always seem to manage to charge a lot less than I’d expect, and we did have a conversation about the possibility of an inflated invoice to take home for it (but didn’t in the end, if you’re watching, darling…)

Thank god my money is my money and dont have to put up with this stuff. If my partner buys an expensive pair of shoes or jacket etc, as long as its via her money I couldnt give a toss.

If its out of the joint however then I do 😆

My wife saw my annual statement for my 10yr savings things lying around. Seeing that the next one doesn’t mature until 2020 she smugly announced ‘You can use THAT for a new bike’. Didn’t say I had to wait until 2020 though 🙂

strangely, I find it harder to justify big spending to myself than to my wife.

In our house the missus knows if I replace a bolt let alone figuring out the cost of bikes/kit – the only downside to dating a decent biker.
Some of my friends have swapped bikes but kept the same colour and got away with it. But then they have to negotiate shopping:riding ratios on their days off and I don’t.

A friend of mine had a Ducati 748, he changed it for a 996 and had the fairing swapped so his wife wouldn’t find out!

I can never understand threads like this.

Joint account to cover housing costs/utilities – percentage of salary goes into that, anything left over is your money to spend on bikes or whatever you like.

This made me chuckle: bike shops (allegedly!) offering receipts with considerably lower value for bikes purchased so that spouses (not just wives!!) won’t get too mad. Reminds me of a couple of guilty moments myself!! 🙂

Sounds a bit like the relationship that Greece has with the EU…

I find surprising them works a treat.

for example, last night I mentioned that a parcel would be delivered to her place of work and left it at that.

I get an email this morning from Mrs V, saying I quote

This LARGE box has turned up and Mr Hipkins would like to know what it is so he can tell Mrs Eastham 🙄

Mr Hipkins is a keen cyclist who also runs goods receiving at the Mrs’s company.

I seemed to have missed off saying how big the box was or even that it has one of these in it 😀

and at no point has money been discussed.

I guess she lets me spend what I want as long as the family doesn’t suffer, so I count myself lucky.

It must be a difficult relationship if you need a separate receipt

Mrs Gti encourages me to spend money (when we have any) on bike parts because that gives her carte blanche to buy shoes and boots.

Didn’t On-One used to offer a ‘congratulations on winning this bike in our competition’ certificate for about a fiver?

Well it’s not like OO wouldn’t miss a beat on charging for it. 😛

@ Vortexracing – how are you finding the dizzy forks?
How do you rate the 15mm lever dropout system?
Plushness?

They’re rather good aren’t they but still not as plush as my Devilles, still I think I may have too much psi in the dizzys.

Has no-one else noticed that the lower receipted value may then appear in the shop’s takings, thereby reducing their ‘declared’ sales for Vat and taxable profits to HMRC? Do that a few times a year on carefully selected sales and it’ll add up to a tidy sum.
Looks too much like sharp practice for my tastes…

@ Vortexracing – how are you finding the dizzy forks?
How do you rate the 15mm lever dropout system?
Plushness?

They’re rather good aren’t they but still not as plush as my Devilles, still I think I may have too much psi in the dizzys.

Firstly, the box is still at the Mrs’s works so I dont know and 2ndly, it just the frame and Reba forks, it’s just that that was the first piccie of a Solaris I found.

I do intend to run it fat though and I also have an XT chainset, so I’m not far off the piccie 😳

A lower receipt won’t help in insurance claims either

Would probably need to pay in cash for the shop to easily pull it off though otherwise their books wouldn’t balance too well would they?

Has no-one else noticed that the lower receipted value may then appear in the shop’s takings, thereby reducing their ‘declared’ sales for Vat and taxable profits to HMRC? Do that a few times a year on carefully selected sales and it’ll add up to a tidy sum.
Looks too much like sharp practice for my tastes…

Would probably need to pay in cash for the shop to easily pull it off though otherwise their books wouldn’t balance too well would they?

Amateurs… there’s two receipts, and three transactions:

1) Actual transaction, with debit card payment, invoice, VAT all duly logged and paid, lets say £500.

2) Another sales transaction is created, logged as a cash sale, receipt / invoice duly printed, lets say £400 for ‘domestic presentation’.

3) A sales return / credit transaction is created, cancelling (2). It’s a cash refund, and it’s for £400…

Shop’s books all true and fair, all VAT correctly accounted for, no worries. And transaction (1) with associated paperwork still exists, so come insurance claim time, no problemo…

Has no-one else noticed that the lower receipted value may then appear in the shop’s takings, thereby reducing their ‘declared’ sales for Vat and taxable profits to HMRC? Do that a few times a year on carefully selected sales and it’ll add up to a tidy sum.

Would probably need to pay in cash for the shop to easily pull it off though otherwise their books wouldn’t balance too well would they?

I would expect that the shop will produce another receipt that covers the balance so their books tally. If you don’t want it, it’s binned so you effectively only have a receipt for a portion of what you bought.

It happened to me once. I had to laugh and told my wife who was with me, giving her the chance to explain that she knew exactly how much it was – she was buying it for me as a present 🙂

Or you’re all overthinking it and the ‘receipt’ has the same validity as On-One’s beauty pageant.

They’re not stupid.

The owner probably just get’s two bits of paper, one actual receipt and one fake.

No jigger poker with tills, no VAT fraud, no Illuminati pulling the strings to fix the bike prices.

The owner probably just get’s two bits of paper, one actual receipt and one fake.

This may also be true, I guess it depends whether it’s the sort of bike shop where the owner has to look for a pen and the receipt pad, or where it’s computerised.

IME the latter is increasingly the norm though, even for the smaller LBS. It’s a hell of a lot quicker in that case to put a dummy sale through and then cancel / credit it than to create a “fake” invoice in Word or whatever.

I’ve got a mate who is fond of expensive jackets and related outerwear, (Arc’Teryx Veilance and the like) he admitted to sneaking new jackets in and when he wanted to wear it, putting a cobweb on the shoulder to make it look like he’d had it ages