Has anyone else encountered lack of stock issues with Evans Cycles? Just nipped in at lunchtime as for convenience rather than my LBS which is difficult to get to after work.

Was after (as you can see not exactly hard to get items:

Cinder tyres – nope didn’t have the ones I was looking for

Brake pads for Avid Juicy 5s – nope had a couple of deores and hope but that was about it

Citrus degreaser – nope had some nasty chemical stuff in an aerosol which I didn’t fancy the look of.

Useless, don’t think I’ll ever bother with them again. They’re just like Tesco’s convenient but just don’t have any positive vibes. I never been too impressed with their service (they sold a helmet to my BF which was way too small.) Apart from having a Herman Munster look, isn’t this a little dangerous? Muppets.

My nearest Evans in Woking is a great store.

ou want a particular brand of make and tyre – from 100’s of available

and spare disc pads.

bit fussy if you ask me.

citrus degreaser – fair enough.

It’s to do with being too picky. The brake pads is annoying agreed, but they had plenty of “tyres” and also some “degresaser”. Just not the exact sort you wanted.

When I buy clothes, or food, or a new toaster I rock into a shop and buy an item of the general sort that I need at a price that I am willing to pay. With bikes, we expect to walk in off the street and buy exactly the product that we’ve read about on the internet, and if the shop doesn’t have it we call them “useless”. It isn’t very fair. 🙂

I never go to any bike shop expecting to get exactly what I want unless I’ve called up first to confirm that they have it in stock or ask them to order it in for me.

Cinders are usually an Evans staple, they always have them in my local ones. Citrus degreaser means walking across the road to Cycle Surgery instead though.

Too picky re tyres??? The number of debates on here about what size and type. Give me a break. Being a small rider narrower tyres suit my rider. So BD what are you saying? I should just buy what they have rather than what suits my needs. That’s customer service of the Henry Ford variety. It’s not as if they didn’t have any narrow tyres in that particular store and have made a decision not to stock them due to lack of demand. But I really get on with Cinders. And as far as I’m concerned citrus degreaser is pretty bog standard item to buy in a bike shop. It doesn’t have to be a special brand.

This is not particularly unique to the bike world. If I went to say Carphone Warehouse for an iphone. It they didn’t have one in stock I wouldn’t come out with a Samsung Toca. I still be pretty p****d as they didn’t have what they advertised.

Cinders are usually an Evans staple, they always have them in my local ones. Citrus degreaser means walking across the road to Cycle Surgery instead though.

Spitalfields?

Why not check beforehand or ask them to order them in?
Do you really think that there’s any actual shop on earth that carries 100% of its publicised stock items?

Im confused, are you saying they didnt have any cinders because they had sold out, or didnt stock them because they are not popular?

they sold a helmet to my BF which was way too small

How is that their fault?

So BD what are you saying? I should just buy what they have rather than what suits my needs.

Pretty much, yes. Most people’s perception of “their needs” appears to be derived either from something they read once or from an imperfect process of trial and error. Buying a different tyre of a vaguely suitable nature (thin ones for mincing, in your case) is part of the trial and error process, and if it turns out well you can write about it on the internet and other people will write about you having written about it, and before you know it your random narrow mincing tyre will be the tyre of choice on STW.

Alternatively, accept that you’re going to have to wait a whole 24 hours to get them slightly cheaper from CRC. 🙂

Spitalfields?

Yep. 🙂
I often go there just to take random bikes for a test ride, and use up a lunch hour.

If I went to say Carphone Warehouse for an iphone. It they didn’t have one in stock I wouldn’t come out with a Samsung Toca.

Oh, and I don’t really know what either of those things are, but I suspect your level of knowledge must make shopping for a portable telephone pretty frustrating. 😉

Coz he went in having never bought a helmet and asked if they could recommend a size. Which they did and was way too small. He did try in and the assistant said it was perfectly fine. To me a helmet balancing on top of the skull is not fine. You could and probably will call my bf stupid for buying it but he went on the advice of a supposed expert in the shop. As he somehow thought they would know best.

And yes they did have Cinders – but not the size I wanted.

“Evans in Woking is a great store” – assuming you can drag the staff away from chatting to get served, don’t get served by the girl in the shop and brush off the assumptions that by me buying tyres must mean that I am buying them for my BF……apart from that its not bad.

It sounds like he got recommended a “one size” type of helmet, which probably isn’t ideal, but they do “fit” after a fashion (at least the retaining systems work with a wide variety of head sizes), they all pass the same safety tests, and they tend to be a fair bit cheaper too.

Stock is really hard for bike shops – there is so much you can stock that you cannot possibly stock everything.

I would expect brake pads for most brakes tho. My LBS manages this but as for tyres they have a range of a good few but no way could stock every tyre available.

BTW why is it fair enough to get upset over the degreaser but not the pads? Surely not stocking one of the most widely used types of pad is more of a sign of a problem than not having some hippy, citrus based degreaser?

you gotta love an Evans bashing thread, especially, when there is a real need to do it…..

CRC is normally way better for stock than an Evans.
But has anyone noticed how much bigger CRC’s warehouse is than an Evans?
If you need a specific thing, order it.
If you want something that fits the bill quickly, go into a shop. I’m sure something from Bontrager or Specialized’s tyre range would have worked fine.

“CRC is normally way better for stock than an Evans” as a company, not a chance. Evans have 34 shops with a warehouse to cope, keeping those shops in stock would be pretty hard, as well as mail order sales, selling direct from a warehouse only, like CRC do is MUCH easier

“But has anyone noticed how much bigger CRC’s warehouse is than an Evans?” again not a chance CRC is mail order, evans is shops AND mailorder…….

Every time one of these threads pops up I remind myself why I stick with B2B.

Then again, every time Si posts another picture of a “demo” Chumba I start considering importing some frames as an excuse to write a load of nice kit off against tax. 😆

The Birmingham store did not have any 26″ inner tubes bigger than 1.0 and none at all with presta valves the other day.

Then again, every time Si posts another picture of a “demo” Chumba I start considering importing some frames as an excuse to write a load of nice kit off against tax.

eh?

i always ring evans to check on stock, and they really do price match any other price…. dont expect nething else from them.

If you are buying and selling bikes as a small business you have to make a profit before you start paying tax.

If you are buying bikes yourself you have to pay tax on your income and then buy the bikes.

Just something that I was day-dreaming about recently, I know its hard to turn a profit flogging bikes, but if you only want to cover costs or its part of a larger business then that isn’t really important.

CRC is normally way better for stock than an Evans” as a company, not a chance. Evans have 34 shops with a warehouse to cope, keeping those shops in stock would be pretty hard, as well as mail order sales, selling direct from a warehouse only, like CRC do is MUCH easier

“But has anyone noticed how much bigger CRC’s warehouse is than an Evans?” again not a chance CRC is mail order, evans is shops AND mailorder…….
an Evans, AN Evans. A single branch of Evans. One shop. Not the whole company. The shop you may go into as part of Evans’ physical presence. Just one Evans store…
Is smaller than CRC.
Point understood?

CRC is mail order, so comparing CRC to one Evans shop is ridiculous….

don’t understand your point, because it doesn’t make any sense, if you were to compare CRC to Evans mail order, then that would make sense, but you would be wrong because Evans mail order is bigger than CRC… point understood?

Bicycle shop in ‘haven’t got exactly what I want, right now, shocker’, gee, I bet people all over the world are empathising with you right now. And if your boyfriend can’t work out what size of hat to wear, I’d be thinking twice about letting him fiddle with y’monkey…

i once ordered a bike frame from one of the evans shops down south to be delivered up to leeds for me to measure up to be sure it fit(it was new old stock in sale so couldnt get measurements online and evans were not willing to measure for me) ;-(

the lad i spoke to said no we dont have that frame here, your wrong i think as hq said you have it here . he said if we did id have bought it at that price ..mmm..quick check oh yes we do have it

so i paid my 50 quid deposit for it to be sent up to leeds (he did inform me if someone came in and paid in full before the delivery truck took it it would be sold. which is fair i reckon) about a week later i hadnt heard owt so i called up and i was told a customer came in and paid in full just after i paid the deposit

i was a bit miffed to say the least as they had not informed me. upon further questioning i found out it was the lad who took my deposit that bought the bloody thing

not been in since ;-(

Crikey, i just spat tea all over my keyboard………monkey, priceless!

My local Evans (Kingston Upon Thames) has just changed from being pretty rubbish to nowadays pretty good.

Well if you order something in store and we have it in the warehouse it usually arrives at the shop the next day, sometimes keeping stock of some items is tricky, id the supplier is running low for example then we can’t do much about it.

Thought u were referring to Cadel, in which case i totally agree

Yeah, Cedel Evans is riding like a useless ****. That’s coming frm an Aussie. That’s what you get year after year when you ride without a reliable team and don’t have enough mongrel in you.

Oh you can never get tyres or brake pads off him either..

The Birmingham store did not have any 26″ inner tubes bigger than 1.0 and none at all with presta valves the other day.

Go to Tesco, or Wilkinsons then. And Presta valves are crap anyway, so you had a lucky escape there…..As are Panaracer Cinders: So the same applies there as well………