We learnt that Halfords bike sales people haven't the brains or the motivation to elect a pair of tyres as " shop tyres " so customers would be allowed to test the £1000 bikes in the wet car park.

" Nah mate, can't it ride out there today…bin raining. "

DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO SELL THE BLOODY THING OR HAVE YOU BECOME EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO IT YOU NUMPTARD?!

i learnt that stiffee's rock.

i learnt people were completely un reasonable

riding new bike in a carpark that is wet and salty……and then you dont buy it ….left with a bike that needs heavily cleaned up or discounted. FWIW ive worked in a few shops and i wouldnt have let you test ride it in the rain unless i had a demo bike to let you try

Sorry " trail_rat, " I didn't expand on the situation as I was in " ranting c0ck wad " mode. I should've clarified. By demo I just meant riding the 50-100 feet to make sure the bike's a good enough fit. You could even have demo wheels. The carpark was damp, honest-not even wet. The sales guy looked like he wanted to go home and really-body language, monotone, keen-ness NOT to help-gave this deep-seated, ingrained feeling of " phukk off, I want to go home and I hate bikes. "
Sorry about giving a " I'm loaded, do you know who I am " w@nker impression mate.

Winterstoke Road, A_S? I didn't let them touch my Bianchi Bike to Work bike or even take it out of the box when it arrived there!

Looks like you've got one of the (Many?) crap branches near you. Our local Hellfrauds is actually pretty decent, and is big enough so you can ride round INSIDE to test bikes.

I bought a Carerra Subway as a commuter last year and the youngsters in there were as helful as I needed. The guy who served me was a nice lad.
They've got the new Boardman FS bikes in stock now, and by god they're lovely bits of kit and the prices are astonishingly cheap!

Hi Pete! That's what I got the chap to let us do ( eventually ). He changed his outright over-the-phone " NO " to my mate fitting his SPDs to an okay when I showed him we'd gently hand-tighten them on.

Hi Clubber! We're seriously thinking of letting just me do the PDI on the bike if he buys it.

We're seriously thinking of letting just me do the PDI on the bike if he buys it.

DO IT!!
I do that on any bike I buy from anywhere. To be fair my Carerra was fairly well set up, but make sure you open the hubs ang get plenty of grease in there from new. They last forever if you do that, and I've seen and heard of a few loose cones from new recently. On local had a new bike and his back wheel locked solid a few miles into it's first ride….(Not a Halfords bike either, and XT hubs)

Assuming that things have not changed since I was a Halfords kid 16 years ago they are paid a salary without commision so whether they sell you a bike or not makes no difference to them however they will have to clean it if it goes out and gets dirty and wet. Go to a proper bike shop?

What I learned today – you can leave a 12 year old Mazda on the drive for a month without moving it, through rain and snow, and it will start first time when you have to go to work.

I learnt that riding fixed on the road for the first time was probably not best carried out in the morning rush hour. 😀

I learnt that riding fixed on the road for the first time was probably not best carried out in the morning rush hour.

Skills. Adrenalin, the fastest way to up your heart rate for minimum effort 🙂

" I learnt that riding fixed on the road for the first time was probably not best carried out in the morning rush hour. "

YOU'RE NICKED!

Agency_Scum's points are right if you want to sell a bike with good service in a decent LBS!

But he's wrong this time because he had faith and hope and realised:

Halfrauds are Utter utter utter s*it

Great bikes available but absolutley sh*t service who are not Cytec trained.

Good for car batteries though lol

i learnt that some people believe all the hype in the countless thousands that halfords spend on advertising….

cos folk still seem to go their!

those boardman bikes are great for the money though,

today I learnt that skiving off work in winter is not as much fun as skiving off in the summer