CRC used to be the fastest and I used to get things next day. Now they have become the worst. I ordered a whole heap of stuff 6 days ago and everything else turned up Tuesday / Wednesday. CRC order still not here.
I appreciate you can pay for delivery, but they sometimes don't ship your order until 3 days after you have placed it when you use free delivery.
Rubbish
yep - finding stuff taking over a week on free delivery. Merlin on the other hand managed next day.
Now tend to check all the other online shops before I go to CRC unless I know i'm not going to need it for 2 weeks.
Yea, I've stopped using them. Wiggle, Merlin and Ribble are all more reliable. Plus the CRC website is awful.
Yep. You often get despatch/tracking info on same day as order, and they obviously hold back on actually releasing your order to the postal service for a few days... Then tracking is active and delivery takes two days.
Wiggle, ...more reliable. Plus the CRC website is awful.
Wonder how long the merger will take to bring Wiggle standards down to CRC's level...
For balance, ordered wednesday afternoon, dispatched thursday morning, arrived this morning.
The irony of of the situation is that Wiggle own CRC?
I have noticed using the free postage that it can take a few days to turn up or even get picked up by royal mail but I ordered tyres, sealant and a dropper about lunch time yesterday and for the grand sum of £2.99 they arrived this morning.
The uptake for the paid delivery service is going to be crap if your free service is too fast.
If you pay your £2 it's quick.
Pretty good here this week. Ordered Sunday pm, despatched Monday, arrived Tuesday morning.
On the other hand, the brake pads ordered were actually out of stock - had an email through to say sorry though (and a refund), with a voucher code as well. They're still on the site as in stock and available....
I ordered a helmet last week on Wednesday afternoon, arrived Friday.
Ordered four items Tues, small bits arrived Weds, bigger boxes yesterday.
Disgusting.
three deliveries to austrlaia, each one took four days
They don't promise it'll be delivered quickly so I'm not sure I could complain tbh
Yeah for free delivery I'm not complaining... well not too much. Latest order took 6 days until it arrived. Quite like their website, not many of their competitors allow you to combine the filters which can be very useful when looking for specifc standards of wheel or chainset etc.
Yeah for free delivery I'm not complaining
They used to do free delivery that would reliably turn up in 1-2 days.
Based on this year's orders so far, If I order free delivery from CRC I have about a 75% chance of it landing in around two days. The outliers are generally around 4-5 days. I think it's luck of the draw, and tbh I suspect it's RM letting them down.
Bear in mind that anything you order from CRC is coming across from Ireland by ferry before anything else so there's an automatic advantage vs Merlin...
They used to do free delivery that would reliably turn up in 1-2 days.
Would that have been before the Royal Mail was privatised?
Yea, I've stopped using them. Wiggle, Merlin and Ribble are all more reliable. Plus the CRC website is awful.
... but uses Wiggle's website in preference? Merlin and Ribble while having exemplary service standards both have pretty oldskool sites too (although more functional that Wiggle)
Personally I don't see the issue with CRC's website. Seems logically organised and functional to me...
Agree CRC's need look site sucks nuts 😯
Back in the day (probably 10-15 years ago 😯 ) CRC was pretty well always next day free delivery, it was ace.
It's not even like the competition getting better has made CRC look bad - CRC had it nailed over a decade ago, wonder how they managed to drop the ball so badly?
Didn't they chop a bunch of staff? Even two years ago the free delivery was often next day
My last frame from crc took over a week to arrive. I made the mistake of paying for next day delivery from them years ago, it took them 3 days to dispatch the oder
Yeah, the free delivery certainly isn't worth the money you pay for it....
If you want something next day, order by the cutoff, pay for next day, and in my experience you always get it.
Otherwise, expect it in under a week ish. Not really sure what the complaint is tbh. It's not like they claim free stuff will be with you next day, it's pretty clear on their site it's expected to be 3 to 4 days.
I get that if you opt for free delivery then it's good business sense to make it slower than paid. What annoys me is when the online tracker says dispatched and give you a tracking number, which when you attempt to track RM has no record of. Last box of stuff I ordered was "dispatched" the same day but took 3 days to be traceable on RM then an additional 3days to arrive. Makes me think, like mentioned above, that they sit on the packages to slow down the delivery process.
Never had next day with CRC free delivery. Always minimum of three. Often more.
Worse is paying for next day delivery took longer. I always suspected because that involved sending a man to the post office to pay for next day delivery. It was next day from the point when the can be bothered to ship it, which wasn't same day (despite qualifying for that day cut off).
CRC is limited for me anyway. Essentials are fine if they're in stock but I only get a few things. Drivetrain bits occasionally, and even then sometimes I find them cheaper elsewhere. For other things almost always they don't have the size/colour/model I want in stock or it will be at full price. That's just the way they work though. They're a discount shop flogging off the stuff people don't want cheap to attract you in.
I actually find CRC's [list]website [/list]one of the best.
In fact I often use it to get a drilldown to a part number then use google to see if its cheaper elsewhere.
I was looking at forks recently... you'd think "filter by wheel size" is sensible/fundamental.... but it amazed me how many wouldn't allow this...
Delivery wise.... I'd guess it depends where you live.
I'm not far from Gatwick so Evans is usually fastest.... and the deliver to store is also convenient... I'm not sure I'd want to order from NI though!
I know I'm not alone in Superstar delivery drifting into months rather than days 😀
"We have these wheels made up and they are taking up space in the warehouse... grab a bargain"
1 week after order: "We are busy sorry about the delay"
2 weeks after order: "erm, we are making the wheels now"
3 weeks after order "erm we don't have any boxes to ship them"
Still ... £100 for a set of decent wheels....they were also described as "pre-built" which was a bit of a joke..(in fact the build was so bad it was really incorrect to describe them as wheels - well over 1cm out of true after 30 mins) .. TBH it would have been easier to get spokes, hubs and rims ... but ... £100 for a set of rims, hubs and spokes still isn't bad... I just wish they sent me them a month earlier without bothering to lace them.
I struggle with long sentences but I did a "search" on this page and zero results for "LBS" or "support". It's been nearly an entire day! Disappointing 🙂
FWIW I am rarely disappointed with CRC delivery times usually 2 working days I find. If I desperately need it asap I either pay for it or get it from somewhere I can be sure it'll arrive quicker.
[edit]LOL @ the auto-replace, haven't seen that before 🙂 [/edit]
I did a "search" on this page and zero results for "LBS" or "support". It's been nearly an entire day! Disappointing
It depends what you call a LBS in today's economy ....
Evans is "local" to me.... last year we were local to JE James.... when I bought some stuff .. we are reasonably local to Hargroves
I just got a helmet from Wigan... at the time I was in Lancs... (but it was £20 cheaper is the real reason).
I'll buy local when it's not £10-£20 more.... but I do have limits!
I would always go to crc first when looking for bike parts, but everything i have ordered this year has taken a week to get to me. I dont want to pay for next day and dont need to receive it the next day but i do expect to be seeing my goods in around 3 days. Gone right off them.
I keep saying we need an Amazon of the bike world. Or Amazon selling a lot more bike stuff. They sell some, though questionable sources when they're from marketplace sellers.
As a Prime subscriber it would be great to get standard bike spares next or even same day via Amazon, like I can with a lot of other things.
And yes, there is the LBS. Problem is they don't stock everything and it has to be ordered from their supplier, which is "a couple of days", and then sometimes longer as they're still waiting for delivery. And then there's the price. I like to support LBS, but sometimes prices are just insane for standard parts. Sure they can't compete with grey market and OEM stuff online, but for standard parts at RRP and even higher that almost everyone can get cheaper elsewhere (even in some other LBS), it's easy to see why people will look for cheaper. A decent LBS may get my business on big purchases though. Chance to test ride, warranty and support, follow up business.
Ordered from CRC Wednesday late evening with free delivery,received order today,Saturday.
I have always have good service from CRC, usually 2 or 3 days and when I go to local bike shop they haven't usually got the part in so they need to order it (does it get ordered there and then or in a day or 2 time ?) then by the time he gets it in and lets you know it is in a week has passed and you pay RRP. Plus with all the different 'standards' we have nowadays the chances of the bike shop having the part you want in stock are getting slimmer. Just my 2p worth.
and you pay RRPHow dare they!
I don't get next day delivery even if I pay for it.
I ordered something from Jenson USA last week.
Expected it to take a fortnight or so, it arrived in 6 days with standard postage!
I thought they were getting bad but ordered some stuff free delivery last Wednesday and it was delivered Friday. Ordered some more stuff Saturday afternoon and it was delivered this morning. Both parcels say Tracked 24 on them
Maybe they've read this thread?
The last 4 times I've ordered from them using free delivery its taken well over a week to arrive (8 days with the last order).
What do people not like about the CRC website?
I find it one of the best, very easy to navigate around.
I never use wiggle because of how un-intuitive it is to use.
Thats what I was thinking
I find it one of the best, very easy to navigate around.
And then you find that most of it is not in stock....
I've just spent a couple of hundred pounds on odds and ends such as new BB, cassette, helmets and knee pads - and only the BB's came from CRC as others were cheaper or had in stock what CRC did not.
Most annoyingly is CRC's way of leaving out of stock items on google shopping - 'ooh look at us, we have product x at 50% off.' No you don't. And you have not since last October.
You realise that a) you can select in stock only, and b ) there's a bit that crawls for process on Google, right?
In defence to CRC Royal Mail have changed their services in recent years. I've bought a couple of things on free delivery and they've dispatched it the same day only for it to sit in the depot for 2-3. Royal Mail will sit on it until the last day of their SLA unless they have to deliver something else locally so it's a bit hit and miss.
What isn't defensible is the fact they're now using Yodal for things now... took nearly two weeks for my Daughters balance bike to turn up, ordered well in advance which was lucky, driver said the Postcode took him to the wrong place two days in a row and we must have put it down wrong, explained politely it must be his system, the postcode on the box was correct, nope it was my fault, I didn't really care at this point but he kept on - I told him that we have no less than 4 deliveries a day to the address (work) and handle 100 individual parcels a week and we're kind of sure about the address but no, computer says no.
I quite like the collect+ system. Items go straight to my local shop rather than attempting delivery and then returning the package to the sorting office.
I've bought a couple of things on free delivery and they've dispatched it the same day only for it to sit in the depot for 2-3. Royal Mail will sit on it until the last day of their SLA unless they have to deliver something else locally so it's a bit hit and miss.
I guess we'll never really know whether it's royal mail sitting on it or CRC.... I've always assumed CRC as the tracking only ever goes live I assume once it has been loaded into the back of a RM truck from crc. The tracking only goes live a few days after the despatch email.
On the flip side of CRC's service, Hermes lost a free return, and crc refunded me within a day of me providing CRC with the Hermes tracking info.
