[Closed] LBS customer of the day part 657

brilliant 😯

😆

The customer is always [s]right[/s] stupid.

Fricken cyclists 🙂

That's pretty funny

Yes, but I've swapped my wheels round since then to keep the wear even!

Jesus wept.

Were the tyres covered in dog poo just for good measure?
That was always my favorite from my days as a Saturday boy 😀

Make the customer feel stupid and put him off ever coming to your shop again! For just the £3 cost of a tube!

Does anybody really take their bike to a shop to get a puncture repaired? Fair enough if you don't want to spend the time (or but the tools) for major repairs, but surely the ability to fix a puncture is a prerequisite for riding a bike. What do you do if you puncture miles from anywhere?

What do you do if you puncture miles from anywhere?

You call your friend whose enthusiasm for cycling fired your own and which led you to purchase the cheap hybrid that you ride now everywhere without a thought for maintenance. You also call when the chain comes as you've just had your nails done.

In fairness, she offered to wheel the bike round to me so that I could show her how to put the chain back and then finally surged through that cycling milestone of working out how to do it herself.

I will get the puncture call at some point.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and repair it free of charge for you.

There, that was your mistake 😉

In fairness, [b][u]she[/u][/b]....

Ah....so that's why you were so helpful!

Had a similar customer to Al many years ago, fixed a puncture, even down to replacing the tyre. Said customer came back in a couple of days later, having commuted from West London to WC2 twice, complaining that they had another puncture, and it was all our fault. I politely pointed out that it was more likely to be the fault of the three inch long nail sticking through the tyre.

Puncture? That's nothing. Wait till you get a customer drag in a carton containing one of Korea's finest BSOs and demand that you build it up for him. While he waits. For free. "But you're a bike shop ..."

My faith in the stupidity of the general public has been restored 🙂

Does anybody really take their bike to a shop to get a puncture repaired?

I don't know, on the club run on sunday a guy was suggesting the club put on maintenance courses so he didn't have to take his (expensive) bike into the shop three times a year for maintenance. That's a guy who does a couple of hundred km a week who couldn't do anything more than fix a puncture and lube a chain - its not hard to imagine that there's a lot of people who wouldn't know how to do even that.

Kunstler - Member

I will get the puncture call at some point.

we're all waiting for the tyre-booty call

Does anybody really take their bike to a shop to get a puncture repaired?

Me – although strictly speaking I didn't intend to take it to a bike shop for a puncture repair. I’d been doing a couple of practice loops for a triathlon the next day and punctured twice on glass left over from a mini-marathon. Got back to the place I was staying and thought I’d better go grab another tube rather than rely on the fixed 23c tube.

So I popped out to find a local bike shop and as I didn’t know the area I ended up cycling 8 miles before I found a shop, in the process I got another puncture, as I had nipped out I didn’t have any tools with me and I have an Alfine bolted hub. So I bought 3 tubes, a new rear tyre and asked them to fix the back puncture.

Bloody expensive “nip out” as I was charged 8 euro a tube (In a specialized box, I should have known better), 15 euro for the repair as well as the 65 euro for the new tyre.

Shut the door, keep the fools out.

That's nothing I know of a successful Cardio-Thorassic Consultant Surgeon (thats a chest, abdomen and throat slasher) who is unable to repair puncutres on his bike... makes you wonder, no?

agree with: if you can't mend a puncture you shouldn't own a bike.
Who breeds these people?

I do wonder how some folk carry out basic functions such as shopping, cooking, their job etc.

That's nothing I know of a successful Cardio-Thorassic Consultant Surgeon (thats a chest, abdomen and throat slasher) who is unable to repair puncutres on his bike... makes you wonder, no?

Well, I can repair a puncture, but always head to my LBS when I need an aortic stent.

Last time they charged me for the tube as well as fitting it - rip off merchants.

Do you all fix punctures on your own cars? Service them too? How can you possibly drive thousands of miles in a machine without having at least the ability to carry out basic and regular maintenance? The mechanical principles are just the same 🙄

Some people just want to ride their bike to the newsagent every evening without carrying a loaded camelback, and are happy to call on the services of their LBS for routine work (which in some way goes to make up for the loss of revenue from the try-local-buy-online types here and keeps our LBS's open)

Surely as a bike shop, stupid people are manna from heaven?

When I worked near Evans in Manchester, and popped in for anything at lunchtime, there would be a constant stream of people coming in for punctures repaired, and suchlike

Ooooh somebodies on the defensive.....

When I worked near Evans in Manchester, and popped in for anything at lunchtime, there would be a constant stream of people coming in for punctures repaired, and suchlike

I would put money on Evans not dishing out smart arse attitude to their paying customers though.

40mpg - Member
Do you all fix punctures on your own cars? Service them too?

The difference being that you can't mend your car tyre sat on your patio with a bowl of water, a quid repair kit and a small pump.

I would put money on Evans not dishing out smart arse attitude to their paying customers though.

Oooh, really? If I was a betting man, I'd take that!

Have got a mate who can't fix punctures. We've gone through the procedure on the trails and the backyard but for whatever reason he just doesn't get it.

It always ends up like this (52 secs in)

I would put money on Evans not dishing out smart arse attitude to their paying customers though.

That particular branch now seem to mostly specialise in week-long-Saturday-boy ism rather than smartarsedness, unfortunately.

we get asked to repair punctures a lot and its more a case of cant be bothered or not wanting to get dirty more than being able to do the job.

its just a basic service we do it, we charge for it and the customers are happy.
no need to judge or get shirty about it.

I do wonder how some folk carry out basic functions such as shopping, cooking, their job etc.

And breathing

[img] [/img]

Glad I had a spare tube for this one, always gets on ym nerves when out with people who can't even mange to put a chain back on or fix a puncture, there is a line, but those two tasks are well under it

Surely as a bike shop, stupid people are manna from heaven?

There must be an ideal level of stupidity. Too stupid and you are in bso territory and they just can't understand why they would want to spend more than 50p for your services or in fact there is a problem - you must be trying to con them. Not quite stupid enough and they know they should probably be able to do it themselves and every penny they spend with you is an attack on their manhood and capability.

how much for a puncture repair in a LBS btw?

I bought Richards bicycle book as a 14 year old to start me off with bike maintenance .To me its an all encompassing hobby .Riding ,repairing the history of the bike and racing are all just part of cycling .I am in the camp of if you cant fix a puncture you shouldnt ride a bike .There is no way my dad would have picked me up in the 70s if I had made the 2 pence phone call pleading for a lift after a puncture !

Edric 64 - Member
...There is no way my dad would have picked me up in the 70s if I had made the 2 pence phone call pleading for a lift after a puncture !

I drove 10 miles once for my son who had a puncture. Dropped off a new tube and a pump and left him to it. 🙂

I'm terrible at using a puncture repair kit, I've never been able to repair a puncture, they just go flat again, somewhere down the line.

So, tube in bin, new tube in the wheel, that's how I fix punctures

So, tube in bin, new tube in the wheel, that's how I fix punctures

that's your choice but incredibly wasteful. Where do you live? if it's close I'll have every single tube off you.

Jekkyl, my LBS charges a tenner. I raised an eyebrow and he explained they always put a new tube in case the patch fails and we get into the op scenario. He also indexes the gears because of the number of times folk would blame his puncture repair for the fact that their gearshifting is every bit as bad as it was when they brought it in.

epicyclo ,I like your style !!

I always put a new tube in when I worked in a shop .I dont know a shop that doesnt .Its quicker than fixing a tube and they cant bring it back saying the patch failed

my LBS charges a tenner.

Evans do a £5 puncture repair. If you buy a tube from them and the tube is £5. 😉

£10 seems about the normal price to be honest (tube + fitting) although I know some shops that charge extra for hub geared bikes which are a bit more complicated.

As above, I've never come across a shop that doesn't just chuck a new tube in - far quicker and easier that way.

jekkyl - Member

So, tube in bin, new tube in the wheel, that's how I fix punctures

that's your choice but incredibly wasteful. Where do you live? if it's close I'll have every single tube off you.

I've found on 23c's that I've probably got a 20% failure rate on repairs - I struggle to get the patch properly attached on the narrow rubber so I've started to just swop out.

On the mtb when I had tubes I would do a swop out so i wasn't holding anyone up, but repair at my leisure once back home. Did swop some massively patched tubes with the SSMM kenda guy back in 06? i think.

Not specifically about punctures, but that analogy someone posted about cars is kinda interesting (I think).

In my parents' generation, say the 1950s, 1960s, if you had a car and expected to be able to use it, you had to be able to do basic maintenance on it, everyone could open the bonnet and had at least a rudimentary understanding of what the different bits were, what they did and what needed to be done to deal with common faults. Some of it was what we'd now call "urban legend" (or "total ballhooks") such as cracking eggs into radiators and tights as emergency fanbelts, but at least people generally understood what a cracked radiator or broken fanbelt was..

At some point in maybe the 1980s cars started being generally reliable and people stopped gaining the knowledge about the oily bits. Shortly afterwards it all went computery and now, even if you know what the things do, there's not that much the average home mechanic can do under the bonnet of a car anyway. Perhaps as a result of this, it seems that it is now acceptable to call the AA / RAC out if you get a flat in the car, and I know people who have done this, despite being perfectly capable of changing a wheel themselves - we just don't have an oily rag relationship with our cars anymore like what we used to.

Another example is computers - in the 1980s, if you'd shown someone a modern PC, and they saw that you could just turn it on and press the icons on screen and install peripherals by simply plugging in a USB cable, and the thing just works, they'd have been gobsmacked. Anyone remember trying to install, say, a modem, or even a printer back in the day? Again, the "plug and play" technology has changed our relationship with the machine - we don't expect to understand how the thing works or to spend half a day playing with DIP switches and disabling ports, and nor would we be able to, in many cases. You used to have to "know about computers" to get them to do things, now you just have to switch them on.

So, on to bikes.. Are we heading in the same direction? I can see it happening. I'm no great mechanic, but I can adjust the brakes on my kids bikes. However, the hydraulic system on my bike is a bit beyond me. Sure, I could learn and keep up with things, but my brakes don't need regular attention, they just work, so if they do need a bleed, I'll pop round to Garage Bikes and Al or one of his spannerists will do the job and charge me not much for doing it. I can index my own gears, but how about in a few years time when we're all on electronic gear shifting? Won't it be like cars, you'll expect that it has to go into the shop as it isn't really a home servicing task? Shock servicing?

The point is (and there is one, honestly, and here it comes with any luck) that once you establish that routine maintenance tasks are something that you go to the bike shop for rather than something you do at home and get a bit oily, that will become the normal route, and even the basic stuff that you could do will become a bike shop task, just like I don't "tinker" with my Mondeo, it goes straight to the garage.

Good point edlong. I used to service my own bikes , but they were simple two-strokes, and then onto various bits of Guzzi agricultural stuff etc etc. I stopped servicing my own when I bought a ZXR with more complicated carburetters etc etc.

However, I gotta pull you up on hydraulics. They are only "complicated" as long as they remain a mystery. The actual principal is extraordinarily simple, and the reality is only limited by your ability to puzzle out how pulling on the lever forces the pads onto the rotor. There aren't all that many moving parts:

There is a whiff of snakeoil around servo wave and other enhancements, but that's just a cammed lever to take up the slack quickly for example.

I felt the same way about suspension forks, until I'd serviced a couple. I'm no expert, but they aren't intimidating anymore.

I helped a 'mate' gete his lad who was dead keen started in MTBing, found him a good bike in the classifieds for over half a grand, took him out a few times, bit of bike upgrade and repair for him. Then I stopped because 'mate' turned out to be 'lazy user of friends'.....and I gather the lads bike has been unused for 1.5yrs now due to a puncture which neither could be arsed to fix.

Ooh OP has been beaten!

Customer jumps queue at 5:45 telling me he's in a hurry and has something set aside.

I say "I can serve you as long as it's quick as I need to leave shortly to make the chain-gang". I go get it.

Just as I am about to complete the transaction he says "Oh can you price match on CRC?"

"Yes" (though it's actually YOU that's meant to do the work here :roll) ). I load up the website.

(after a few minutes)..."Oh I can't see it on the website. I need to go, can I leave it for another night? I need to leave to get to the chain-gang"

He then leaves for the chain-gang, having wasted 5 minutes of my time, and making ME miss the chain gang.