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I get that test riding a bike before spending lots of cash is a good idea, but how do people actually do it? I have asked at local shops and they are happy to arrange, but want to charge between £50 and £70 for the privilege which can get expensive if i want to try a handful of bikes. To be fair, they offer to refund the cost if I buy, but it will still get costly.
Do people just pay up? Do i wait till I have narrowed it down and just use it as a last stage confirmation?
By way of contrast, last week a local car dealer invited me to the pub, provided food and drinks all just to persuade me to test drive one of their cars!
I think its a bit different, you test drive a car in normal conditions with a rep. Most dealers would let you take a bike out for a spin round the block, but theres no point. You need a day on the trails to do that, and your average 4k bike is probably going to get through plenty of kit over 6 months of that. If it was out say a day a week for 30 weeks thats only £1500 to keep it maintained and its going to be a 2k bike afterward, so probably just about break even.
My experience of main dealers is better, specialized concept store let me borrow bikes to take out but I would say they dont have the cost structure to worry about.
Best thing id say to do would be to get on one of the demo days at a trail centre, quite a few shops do them and you can just go try a load. Stif used to do one at stainburn, short trails so you can just hop on a load, they didnt use to charge but dont kow if thats still the case.
Yes I paid up, & it saved me making an expensive mistake in the past, so I was extremely pleased. The other option is to look out for demo days the likes of the bigger retailers, & manufacturers demo days. While those demo days were free, I had to make sure I was available and had to travel to them, and wait my turn to try the bikes I wanted for a short test ride. So £50-70 for a weekend on the trails I normally ride is a much better proportion IMO.
That said the last two bike I bought couldn't be demo'd (one 'just' out and the other mail order) so I just bought them and hoped, both have turned out to be great
EDIT: some-how I doubt your local car dealer was selling you a Skoda fabia (basic festa, etc), just out of comparion what (aprox is fine) price range was that 'car' in?
Fair point, the car dealer was trying to interest me in something £30-£40k so appreciate there is a bit more flex in the system. Appreciate its not a really fair comparison, but a very different approach.
We don't charge for demos, even if the bike is out for a weekend
If the shop is getting the bike in from the main dealer the charge is also to help cover the time to re build, setup, wash/clean/check, repack the demo bike as much as to cover any wear and tear.