a new low for On-One/Planet X? or just par for the course

Just checked deleted email from PX dated Sat 26th, indeed the Fib Sale was supposed to be extended until Monday night.

Well at least the shortened name of the BF sale is true, its length was a fib/lie.

I was contemplating a £100+ order, including non-essential bits, that same order is now about £125+ so why would I buy it all and add to the ~£350 I’ve spent on bits there this year? Not to mention PX withdrew from Topcashback in the last few months.

Well I have just bought my 14yr old son a 16″ Inbred frame in Matt black for £145. They are now £154 pounds. It’s a good frame for him to crash about on. I’ll put my old but very good quality 26″ kit on it. He’ll have a niche bike that should be very capable if a tad heavy. I still think 26″ bikes are great for kids to learn all their skills on. Ordered on Saturday came today no probs.

They have made it so that everyone just thinks the price will be cheaper at some random point in the future though.

that’s the weird thing, I was looking at the both Parkwood frames the other day both versions down to £90 from £150ish (Fibonacci sale), yesterday the 29er went up to £92 (?) and the 27.5 went down again to £67… eh? It’s sort of tempting but then sense prevails and I realise there must be some sort of catch, plus you’ll have to build the thing up…

So what does that tell you?
That the Frame is another unmitigated bag of shonk? – could be.
That nobody in their right mind should ever pay more than £100 for an on-one frame? – I know I wouldn’t now…
Or that it’s the deal of a lifetime, never to be repeated?… till the next ‘Sale’.. or they finally do just go bust…

I might just email them and offer £50 for the 29er, see if they’ll bite…

😆 sussed the price thing out it’s like this 😉

I still think 26″ bikes are great for kids to learn all their skills on.

Oi!
They’re still ok for many of us “grown ups” too! 🙂

We critics didn’t look around for an industry pantomime villain and settle on PX. Most if not all of us were happy customers, even fans, from BITD when they catered for the British enthusiast-on-a-budget market; steel, LT HTs, single speeds, they had most UK niches covered with value for money products. Their CS and QC have declined as their ranges have expanded, and Dave L’s ambition and magpie-like approach to warehouses of bankrupt stock means they now sell a bewildering range of, well, tat.

Throw in the ridiculous pricing approach and, as your teacher used to say, we’re not angry just disappointed.

I think in light of this post you can probably close this, and any other, Planet X threads – it sums the situation up perfectly.

If sq23890328091 is reading this and would like to sell me a Pompino v4 in 51cm for £72.37, drop me an email. I don’t need the fork. 😀

Ooh our brand new winter range of clothing tat is now in stock.

So when did the made up ‘Was’ pricing apply, then?

And I still have to pay postage on a £56 jersey? No thanks.

If sq23890328091 is reading this

To be fair, the simple and catchy username should have given us a clue about the PX pricing strategy.

Martin, my username was given to me by my old bank when i first joined their online banking many moons ago, it predates my time at PX by over a decade. It’s the user name that i use for all my online activity, i never post under another name.

finbar I’d love to offer you one at that price, but Dave would kill me, that’s well below cost.

Richard, the jackets have been available on pre-order for several weeks, they’re far from being tat, as anyone who’s taken the time to check them out will attest.

finbar I’d love to offer you one at that price, but Dave would kill me, that’s well below cost.

Ta – oh well, worth a go 😀

Build your own Pickenflick Hydro for £999 – blimey. They do sometimes manage to break through my cynicism 🙂

It’s the user name that i use for all my online activity, i never post under another name.

*googles*

he’s right you know.

Sq, you are telling me at least one person pre-ordered something at full made up RRP from you lot before it was even in the shop? 😯

Pull the other one!

It may well not be tat, but that’s the point, so much of your offering lately has been tat, and you have tat selling levels of comtempt for your customers, so who will actually expect a new product to actually not be tat?
(let alone pay full RRP for it, in advance).

Good luck.

Well I still like PX/OO stuff.

Fleegle Pro bars in chrome for £7. They’ll do nicely for my new build…

The two sets of On One Knuckleball carbon bars and the El Guapo 35mm stem I picked up last week for less than £100 including postage are far from tat and were delivered the next day.

The two sets of On One Knuckleball carbon bars and the El Guapo 35mm stem I picked up last week for less than £100 including postage are far from tat and were delivered the next day.

Ha now that’s funny but your right ,it’s worse than cheap tat.

@ sq225917
Simon, i waited patiently, and put my order in 2 days ago, and just found out that the item i had ordered is out of stock, and that on-one will inform me when it is back in stock. thats not a lot of use to me now. i know these things happen, just a bit ironic that it happens to the OP of this thread, or is it?
Lester

Fleegle – been around donkeys years
Knuckleball – also an old design (made by a bat maker if I recall??)

dont think they are the problem parts.

Might be to you but the ones we have already have performed as good as my Havocs, Burgtec and S Works ones. Not much difference in weight between the Syntace stem its replacing.

Wouldn’t pay their full price but at that price I would have been a fool not to.

Sq’s latest login from his bank is SQ11235813 I wonder what it will be next week?¿

You were lucky Tracey – but you did spend days or weeks monitoring their variable pricing until just the right time.

Which is the only way to deal with this lot.

Parkwood 650b frames for £67 is a ridiculous bargain.

AlexSimon – Member
Build your own Pickenflick Hydro for £999 – blimey. They do sometimes manage to break through my cynicism

Totally! Nearly worth the risk

Additional parts required to complete the bike build.
Rim tape x 2
Outer gear cable
Gear Ferrules
Hydraulic cable, olives and barbs.
As these bikes are shipped unassembled you will require certain bike tools to complete assembly. An allen key set, BB wrench, torque wrench, cassette lockring tool, headset press, hacksaw and fork cutting guide, chain tool/pliers and cable cutters should be considered an absolute minimum.

The other bits are easy enough to source, but how easy is it to buy the right Hydraulic hose, olives and barbs?

well if you can be arsed to read the accounts they don’t actually look to be in too bad a place considering the current retail market place – better than last year with healthier capital and less cash tied up in stock. Still feels like a lot of stock though but I have no idea what the standard Minimum order quantities are from a Far east Carbon factory. I’m no accountant either but can make some sense of a set of accounts ( I think)

Just had to check. The Build-it-yessen PickenFlick and the XLS both come with the SRAM hydraulic hose kit, barbs and olives. I’ll edit content accordingly once I’m back in tomorrow.

I’ll enquire why the London Road doesn’t.

Simon, the London road doesn’t use hydraulic hoses, it’s cable operated disc. BB7 to be precise.

This is why it’s effing frustrating, they can’t get product descriptions halfway right so you have no real idea what you are getting on anything more than basic handlebars etc! Dimensions are not in tables or are just wrong, product details vary between title, list of what’s included, description etc… If they just paid one person who knows anything about bikes to sort all that rubbish out it would be far less frustrating! STW basically knows more about half their products than they do…

And Tracey’s handlebar purchase is the other reason, they’re now back up to ‘not great value at all’ price levels from ‘bargain’ and you never know which it will be from day to day. The boss apparently goes through every item once a week on a spreadsheet to look at sales volume and current pricing and how it should change; my guess is these crazy maths sales are just applying known maths algorithms to that spreadsheet with least change selected for most products!

And if SQ225917 can tell me the difference between the carbon fatty forks at £92 and those at £137 (rrp £150 and £199 respectively) I’d be very grateful as I’m about to order a set of the cheaper ones…

SSBonty – Member

And Tracey’s handlebar purchase is the other reason, they’re now back up to ‘not great value at all’ price levels from ‘bargain’ and you never know which it will be from day to day.

Not really. Well, it depends how you look at it. If you’re terrified of not getting the best possible price, then it’s a problem. But value doesn’t mean “cheapest price”. Those bars are actually decent, at the price they’re definitely good value even if tomorrow they’re ten quid less. It’s just annoying, is all.

STW basically knows more about half their products than they do…

That’s because a significant number on STW like me have worked there! Seriously, STW is like an army of ants scruitinising every spec, nuance of pricing, etc and shouting it proudly to the clamouring masses. Time was that if a cock up was spotted, There would be an “oops we got it wrong again” from the Hebden Bridge messiah and everyone would have a chuckle and move on.
This current mood is “don’t argue, we know best” and isn’t being well received.
I think a period of reflection and dignified silence wouldn’t go amiss, seemed to work for Hillary Clinton, oh wait…

That’s because a significant number on STW like me have worked there! Seriously, STW is like an army of ants scruitinising every spec, nuance of pricing, etc and shouting it proudly to the clamouring masses. Time was that if a cock up was spotted, There would be an “oops we got it wrong again” from the Hebden Bridge messiah and everyone would have a chuckle and move on.
This current mood is “don’t argue, we know best” and isn’t being well received.
I think a period of reflection and dignified silence wouldn’t go amiss, seemed to work for Hillary Clinton, oh wait…

I think that a company that can be mentioned in a thread that goes on for four pages, and perhaps 150 comments of which 3 are positive needs to ask why this is the case?

In the last 12 months i have purchased from them:
– Fatty Trail frame, suffered with London Road seatpost issue, has can shim
– Holdsworth Singlespeed frame, large chips out of the paint by third ride.
– Flat pedals, packed with so much grease they don’t turn on the axles.
– A Reverb seatpost, which was faulty, returned and they denied receiving despite Royal Mail confirming it had been signed for there.
– 10 inner tubes which don’t hold air, i needed to put 20 psi in before ride to work, then another 20psi in for the ride home.

And a stem, the stem works.

If I were you I’d replace the stem with an imported Chinese carbon jobbie asap.

Better safe than sorry…..

😆

Why are PX so bad at giving us details about some products?

Back in the summer I bought one of the last remaining FatNotfat 29er wheelsets, but until it arrived and I tried to fit the front wheel, I had no idea the wheel was Rear Disc Spaced.
But until I discovered the front wheel was RDS, I did not dare order a carbon fatty fork, which I knew was RDS.

All this year, I’ve known about the Emmental rims on El Guapo hub fat wheelset, but after buying the RDS carbon fatty fork I thought buying a set was pointless because nothing in specs suggested the El Guapo hub was RDS.
Consequently, I bought a Fatty front wheel that was advertised as RDS, knowing I could use my RDS-FDS converter to use it on my FDS default Wazoo fork and then remove the adaptor once I fitted the RDS carbon fatty fork.
But low and behold, they announce the “build it yourself” Fatty earlier this week and it comes with the RDS carbon fork and a set of those Emmental rims on El Guapo hubs! So either the front hub is RDS, it can be converted to RDS or the DIY package is coming with a front wheel that will not fit the frame!!
Yes, on the face of it I got a good deal on the rear wheel of this set for £56, but once I fit the carbon fork I have to use the heavy solid rimmed Fatty front wheel (1638g) and buying a separate front El Guapo wheel (~1430g and hubs that can be switched) is not an option.

Not really. Well, it depends how you look at it. If you’re terrified of not getting the best possible price, then it’s a problem. But value doesn’t mean “cheapest price”. Those bars are actually decent, at the price they’re definitely good value even if tomorrow they’re ten quid less. It’s just annoying, is all.

But I’d say that when their raison d’être is being a decent but cheap direct to customer operation, and when they have been available at £30, £40 and £50 (and probably all sorts of prices between at various times), and not just in once yearly sales but at all sorts of random times, they are now back in ‘might as well pay a little more for a branded bar’ territory. I’d agree they are decent, if they were i.e. £40 or £45 all year round that to me fits the decent but good value price bracket that should be what they are about.

Anyway, just had great customer service from them, ordered last night the randomly £40 cheaper of the 2 sets of carbon fatty forks (plus other stuff) and forgot to include the bung, phoned them this am, got through in about 2 mins, bung added to the order no problem so don’t have to pay postage twice. We’ll see what turns up, but that’s better than most places where the order placed can’t be changed…

n0b0dy0ftheg0at – Why are PX so bad at giving us details about some products?

High turnover of staff where no one really gives a toss because they are being told to do something different every 5 minutes, being paid peanuts and might not be there next week?

This is nothing new, my memory’s not great but a few that spring to mind.
Fireline Ti frame that needed the rear brake mounting filed to get a caliper to fit, nicknamed the Fileline.
Fireline that wouldn’t accept a front mech due to tyre clearance, also you couldn’t fit chunky monkey tyres as they were too wide. 1X was the saviour there.
ElGuapo 26er with low BB height causing pedal strikes.
Failing internal cable routing, whether or not the inner cable was guided was a lottery based on frame size.
Dissolving alu nipples on carbon road wheels as they retained water because the drain holes were too high up the rim.
Happy days!

My very first experience of On One back in 200something, was buying tyres, they had kenda nevegals, folding bead, stick-e, 2.2 (don’t know why I remember). I emailed and said, are you sure? Because the only 2.2s Kenda advertise are wire bead OEM . Yeah, it’s definitely fine, we checked the website. OK, are you really sure? OK fine, we’ll go and look. Right I personally looked and they’re definitely folding, stick-e. Cheers, really appreciate it. a week later 2 wire bead OEM spec tyres made of plastic turn up. Returned them, they initially refused to refund the postage because it was apparently my error. Then edited the website and claimed it was like that all along. Then complained that I’d sent it back in too big a box and badly packaged (exact same box and packaging they’d sent them to me in) But we got there in the end.

And I kind of thought, LOL, those crazy on one dudes. Because back then, they had goodwill and, I don’t know, shonky charm. Boskiness.