Hi All
As you can tell I don’t post here too often but have been a member for a while and enjoy lurking every so often. I’ve been riding road bikes for some time and decided I wanted to cross over to the muddy side for a while and buy a MTB.
I didn’t want to spend loads and decided that I could feasibly get away with using my companies bike to work scheme as I will still use for going to work as well as my main road bike rig.
After much deliberation I decided to go for an On-One Scandal 29er after hearing great things about them. I put my order in at the beginning of August, got the bike certificate about a week later and sent it electronically across to On-One. They were slightly slightly slower acknowledging things than I’d like but that’s not really On-One’s forte I guess – it’s producing and building great bikes.
With a quoted ~5 days build time I chased them up after not hearing anything from them for almost 2 weeks and the order status on their web site saying my bike was out of stock. I was told that it was just the front rotor that was missing and it was due in the day after. Two days later I ask them again – did the rotor come in stock? Then I get a call from a very helpful woman called Jenny. Jenny explained to me that my scandal had gone out of stock (despite one being allocated to my original order) and that it was going to take a long time until they were back in stock. As a gesture of good will they would like to offer me the closest equivalent that they do have in stock. To my surprise this wasn’t an Inbred but a Lurcher SRAM X9 build. Needless to say I was completely over the moon with that suggestion as I know they’re about £500 more expensive. The nearest build date was a week later when I happened to be on holiday so we both agreed to move the build date to coincide when I got back from holiday.
The build date arrives and I’m as excited as a young lad seeing his first pair of jubblies when I get an e-mail… your bike has being built (yay) but the helmet you ordered with it is in a different show room and will be a day late (boo). Not to worry I thought, I have other helmets. For whatever reason bike delivery day arrives and alas, no bike. For whatever reason Yodel (the worst delivery company since City-Link) decided not to bring it that day (not On-One’s fault) but it does arrive the day after; the same day I’m now expecting my helmet. The bike is the most wonderful thing ever. I’m so pleased with it & I’ve not a single complaint about it. I would solidly recommend anyone flirting with buying one to pull the trigger. Still no helmet though… I send an e-mail the day after asking: where’s my helmet? Until, the day after that I end up calling them. It seems the helmet was ‘sat waiting to go’ but instead they didn’t bother actually sending it.
So a 5 week turn around on what should have been a fairly simple bike order. I think the thing that annoys me is that when you place an order and everything is in stock, why isn’t that stock then firmly allocated to your order? On the flip side, if I had the option of getting the scandal instantly or having to wait 5 weeks but getting a lurcher X9 for the same price. I’d suffer through the latter.
Thoughts?
