On the plus side, we do have the entire forum in agreement for once…

Posted 3 years ago

To be honest the OP highlights that too many people are as tight as they come when it comes to bikes, and this is why LBS struggle and staff are paid peanuts,

Posted 3 years ago

£28 sounds fine to me. Shops have overheads and are a business so need to make money. You couldn’t do it yourself so you are also paying for their experience.

If you go to a bar and order a drink and the bottle holds 10 servings, do they charge you 10% of the price of the bottle? Of course they don’t, they are making profit.

Posted 3 years ago

At first glance I did think thats a lot !! But looking at it even with your breakdown it’s about right. Only thing they did wrong is not offer you the left over tape as they charged for a full roll.

Posted 3 years ago

Perfectly reasonable, more than reasonable actually. Even at 30 mins labour that’s crazy.
It baffles be that car mechanics can charge £80 an hour but bike mechanics are only allowed to charge £20 lol.

If you’d taken any other job to any other specialists shop and been charged £40 for half an hour’s labour you’d think it acceptable

Posted 3 years ago

I’d be more concerned that a proper bike shop would use gorilla tape. Unless you insisted on it and even then I’d rather they just declined it. It’s one thing botching it at home it’s entirely another thing paying for it to be botched. It’s the bike equivalent of taking you car to get some body repairs done and having them zip tie it back together.

Posted 3 years ago

People moan about the cost of pretty much any service these days. My wife runs an accountancy business and spends probably 50% of her working day arguing with clients about their fees. I ran my own business for a while too (B2B) and experienced much the same thing. People just don’t want to pay for experience and decent service these days. The prevailing culture seems to be getting as much as you can for as little cost as possible. I just can’t imagine what it must be like to be a bike shop owner these days!

Posted 3 years ago

Out of interest, why do people use gorilla tape rather than the many bespoke tubeless tapes available. Is it just a cost thing or is it better/lighter/easier to use?

I’ve always used stans tape.

I saw this the other day and was a bit surprised

https://www.uberbikecomponents.com/view-product/Uberbike-Race-Matrix-Tubeless-Conversion-Kit-500ml

Incidentally, sealant, valves and gorilla tape are £29.99 which doesnt include labour and isn’t as expensive as muckoff sealant

Posted 3 years ago

I find clear gorilla tape to be more fit for purpose than the correct tape (which is not tape made specifically for purpose , it’s just off the shelf tape that someone picked back in the day)

Clear gorilla tape more resilliant, sticks better , easier to work with and just as easy to remove.

Anyone that uses fiberous gorilla tape on their rims needs strung up with the stuff. Horrible to remove and breaks down with the sealant over time.

Posted 3 years ago

I use clear waterproof gorilla tape on the fat bike because it was wide enough rather than several wraps of Stans. Works well.

Posted 3 years ago

I bet OP is fun when it comes to bill time in the restaurant.

Gorilla tape is not the right tool for the job

it’s the best!

Posted 3 years ago

Out of interest, why do people use gorilla tape rather than the many bespoke tubeless tapes available. Is it just a cost thing or is it better/lighter/easier to use?

For me, it’s because I’ve had better results with it than with other tape

Posted 3 years ago

OP – I don’t know what you do to earn a living, but I suggest you jack it in now and open a bike shop instead. As you’ve discovered, you can easily undercut all your competitors and you’ll soon be on your way to owning your own yacht/Chelsea tractor/lifestyle van.

Posted 3 years ago

Out of interest, why do people use gorilla tape rather than the many bespoke tubeless tapes available. Is it just a cost thing or is it better/lighter/easier to use?

I think it’s more from the ghetto days when there wasn’t much tubeless stuff about and your rim may even not have been designed for tubeless, it’s cheap easily bought and works.

You use it for 2 reasons to seal the wheel a bit an pack up the bead and on nightmare rims may need a fair bit for packing.

I’ve always used stans tape.

Which I think is pretty much same as a roll of tesa tape on eBay but you get 66m for 11 quid as opposed to 10m for 13 quid+(YMMV)

Posted 3 years ago

So! Who had fried rice?
I know quite a number of people (who tend to work in the same industry – not the same as mine) who are obsessed with getting the cheapest possible deal for everything but massively affronted when anyone questions their costs.
OP – you weren’t able to do something. You took it to someone who could and they charged you for their expertise. Tell us what you do and how much you expect to be paid for doing it and we can give you reasons why we shouldn’t have to pay for it 😉

Posted 3 years ago

I think the problem with the OPs version of what he considers fair is the £10 labour charge.

Say £10 labour is fair for 30mins labour, totalling £19 for time and materials…
The shop still has to make a money on top of that and has other overheads to consider, rent, utility bills etc.

When you consider that, £29 total isn’t looking so unreasonable any more, no?

I once had a puncture whilst out and about, couldn’t get my tyre back on for the life of me, so after a long walk to the nearest bike shop they sorted it out for £10.
Sounds expensive for such a small job but considering I was basically stranded and it included a new inner tube, you can’t really complain when you think about it.

The shop still has to make enough money above paying the staff and supplying parts to continue to operate.

Posted 3 years ago

Why not just fit a tube? 😂

Posted 3 years ago

Did the price include VAT @ 20%?

Posted 3 years ago

Why not just fit a tube? 😂

But would he be prepared to pay his LBS £15 to do it?

Posted 3 years ago

Sounds fair to me

Posted 3 years ago

I’m not in the cycle trade, but I feel sorry for those who are when the average customer does’t value their time if/when they need them.

Once you allow for NI and pension costs, seasonality, average utilisation within the seasons, the hours productive/sold and a share of the shop overhead, £9 per hour becomes £25 per hour cost before VAT, or £30 with VAT to break even.

At £11 per hour it’s £34.50 inc VAT per hour to break even.

At £9 salary, I can’t see how any cycle shop is expected to sell their time for anything less than about £45 per hour, making the shop about £12 per hour after VAT with the above assumptions. Even then, a pretty poor return for the owner given the risk.

That assumes the person is on retail work all of the time, and not bike building and so on.

Posted 3 years ago

has he gone off to start his own tubeless tyre fitting service ?????????

Posted 3 years ago

Was going to mention VAT , that’s another fiver gone.

Price of everything, value of nothing.

Posted 3 years ago

The prevailing culture seems to be getting as much as you can for as little cost as possible.

Dead right. And the repercussions are that skilled people just say stuff it and can’t make a living.

We all lose.

Posted 3 years ago

As has been said. The OP seems to know the cost of everthing and the value of nothing!

Posted 3 years ago

“The OP seems to know the cost of everthing and the value of nothing!”

As I said, I don’t have an issue with the labour charge as I was paying for that experience applied through the labour charge.

I was questioning whether I should be charged for the individual items as single items, or whether the lbs could be using bulk buy.

Posted 3 years ago

Out of interest, why do people use gorilla tape rather than the many bespoke tubeless tapes available. Is it just a cost thing or is it better/lighter/easier to use?

in the near past before lots of companies started making proper tubeless tape gorilla tape was pretty much the only thing to use. but these days there is a lot of tape available that’s specifically designed for the job rather than using tape for a job it’s not designed for

Posted 3 years ago

I was questioning whether I should be charged for the individual items as single items, or whether the lbs could be using bulk buy.

They bulk buy, where possible, to take advantage of discount splits from suppliers. Sell more, but more, make a slightly better margin.

They then sell you those items individually.

Now, how much do you think Sainsburys pay at source for a packet of light bulbs? Hint – it’s a lot less than the price that comes up on the till, and yet I bet you, along with every one else, would never whine about it.

How come bike shops are supposed to different to any other retailer? Let alone want other specialist retailer providing a service alongside products.

Posted 3 years ago

I was questioning whether I should be charged for the individual items as single items, or whether the lbs could be using bulk buy.

You were buying individual items. You get the individual item price. What the shop buys them for is nothing to do with you.

I buy a single bottle of pop for £1.09 (or 2 for £2) at the corner shop, knowing they buy in bulk at Costco for £12 for 24 bottles. By your logic I should get in a huff that they’ve charged me more than 50p.

Posted 3 years ago

specifically designed marketed for the job rather than using tape for a job it’s not designed marketed for

Ftfy

Posted 3 years ago

As I said, I don’t have an issue with the labour charge as I was paying for that experience applied through the labour charge

This was actually where I saw issues in your calculations

Your calculations came out at £19 inc. labour, but they had quoted you £10 to fit the tyre alone. Add the labour cost of removing existing tape and valve, cleaning and fitting new, gets you to your £29 easy

Posted 3 years ago

I work part-time as a bike mechanic and we charge £20/wheel for tubeless. Sometimes it’s is a right faff, needing to jet wash the wheel to clean it properly, scrub off the tape residue, requiring multiple attempts, sealant all over the floor, removing the pump head from the compressor hose to maximise flow and a couple of pairs of hands to hold the tyre down firmly. Other times it takes just a few minutes with the right tyres and rim combo. More often than not DIY failure is down to poor taping. Also Gorilla or any cloth-backed tape for tubeless is rubbish – it soaks up sealant and comes unglued – you have to scrape-off the residue, clean the rim and apply something like Tesa or Kapton tape.

Posted 3 years ago

As someone said above put the money towards an airshot or similar device and tubeless setup will be a doddle. As far as gorilla tape goes I’ve used it myself without issues but I wouldn’t expect a shop to use it without telling me beforehand. If they’ve removed tape, cleaned rim and fitted new tape, valves and sealant I’d say the cost isn’t over the top

Posted 3 years ago

gorilla tape, set of an animals..

Posted 3 years ago

Just so I understand, the OP agreed with the shop that he would provide a Gorilla taped wheel with valve and they would fit the tire for £10.

When he got the wheel back they had removed the old tape, fitted new tape, and provided another valve without telling him? They then charged him £29.

Regardless of value, that to me says the shop really needs to work on its customer communication.

Posted 3 years ago

why the hate for gorila tape?

ive removed other tape to fit it. its more robust and seals first time. Ok youve got to use some ipa to clean your rim but youd be doing that anyway when you retaped?

Posted 3 years ago

why the hate for gorila tape?

I don’t hate it, but it is not the correct tape to use, it is a do it all tape. Use it yourself by all means but a shop who should be doing things professionally shouldn’t use it.
I wouldn’t expect to take my bike to a shop to have headset fitted and find them using a hammer and a block of wood yet it works fine (or has done the numerous times I have fitted headsets)

Posted 3 years ago

Not in the same trade but if I was fixing someones car for them off the books…no building costs or special equipment needed..i could easily charge them £60-£100 an hour for that work…as I AM FULLY QUALIFIED AND EXPERIENCED …fully qualified and experienced personal are EXPENSIVE and so by the time your at part costs..that racks up.. besides who do you call when you cant do it? Eh…a PROFFESIONAL..they cost money ..I resent paying a shop so do most of my work on my bikes so I taught myself but not dabbled in tubeless or wheel building or straightening
.so would pay a PROFFESIONAL to do it for me ..
It costs what it costs ..if that’s a big problem ..then buy the kit(I could wager that’s expensive then the occasional visit to the shop) and do it yourself

Posted 3 years ago

Which would you prefer they used:-

A small new sachet of fresh sealant that will be good for the next six months in your tyre?

Or the dregs of a 5 litre opened bottle that has been on the shelf for the last six months, where half the hole sealing particles are now stuck to the base of the bottle and won’t go anywhere near your tyre?

Posted 3 years ago

I think I might buy a bunch of clear gorilla tape and change the packaging to “tubeless tape”

There will be a market as it appears people will only use the marketed stuff despite there being better products.

Stan’s tape is shite.

Posted 3 years ago