No ones being exploited?
ex·ploit
verb
past tense: exploited; past participle: exploited
/ik?sploit/
make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource).
“500 companies sprang up to exploit this new technology”
synonyms:
utilize, harness, use, make use of, turn/put to good use, make the most of, capitalize on, benefit from;
informalcash in on
“we should exploit this new technology”
use (a situation or person) in an unfair or selfish way.
“the company was exploiting a legal loophole”
benefit unfairly from the work of (someone), typically by overworking or underpaying them.
“making money does not always mean exploiting others”
synonyms:
take advantage of, abuse, impose on, treat unfairly, misuse, ill-treat;
They’ve just removed a few links from the distribution chain, a bit like On-One/Planet-X. The dowside is if it goes wrong you have to box it up and wait for it to go to germany and back, rather than just walk into your LBS.
Assuming that the extra £200 buys you local service from a shop you like
Depends what kind of ‘service’ you need/want, if somethings broke then there’s not much a shop can do other than send it back to the distributor, who might send it back to the manufacturer. Makes little difference whether you post it yourself to Canyon or the LBS posts it to the distributor. And minor stuff like setup they do do, and post the bikes out in some huge boxes with just the pedals to fit!
Where (IME) the direct sellers fall down is the inbetween stuff. I’m having some minor issues with a bike bike form a direct seller at the moment (headset won’t stay tight), and LBS might have been able to fix it (my guess it the headtube needs facing) but now it has to go back to the bike company for isnpection/repair.