Want a new bike, carbon full suss trail bike ~140mm travel, for big mountain days ( and commuting to work obvs)

Next cyclescheme window is in January. The few shops with stock just now won’t take deposits just now and hold the bike till January ( fairy nuff) and the ones with no stock ordered seem to be suggesting April if I order it now.

Should I put a deposit down now for an April delivery, or do nothing till January and then phone around again in the hope that they have unreserved stock come in?

Or just pay full price now for the one shop that has stock, and forget about the C2W ?

Looking for Orbea Occam m10 or Fuel EX 9.8 or something similar.

Worse more than likely as 2021 bikes are now allocated / sold out and shops are ordering 2022….

Can’t really see a scenario where it gets better, sorry.

Forget it, there’s very little coming into the country between now and March/April and most are sold out already.

Ordered a Giant Contend AR1 from lbs last week, delivery mid Jan. Most of that that order is all presold already..

Fearing price hikes and availability after brexit I have been systematically replacing all my the expensive bits on both my bikes after buying a new mtb frame end of 2018.
Cotic have recently accepted my Cyclescheme voucher for an escapade frame from the January drop.

I will then have 2x steel framed ‘allrounder’ type bikes with some high rated spec that should last me a good few years.

Everything will be worse in January. Sorry.

If you see a bike you want in stock then buy it. You may be waiting until MY22 otherwise.

Or just pay full price now for the one shop that has stock, and forget about the C2W ?

This. More expensive but far less faff and far more certain. You could pre-order but be prepared to wait or have dates move. I don’t think C2W vouchers can account for a lot of that though?
If you’re pre-ordering then smaller or more direct-selling brands might be able to give you more stock availability/visibility than a global brand>UK distributor>retailer, though there’s always something to be said for the service of a good local IBD.

Ordered a Merida big trail as soon as they were announced. Hoping it comes in 4 weeks from now. Otherwise it is July 2021.

Being as the new models come out earlier and earlier each you should be able to at least get some newer lighter more expensive something from 2023 by 1st of January next year.

Asking about for juniors new bike and it’s deposit now for delivery in March-May for most of the bikes although some were completely sold out.

Oh well, it doesn’t sound great.

I’m probably being naive but I was hoping that the usual poor New Year weather, Christmas bills rolling in and ongoing Covid job losses/hardship might see the second hand market boom and retail having to respond.