Aren’t BETD doing an offer when you can send your cups to them and they’ll replace the bearings with better ones free of charge?

I’ve got a Phantom, and had a look at the newer Phantom II. I think the only real difference is the material. The older version has a much thicker type material, the newer is much thinner, though from experience (I’ve got a Xenon in the same thinner material) both are pretty windproof.

It might be a psychological thing with it being thicker but I think the older one is a touch warmer, but not much in it. Newer one is a touch more flexible with it being less bulky.

In terms of zippy off arms they are both the same.

Warton, do you really think there is a huge amount of difference in a two colour print run and a three+ colour when you’re doing a million tins of beans.

Anyway, you know you’re buying the cheapest you must be aware of the expensive ones surely…?

TJ, if one tin of beans if more expensive yet like manna from heaven, and the other is cheaper what do you buy? You seem to be implying taste comes into it, yet always affirming that you always buy the cheapest?

You’re pretty much on your own with this one.

If you agree a price, maybe ask him to put it back up on ebay for a buy-it-now price – that way he gets feedback and you get covered.

Might be worth offering to give him a little extra to cover the fees he’ll incur (10%).

roote1 – that was first thougt – M4x6 button head bolts, 12mm penny washers and a nyloc nut.

I riveted my mudflaps on, looks neater.

That was my other thought – just normal pop rivet I suppose? And fancy ones with a low profile on them, or just a standard. Not used them since my school days.

Looks like a pop rivet tool and a couple of rivets would cost as much as a few A4 stainless bolts!

Zefal seem to do a new equivalent of that Decathlon one that can even be fitted to front sus forks:-

Zefal no mud

Ah, geoff got there before me.

So can anyone actulolly put any meaning to this guff?
“Brand communication”
“talk to their customers through their website”,
“Brand message”

Okay, I’ll bite on this one.

Brand communication – trying to reach out to your target audience and try to get them to perceive that they are similar to yourself. Rolls Royce are a luxury brand, bet there isn’t a flakey out-of-focus image on their site. Maybe something like fashion clothing have a little more ‘edge’ to their site.

Talk to their customers through their website – this is the wording/tone used. How it is used often conveys certain conscious and subconscious attributes. For example, an NHS website may try to be reassuring and concise about illness, treatments etc. – you wouldn’t really want to look up heart attack on the NHS website and get a response “init, ths is like what my granny, like had, you know. Git big pain down your arm. You is dead, man”. Rolls Royce will try to be professional etc., maybe MBR website might be a bit more “down with the kids” type speak.

If it’s you only form of communicating with your (potential) customer then people do actually take how they portray themselves very seriously.

Again, brand message is related to the above – NHS is a professional organisation that you can trust with your health. Even your uniform is part of that ‘brand’. You don’t wear jeans, Ramones t-shirt etc. for work (even if clean) do you? Do I trust this airline to fly me safely from A to B?

Basically all three are trying to portray what is good about your company to someone.

You’re getting too tied up in your own importance non-brand feelings. Do you never walk into a restaurant, think this is terrible, the wallpapers hanging off the walls, just seen the chef outside having a fag coughing his guts up etc? The food might be the best in the world but you probably don’t hang around to find out. Thats a physical representation of the company, if you don’t have any bricks and motar as such then it has to be portrayed on your website.

Chew speaks the truth.

We store a lot of stuff from our two houses when we moved in together. Paid good money to store the junk, got it back, then promptly binned most of it.

It’s fairly easy to knock up a decent looking website. The trick is to get it to look okay in all the browsers, and pixel perfect to how the faffy designer wanted it in the first place (despite just knocking it up in photoshop without thought for actually how it would work). Then add in the last minute customer requests to move things around that we never designed to be moved.

Not that I’m bitter or twisted….

Would you pack it up into boxes and get it collected by a courier and stored in a secure warehouse if it was cheaper? And when you wanted it back you just call up and they courier it all back?

Damo is onto something there. Why not parcel all the stuff up and post it to your new house. It should be delivered about the right time (judging by the delays I’ve had this past couple of months) and saves you having to arrange a van to transort it to the new gaff.

Web designer in not listening to customer shocker…

Customer not telling the web designer what they actually wanted shocker… 🙄

I’m of the opinion most bike things go for 20-25% more on eBay than in the classifieds here usually so you are still making a ‘profit’. Sold plenty of stuff that’s gone for more than you can buy it new in CRC for instance.

You get an almost guaranteed sale after 7 days. Very few tyrekickers who just want loads of photos/details then to say it’s too much, or they need to sell their kit first to afford it.

If i were you I’d sell on here and advertise at a reasonable price to start with.

And then get haggled down. So the £150 advert sells for, say £130. Still £20 less than eBay including the fees…

WCA – if you go to your eBay summary page, there is a link for “selling” down the left side – click on that at any time and it’ll give you a list of all your auction items, those with a red price haven’t any bids, those in greet have bids.

You’ll get an email when the thing sells. You might find the winner pays straight away so you’ll get a notification from paypal that you’re being paid for an item – that’ll have their address in it. If they don’t then you can ‘send invoice’ to the winner.

And re postage, yes, they’ll pay the postage on top, eBay takes their fee only off the actual price of the auction, not the p&p, though paypal stings you again for the combined amount.

By the way, the old Campag ‘CT’ square taper (Veloce/Centaur etc.) chainsets were very light, just a pain that you had to use Campags b/brackets – I had a Veloce one give up after 50 miles! Then again another one last a very long time, Italian quality control I suppose.

Middleburn with a dual atb spider?

Sugino do a nice compact if you’re after square taper called the Alpina.

If you want some dirt cheap cranks I’d recommend these – there are basically Sugino/Stronglight Impact crank with no name on them. For £20 you can’t really go wrong (and there’s a triple version too if you want).
Spa XD-2 cranks

If you want some retro shiney ones have a look at this US guy – he ships to UK
Velo-Orange

If you want 2-piece, it’ll be either SRAM Rival (or S350 or Truvativ Elita version), Shimano R600 or maybe a Campag one (mind, the new Campy cranks run their own proprietary chainring system with one bolt off centre just to annoy you).

And if you really want a low ratio compact, check out Stronglight Oxale 2 (also from Spa) – its a double CD 94bcd chainset running 29/44 as standard!

If you’ve got the space I’d use lossless to archive/playback from computer. You can then burn a new CD if you want from it.

If you really want both, then you can convert in iTunes from lossless to mp3/AAC and keep both versions in parallel in iTunes. Think you select your tunes, change bitrate and it’l ask you if you want to keep the originals (say yes to that!).

Just use a smart playlist to pick out all the low bitrate songs and use that to synch up to your Pod.

Slightly unfair to compare their defence numbers. S Korea isn’t far behind in terms of numbers but of course when N Korea look over their shoulder they see the good ol’ US of A with their large stick too.

Don’t forget Russia probably have a large number of subs/tanks etc. but most are rotting with no fuel etc. to run them anyway.

Just sabre rattling as normal.

One day they might come to blows, maybe when the glorious new NK leader comes into power and decides he wants all the toys.

I’m with CLubber – everything gets paid into joint account and we get same amount of pocket money each month. I don’t ask how much her haircut was, she doesn’t ask how much that chainset was. Simples.

Now and then the missus occasionally gets some clothes or whatever paid for our of the joint account funds, I get some geeky bits like new monitor or she looks the other way when I desperately need new chain/cassette.

We do earn kinda the same but I’m in positive brownie points for covering a lot of stuff when she did maternity leave.

Get the large Lezyne road drive. Carbon version if you have some money to waste for a couple of grams saving.

Personally I think it’s pretty naive to believe any party doesn’t have a large amount of MPs that don’t agree with the policies their own party is trying to put through.

That’s the whole idea of the whip – vote for <insert party name here> policy or you don’t get reselected come next election, regardless of what you really believe.

There’s rarely a vote where MPs are allowed to vote with their own convictions (rightly or wrongly).

As people say self preservation will sustain the coalition for quiet a while yet. The LibDems will probably use it as a bargaining tool to get their way on a few minor things.

What happens if no-one buys it? Do I just post it up again and hope?

You’ll just get charged your listing fee. Relist it again, if it’s up on auction currently then people are probably a) not buying as it’s too late to get for Christmas or b) skint because of Xmas.

Relist after Christmas/New Year when people have their Xmas money burning a hole in their pockets.

I assume that I have to accept what ever the highest bid is, even if it is really low unless I put a reserve on it.

Technically it is a legally binding obligation to sell regardless of price. Though there are a number of threads on here discussing either to cancel the item or just ‘lose’ it in the post. Either way you’ll be charged final fees so you’ll lose 10% of final value regardless.

Can I pull an item from the auction if someone buys it direct or I sell it some other way before the end of the auction?

Can cancel an auction at any time, though you’ll lose the listing fee. If anyone contacts you outside eBay with an offer they’re normally trying to get it cheap, often get better price holding nerve.

Always been pretty successful putitng stuff up ending Sun between 20:00 and 21:00 – bairns in bed, had tea, no pub etc.

Bike stuff always sells well, other stuff sometimes a bit dodgy.

Do check postage. Selling something for 99p then finding postage is 80p more than you though is annoying (certainly once listing fee makes you in negative profit!).

They were superb at the Sage in Gateshead a couple of weeks ago. Even went walkabout around the audience.

Dragged a few lucky punters up onto the stage to kinda dance and enjoy themselves. The girlies had a great time, the lads realised 2000 people we watching them and quickly went into a shoegazing shuffle…

Oldgit – yep, they throw all stopped mobile numbers back in the bucket to reuse.

Can’t genuinely believe the major stores are going to change all the prices on their items from £9.99 to £10.24 or whatever.

Might find the online items that often have random seeming prices might get on with it as it’ll be an easier task, and often VAT isn’t included until checkout anyway.

The thing is, I’ve got a hi-fi in most inhabited rooms in the house, and like to be able to just grab a CD and take it to wherever I’m likely to be, pop it in the CD player and get on with what I’m doing.

That’s what an iPod dock is designed for! Pick up iPod, pop in whichever dock, play music.

Can you still claim the VAT back on the Sony too despite the discount? They are offering to refund VAT before end of year IIRC.

My company did something similar – temporary part time, or unpaid leave.

Quite a lot of the younger guys took the opportunity to do a year off travelling with the guarantee of a job back when they’d finished. Others went to work for other companies and never came back.

It was quite popular actually working part-time, maybe for childcare, or kids holidays etc. knowing it wasn’t a permanent fixture.

To be fair it’s often not the nurses fault. The midwife pretty much told be to put in a written complaint as it would highlight their lack of staff on the ward rather than the quality of care from individuals.

TJ – if you think nursing is better these days I suggest you don’t bump into my sister who’s just come out of hospital. Nil by mouth, drip ran out, nobody bothered to change it for days, ignoring women in next bed with problems with blood clot etc. etc

Sister-in-law is a nurse and she is horrified at nurses attitudes these days.

* not that I’m painting all nurses to be bad and I’m sure you look lovely in your nurses outfit 😉

You only get your fees back if the buyer agrees to the cancellation IIRC, if he’s a tool and doesn’t click the ‘I agree’ button then you might get stung.

Mmm, bad form by seller.

You can cancel an item after the fact. I’ve just done it after someone thought my alloy post was a carbon one, sigh (it was Christmas and I couldn’t be bothered to argue). If you both agree the cancellation the seller gets their fees back, if they just cancel because they didn’t like the price it sold for then fees still apply.

At worst don’t agree to his request to cancel the order. Might be a costly reminder to him circa £120 in selling fees.

Maybe email him and say if you see the bike up again without reserve you’ll report him to eBay.

Apart from that, as discussed above the seller will find a reason for not sending so probably not worth getting too worked up about it.

It’s fairly revolutionary in that you no longer need any of the gubbins for a front mech.

Well, apart from a bashguard, chain catcher, downhill rollers etc. etc. that everybody then puts on the stop the chain coming off now the front mech isn’t there. Though, to be fair I do appreciate they are lighter/simpler than a mech/shifter.

That Canyon three speed internal hub looks interesting – three speed hub with the facility to put a normal cassette over the top.

I suspect the two big lumpers coming out are due to you leaving in two months time. If they didn’t get it then it would probably get messy, there’ll be all sorts of considerations for tax/NI etc. on their side, it wouldn’t be as simple as you saying I’ll set up a standing order back to my old employer for 6 months to pay it back…

Sold loads of stuff after last Christmas – prices went mental and all I can put it down to is little Jimmy having his Christmas money to spend.

Too late now to get the Christmas selling in – people won’t buy stuff they can’t unwrap on Xmas day.

It’s an old TA Zephyr, so it’s 110mm outer rings with a 74mm inner so the compact rings will be fine.

Think the three year ‘rule’ used to be down to the length of loan period people used to take out for cars – pay off the loan, start a new one for a new car so they don’t get used to having the extra cash spare.

I used to be a regular 3 year trade in kinda guy, now certainly going to run the missus car into the ground.

Until the monthly loan payments would be less than the monthly garage payments I’d keep with the one you’ve got – sounds like it’s a decent one.

I’m erring towards the Intel although there does seem to be some suggestion that the i5 platform is a bit of a stopgap and as such might have limited longevity.

First rule of PC club. It’s out of date the day after you buy it.

Wouldn’t worry about it, I doubt either is going to be a slouch, and almost certainly any ‘upgrades’ will involve new motherboard etc. etc.

Fancy hanging on for USB 3.0?

Jon – I think your lifestyle’s the wrong way round

(live in Stocksfield, work in Toon ?)

Careful, Stocksfield doesn’t have any pubs!