LBS - what a disappointment

General
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Someone mentioned in another thread how important it is to support our LBSs. I agree. But anyone who doesn’t want to hear me whine and complain, please don’t read any more.

I have a LBS about 3 blocks from where I work and they are great, helpful, definitely work hard to earn trust and don’t charge too much etc. Then there is the LBS close to where I live. I’m far from work, so my “home” LBS is 45 miles north of the one near work. I mostly go to the one close to home if I have to bring my bike or uni, for logistical reasons.

So the home LBS is the place I took the uni when I started to get a popping noise/feeling in my right pedal. I told them I got the uni on unicycle.com, and would they check out the problem and put new pedals on, if necessary. They said it would take 2 days. When I called them the morning of the second day, they said it was a defective pedal, the bearings were screwed up or something. I said, OK, please replace the pedals, and I’ll call you back later today to find out when I can pick it up. They said OK.

I called a half-hour before they closed, and asked if I could pick it up. They repeated, “the pedal is messed up.” I said, I know, you told me that earlier, did you replace them? Answer, “No, but you can ride the unicycle for awhile and bring it back when it needs a new pedal.” I was so disgusted with their service at this point that I just agreed to pick it up and thought I will never go back to them again!

Now the plot thickens. I called uni.com last week and told them about the defective pedal and to summarize, they sent me new pedals, no charge, no shipping. The very day I receive them, I tried to buy a pedal wrench (from the NICE, competant, near-work LBS,) but they were out of stock. I went home and told the girlfriend; she said “But don’t you already have an all-in-one tool from your mountain bike?” I looked and discovered that I’ve had a Cool Tool all this time. So, I went to take off what I thought was my defective pedal, but on a whim, tightened it up a little first. And tried it out. Absolutely no popping feeling. No clicking sound whatsoever. So I soaked unicycle.com for a free set of pedals, inadvertently, just because the LBS LIED to me and didn’t even look at my damn pedal! And they kept it for two days!

Amy, if you’re reading this, post something and I’ll send back the pedals.

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Re: LBS - what a disappointment

Amazing. You’re fully justified.

That kind of failure takes about 5 seconds to check, and most of that time is leaning over to grab the pedal. The real diagnosis is to tighten it and check to see if the sound goes away. Another 20 seconds. Total elapsed time for even a busy mechanic ito properly check in a creaking pedal is 30 seconds to a minute, with most of that wasted in idle chat.

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I had that on one of my pedals on my first 20". Itwas pretty tight anyway, but the extra twist stopped the noise!

My LBS is kind of crappy. They were meant to get some gloves in for me, I even paid a deposit and the gloves were in the catalogue of the actual bike shop so it wasn’t a special order. Three weeks and loads of return trips later they still had’t arrived so I used the deposit on a wheel build.

Same shop rebuilt my muni wheel with silver spokes when I had specifically asked for black. The guy said “I thought it was a 26” not a 24" and we don’t have any black in 24" " He is supposed to be former pro MTBer and is a bike mechanic for some team.

Just don’t seem to know much about much and can’t seem to make simple phone calls to find out how much a Gazz is or anything.

But I’ve been to some shops where the guys are awesome, even on the phone.