Several weeks ago I picked up a new bike from Reid Cycles (I won't name the branch as this isn't a witch hunt). Now I look back on it, the salesperson was fairly poor - there was no explanation of the 27 speed gearing, shifting, or anything about maintaining the bike, I was basically just handed the product and shown the door. It did come with two free services over 12 months which is good I suppose.
The bike I bought was the Reid Osprey Elite, currently listed at $699. When I bought it, it was on special for $530 - a decent discount. The specs on this bike are good, no doubt. It represents excellent value for money. But there was a catch - a fault in the assembly.
12 days later, having done around 160km over 8 rides - nothing fast - max speed about 45km/h - average 25km/h, I was pedaling downhill at about 45km/h when the left hand side pedal crank (and pedal) just fell off the bike. Luckily I didn't have an accident, and had only a 20 minute walk/coast home. This was on a Friday evening, so I went into the shop on the following Saturday and straight up asked for a refund.
When I explained what had happened, the manager was initially defensive and said something like "this doesn't happen" and also "it must have been tampered with" or words to this effect. Later on, when he realised that I wasn't making the story up, he apologised, which I appreciated. He repaired the crank joint and found it hadn't been assembled properly, but he didn't know how it could have left the shop like that. So I was left with a bike that I no longer trusted to ride and had no explanation from him how it could have happened.
During the 15 minutes or so while he fixed and checked the bike I tried to haggle my way for a store credit, or a bike exchange for a different demo model, or even just a cash offer for it - but nothing. He didn't give me any options at all, only his assurance that there was "only a 1% chance of this every happening again". I had already given up on ever riding the bike again after the crank fell off - I had lost confidence in it.
Reid Cycles prides itself on putting safety first, but they are just paying lip service to this in my experience - I wasn't given any clear explanation for the lack of QA / safety checks before delivering a bike to a customer.
A couple of days afterwards, I listed the bike on Gumtree. One good point from the saga is that I got $425 for it, which is better than the measly $175 Cash Converters had offered me. At the time I listed it, the shop had put their price back up to $699, so this might have helped me in getting this half decent price.
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| The 2016 Reid Osprey Elite |
