Swiss bicycle shops are hosers rant

1. Technically, it was a free wheel and I didn't see how I could thread the spoke through and make the 90 degree bend with the freewheel in place. Broken spoke was on the drive side of the wheel.

Is there a link to how to do it? everywhere I looked says it can't be done

http://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-me...-cassette.html

Your Kung Fu must be greater!

2. A long string of ineptitude. Would bring it back to fix one thing and then get it back with something else wrong. Unfortunately, a lot of the back and forth was done via my assistant (read OH) while I was out of town. I would come home on Friday wanting to ride and then find something else wrong. Rinse and repeat for several weeks...

list of visits to fix:

missing spoke (really!)

freewheel installed so it wouldn't free wheel

wheel not trued once all the spokes were installed

missing spoke guard

ps. I now own a cassette removal tool

As it happens, I did one just last week, and really didn't struggle. It too was the drive side, and in fact I fsked up and put it through the wrong way first, so it could have gone either way. Yes, I had to bend it slightly to thread it through, but not much more than you would to get the nipple to screw on anyway, if like me you're not removing the tyre , or indeed the wheel from the frame.

Took me about five minutes, including re-truing the wheel.

http://velofabrik.ch/ch/kontakt/?lang=en

is a good place I found when having a problem at Bhf Enge

and here MAECHLER http://www.oeffnungszeitenbuch.de/fi...-1157985W.html

reliable and helpful

I took the cassette and tyre off as I was getting the shop to replace the spoke, so why pay for their labour when I could do it myself. Maybe they could have done it with all this in-situ, but then maybe they would have still charged me for labour and said that this is what they needed to do. Wheels are a dark art to me..

I've definitely had bad experience with at least 1 bike shop in Z.

I took my bike in for a puncture repair (could've done it myself, just didn't feel like it that day) to my local bike shop at Schmiede Wiedikon, "Velofix", and when I picked the bike up the guy said my back gearbox was old and worn and should be replaced (he then proceeded to take out some fancy tool that was supposed to prove that).

When I asked "how much would that cost?" he said I should probably consider buying a new bike instead. Avoiding getting annoyed I said I was not interested in that, as far as I'm concerned my bike runs fine, and again asked how much replacing it would cost. 250 CHF with labor he said. I said "I'lll think about it" and left.

Skip forward about 1.5 years of using the old box just fine, I decided to do it myself to see how hard it could be. Found out what the gear box ID was (says on it), googled around, ended up on bikester.ch where they had it for 13.90 CHF (!), I also had to buy a tool attachment for removing it - 8.90 CHF, and to make my life easier, and a chain whip for 13.90. Total time to do the job myself, probably 20 minutes after watching a video on YouTube how to do it.

In the end I also replaced the chain, the saddle, the front gears and the pedal bars, pedals themselves, handlebars, and some other minor items, all for less than the 250 CHF they wanted to charge me.

I understand that labor costs must be high in a bike shop in central Z, but I really disliked the attitude that I should just buy a new bike instead of getting an old one repaired, and then a 250 CHF figure with no basis just tossed at me. I'm sure there's better bike shops, but bikes really aren't that complicated, there's YouTube videos for nearly everything, so if you're even a little bit handy, try to do it yourself. Just take pictures as you dis-assemble stuff so you remember what goes where

Do you know any good place where to sell your bike? After a year having a bike here, i used it just a few times, since no one of my colleagues are willing to ride. I went out myself, but that became quite boring, so now the bike serves as dust collector.

And in my opinion, the bike shop prices here are ridiculous. Having to pay 200Fr for a basic bike maintenance, i would rather buy the required tools and do it myself.

But yes, its a price for being a slacker :-)

Think again. Bicycle mechanics are generally poorly paid.

According to this article from 2013 (in German only, sorry) the recommended minimum monthly wage for a mechanic is between CHF 3500 and 4500.

According to Wingnut's profile he/she is a programmer. I wonder if the bike shop owner went to him/her with their website/excel accounting spreadsheet/laptop and asked for some basic maintenance if the bill would be less than 250 CHF, even if it were something that they might have been able to do themselves?

I suspect not.

Nothing personal Wingnut, but let's be honest, if the guy came to you with a website that his brother in law had built with Frontpage, and asked you to add two additional photographs to it, how much would you charge him, even if you didn't say "Well, you know, Frontpage is pretty outdated" first.

Actually, I still use it for a friend's website.

Tom

Just wanted to share a postive story from a Swiss bike shop:

I bought my nephew a cheap bike from the local Brocki as money is a bit tight at the moment. It was pretty beat up with old tyres, ripped seat, missing handlebar grips and a broken bell.

Anyway soon after one of the tyres popped and I told him to take it to the bike shop as I was working.

The next day we went to pick it up and they had replaced the tyre for CHF 30.00 -but they also replaced the seat, handlebar grips and gave him a new bell using old parts!

Such a nice thing they did for us and he was totally rapt!

While I wholeheartedly agree that the guy shouldn't have started replacing parts and thereby giving you a bill for 1200 CHF, the other pricing is not out of line at all, IMO.

As someone who worked in a bike shop Stateside and could barely afford to eat, let alone do much else, I have to say that it's no way to live. In an effort to support bike shops paying their employees a living wage they have to charge more, in some cases a lot more for service. However, I've noticed in a lot of cases though, costs here are approx. equal to those back home. As an added bonus, I've never had to take a repair back to be redone since living here.

By the way, bleeding brakes is really no fun and to do it correctly, takes a certain amount of talent and know-how.

I discovered that Velo Elsener in Seebach charges 160 CHF an hour.

They deliver good work, but their pricing is outrageous!

I bought my own repair stand and get my parts from German webshops now. Together with youtube instructions bike maintenance is easy and good fun!

More like 30% as swiss bike shops are total ripoff merchants