A BMX video so engrossing it made me burn my dinner, boil the rice dry and have to spend what felt like hours cleaning up the mess would be a great way to start the week wouldn’t it?
Apart from destroying my meals the weekend finally saw me fitting new bike pads right left and centre. The v-brake pads for one bike were easy to come by but I’ve already mentioned the problem with getting pads for the disc brakes on my mountain bike. With literally every model by every manufacturer having a specific pad the chances of any shop stocking the one you need is slim. This was shown in my impromptu semi-mystery shopper tour of a collection of shops that make sense to me…
Zero Cycles is an expanding brand in Bristol with shops in Bedminster and Downend, that I visited.
The Downend store was disappointing. Despite having a wide range of pads on display I was barely given time to look before I was caught by a sales assistant. I explained what I was looking for giving the model of the brakes. I was told they don’t stock Hayes pads, then, when I asked about other manufacturers making pads to fit, I was told that they could only match it if I had the old pads. I didn’t and so the conversation seemed over. I left, as then continuing to look at the pads they had would seem awkward.
In Bedminster (the old Garlands Cycles store and one of my favourites) the sales assistant was much more helpful, checking the pads they had, ringing the parts department before saying that unfortunately they had nothing in.
Mud Dock is a Bristol institution of a bike shop and they were also very helpful. Checking the stock but no more having the right pads, the assistant then told me to try Chain Reaction (which I was already planning)
Next was AW Cycles in Reading as I was going that way. I rang ahead, spoke to someone in the workshop and felt like they thoroughly checked what they had before telling me they hadn’t got the right pads either.
At this point I ordered the pads form Chain Reaction and gave up on riding more over Christmas. This website is fast becoming the only place to get a full range of any specific part you might need at any time, and it’s only their over-large boxes that mean a trip to the post office when you miss the delivery that makes them in any way less than perfect.
However, despite buying the pads, I wasn’t done. I was in the Pentonville Road Cycle Surgery. I was in the shop buying the other pads so asked again. The assistant here checked the pads on display, and the online stock. Apparently there were pads in stock in Romford and Manchester, neither of which was all that convenient, but it’s good to see it checked. Finally he delighted in telling me that they were cheaper there than at Chain Reaction, but agreed that I was arguably better off getting them there than waiting for them to be special ordered in two weeks into the store.
So there you have it, an entirely non-scientific review of some, but far from all, the bike shops in Bristol and a couple elsewhere. At the least it might give you an idea of where you might get good service, which is in the majority of good shops as it turns out. As local bike shops will have to survive on the service they can give when they can’t compete on stock and price with the big online retailers then this has to be a good thing.
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