I took the train to Caterham on Saturday morning (30 October 2021). There was rain. As I walked up the hill in the general direction of Ross Cycles the hood on my parka was up and then down and then up again, but when I reached the summit and rounded the corner at the top of Whyteleafe Hill it was little more than the odd spit as I took in my surroundings. Everything looks down at heel and miserable when it rains; cars with dirty hub caps pull out of side roads, an obese man mops the floor of his takeaway and soon I turn left with only a rough idea of where I am going. I could have taken the bus, but the thought of sitting there behind a steamed up window, wearing a mask and passing by the gloomy shop fronts and empty playing fields made my heart sink. As the journey continued, I spotted a red double decker bus crawling along and felt relieved that I'd taken the train, even if I had to wait around for 20 minutes in a bright and deserted waiting room on Purley station. When the train turned up I had a carriage to myself.
Even when I reached the top of the hill, there was still a long way to go, it's a good half hour walk. I turned right and found myself on the home straight. It wasn't long before I was just yards from my destination. Am I happy? On one level, yes. I'm getting my bike back. But on another level no, I'm pretty cheesed off. This morning I received a text saying my bike was ready to pick up and that a receipt had been sent to me via email. I had already spent £90 on a silver service and was expecting to pay a little more for new parts, but what I wasn't ready for was the price at the bottom of the aforementioned receipt: £201! All the parts had worn out, including the bottom bracket. I started to wonder why I had bothered with a silver service. Had I opted for the bronze the bottom bracket would not have been touched. There was certainly no evidence that it needed to be fixed, nothing appeared to be loose. Everything else I expected: new cassette, new chain and front crank, new brake pads, but it still felt a little disappointing parting with the cash.
"You might as well buy a new bike!"
The thought that "I might as well buy a new bike" crossed my mind as I remembered trying to get my Kona serviced back in 2016. There I was, standing in Ross Cycles, I'd spent the best part of £300 and with that money, once again, I could have bought a cheaper bike with block brakes, perhaps, and yes, cheaper parts, but nevertheless a new bike.
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| Perhaps the owner of this bike needs to buy a new one |
My own bike wasn't far off being 'basic' in terms of its components (unlike my Kona Scrap, which languishes in my garage with two flat tyres). My current machine is a Specialized Rockhopper, but it doesn't have top-of-the-range components and that, says Ross, is one reason why the final repair bill was so high: the cheaper parts wore out quicker than more expensive parts. Really? Well, I guess that higher spec brakes and gears would offer greater longevity, but let's not ignore the amount of cycling I've undertaken over the past year since I last had a service: easily over 3,000 miles, around 80 to 100 miles a week, I was certainly pushing the envelope, and when so much cycling is being done I should have expected that the brakes and the gears and the cassette and chain were going to wear a little, but this doesn't move away from that price. £291 in total. And that figure is enough for me to nip down to Halfords and buy a new bike. In fact, I checked out Halfords' website and I could have bought a new bike for far less than that, £175 to be precise, but let's stick with a bike for the price of the service; there were a couple of them that appealed and while, obviously, I haven't gone that route, the fact that I could have done riles me slightly. It riles me because I know that this time next year, if I keep up the cycling, it's liable to happen again and I can't think of any way out of it. It means, of course, that if I assume every annual service I have is likely to reach the £300 mark – or thereabouts – then, in a few years from now I'll have around half a dozen unserviced bikes in my garage and just one that works (a new bike). There is, of course, something ridiculous about the whole situation, but let's make no mistake, a scenario now exists where I might as well change my bike every October for a new model rather than getting my current bike serviced, and the worst thing is this: the bar is set very low when you consider that, for around £180, I can nip down to Halfords and buy a new one. Now, people might say that block brakes are terrible compared to hydraulic ones, and they are, I know, but this isn't an argument about blocks versus discs.
Where am I going wrong?
I'm trying to work out where I'm going wrong. I've considered treating my bike like I treat my teeth (a check-up every six months) but that, theoretically, would halve the bill to around £150 twice a year and still mean I'm spending the best part of £300 on getting it serviced and even then, let's not forget the Slant, a bike I spotted in Halfords a couple of years ago for just £99 new. Assuming that's still around, then just a minor service might result in the utterance of the great phrase: "You might as well buy a new bike, sir! Have you considered the Slant?" At this rate I could open my own bike shop in a few years and my stock would be a dozen or so unserviced bikes. If I went on a cycling mechanic course I could fix them myself and sell them on ebay.
So where am I going wrong? Am I (or was I) riding too much? Is there anything I can do to reduce an annual servicing bill of almost £300? Should I have taken the bike to the shop solely to fix the brakes and not bothered with a silver service, which gave the bike shop the opportunity to 'look under the bonnet' and find loads of other things that needed doing?
Other sports would cost more
But then I look at it in the cold light of day: Cycling doesn't cost me much in the general scheme of things. I'd be paying a darn sight more annually if I went swimming three times a week or if I joined a gym. A measly £290 for a service once a year and new parts thrown in is nothing, even if it does mean that theoretically I could buy a new bike with the money spent. Perhaps new bikes are too cheap. But then I think of all the Ammacos and Carreras I see parked up all over the place, outside snooker halls, pubs, railway stations and supermarkets, and I look at them and wonder whether the rider would do what I did and ask for a silver service at a bike shop. Where would they go if told 'you might as well buy a new bike'? The point is that if the brake blocks wear down they'd get them replaced, probably for under £20, and as for replacing the cassette and the front crank, well, they wouldn't.
Taking the bike to the shop is getting very much like visiting the dentist or, perhaps, talking to the hygienist. They're always berating me for this or that, not cleaning my teeth probably, not using the brush in the right way, which I always think is a bit of a farce as even if I did do it properly they'd find something else that I wasn't doing right and it's the same now with bike shops. "You ought to clean the chain more often." And who's to say that's bad advice?
I am smarting at the cost of my service, I am, it's true and yes, I could have bought a new bike with the money. Alright, perhaps a slightly lower spec, but even that isn't the point as, either way, I'd be forking out the money, new bike or newly serviced bike.
A lot of mileage
I don't feel as if I've been ripped off. I believe the shop was right and that the parts had worn beyond repair and needed replacement. The shop had said that if my bike had higher spec parts they might not have needed replacement, meaning that the cheaper the bike you buy, the quicker the parts wear down. Conversely, however, a higher spec bike would cost more to replace the parts. It's swings and roundabouts, and while I keep obsessing about brake blocks versus discs, that is not the issue here. When I look at my itemised bill, for example, all they did was change the pads for £15. I had covered, easily, 3,000 miles over the year since last October, probably a little more as I'm currently around 1,690 miles based on when I started recording my distances back in late April of this year, and that's not accounting for the six months prior, going back from April 2021 to October 2020. I could be nearer to 3,500 miles or even more.
However, it's all water under the bridge as the money has been spent, a virtually new bike now resides in my garage, it feels great to ride and I'm happy with it, but for almost £300 and that phrase "you might as well buy a new bike" looming large in the back of my mind, I'm ambivalent about the whole episode and will think twice when I next feel that my bike needs to be serviced. From now on it goes in for individual jobs: brake pads, gears and so on. There's really no need for anybody to 'look under the bonnet', it's a bike for heaven's sake.
Baffled, disappointed, confused, disillusioned
Ultimately, I'm left baffled, disappointed, mildly confused and disillusioned either because bikes are so cheap they can be thrown away rather than serviced, or that servicing itself is so expensive. Bikes are bikes, they last forever unless, perhaps, they collide with a car and end up with a bent frame. For me, the frustration lies in the fact that I have a good bike in my garage that I didn't get serviced because I was told 'you might as well buy a new bike'. I'm sure the guys at Cycle King a couple of weeks ago were teeing up the phrase as they told me what might be wrong with my bike. 'You might need an entire new brake'. I fully expected the guys at Evans Cycles to suggest it to me too, had I handed over the bike for one of their silver services.
I was going to look into cycling mechanics courses, and then somebody told me they learnt to fix their bike by watching YouTube videos. Now that's a good idea!
Further reading...
For further reading on this story, check out What's wrong with bike shops?
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