Tony Raven said:John said:
Unfortunately I can only purchase via Halfords and they don't
tend to stock much where I live.
You don't need to stick to bicycles that Halfords stock - if you
identify the bike you want they should either go out and get it for you
or arrange (as is the case with Bromptons) for one of the manufacturers
dealers to supply you.
A colleague of mine did just this last year we our employer started up
this scheme. Halfords seem to prefer to have 'the manufacturers dealers
supply you' which, inevitably means, mail order.
If you go down this route, where your bike is delivered to you by a
courier, make sure you understand the 'service' limitations. With a new
bicycle you should expect a free 4 week service; my colleague had to send
his bike back to the supplier, by courier at his expense, running the
risk of it getting lost - it did go 'missing' for four days. When he,
eventually, got it back and out of the box he had to re-assemble it and
re-do all the adjustments; the basics you would have expected to have
been covered by this 'free' service.
They do deal with Bromptons differently, Halford's actually give you your
'credit note' to go to a local supplier. This does not seem to be the
case for anything else. He didn't take my advice on how much of a
problem this service issue would be. Maybe he didn't push hard enough to
have his bike of choice to be made available for collection at a local,
or accessible at least, store. I would suggest that you do push for this.
Even though my colleague and I both wrote to our head office detailing
the difficulties we had with the scheme I see they have chosen to use
them again as part of this years 'benefits package'. The only difference
this year is they have now only given their staff 5 days notice to decide
how they should sacrifice their salary. Not impressed.
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