Why I Hate the LBS
So just before I left for Oregon, I brought my bike into my local bike shop (LBS) for a tune-up. I figured that although it was running just fine, it could use it, since it had been more than a year since my last tune-up, and in that time I'd crashed the bike twice. So I dropped it off, saying that I particularly wanted new cables run, a broken spoke replaced, and new salmon brake pads.
While I was in Oregon, I got a call from the shop, asking whether I wanted the brake pads replaced. Uh, hello? It's written right there on the work order, stupid! Then the guy asked if I wanted my rear cassette and chain replaced, and I told him no, I would replace them after the PMC ride. End of conversation.
After returning to Boston, I went to pick up my bike. The first thing I noticed was that they didn't use the salmon brake pads I requested, and the brakes were poorly adjusted. I broke my multitool out and started working on my bike there on the shop floor, which got the attention of the staff. Then I discovered that the rear tire was essentially flat and needed to be filled. What kind of shop is too stupid to put air in the tires? I also noticed that they'd changed the cap on my stem with someone else's; nothing to complain about, but definitely another sign of carelessness.
But then I went about putting my cyclocomputer onto the bike, only to discover that the cadence kit I'd recently bought was no longer attached to the bike! At this point, the mechanic on duty knew I had issues, and I demanded my cadence kit back. He called downstairs and asked them to look for it. While we waited, he explained to me that the guy who had worked on my bike was deaf, so it might take a couple minutes to get the information out of him. Eventually my cadence kit returned, with the explanation that "It looked like it was trash, so he took it off the bike and threw it out". I explained that I hadn't come to the shop and paid $110 to have my bike stripped, thank you.
So then I ride the bike home, and it's barely rideable. The chain keeps skipping any time I put any torque on the pedals. Apparently they decided that they really wanted me to buy a new cassette and chain, and had "fixed" it so that it wouldn't work anymore, despite it working perfectly fine when I brought it in. In fact, it's the second time they've done that to me. But I'd be damned if I was going back to that shop to pay them to replace my chain and cassette (and accidentally remove whatever spare parts they wanted to take from it).
So I took the bike to another LBS, closer to home. The guy there was pretty nice, and swapped my cassette and chain out that day. He said he'd tested it, and it rode fine over the half-mile ride home. Still, that ran me another $90.
In a couple days, I took the bike on one of the usual long Quad Cycles rides. Indeed, it worked fine for the first 50-odd miles, but the chain started skipping again during the last 30 miles, and by the time I got home it was just as unrideable as before. By now I was especially overjoyed.
I took the bike back to LBS #2 and had another mechanic look at it, and he suggested replacing the (front) chainrings, which meant a whole new crankset, since they were integrated. And, in fact, he'd have to order the parts, so I'd have to wait four days before he could do anything. So I waited.
Thursday came and I brought the bike in. He swapped the cranket out quickly enough, but then asked "You don't ever use the small ring, do you?" Apparently the small ring (the easy gears) were a problem because my derailleur just wouldn't move far enough over to get the chain to switch. Then he tried swapping out my derailleur, which didn't help. Finally he had to swap out my bottom bracket in order to accommodate the new crankset. Call that another $120.
The good news is that the bike is now working just as well as when I brought it in for a tune-up. The bad news is that in order to keep the bike running as well as before, I was forced to swap out the chain, the rear cassette, the front crankset and chainrings, and the bottom bracket, to the tune of $330, at a time when I can't afford that kind of expense.
And people wonder why I hate bike shops.