Joe Gross

Earlier this summer I bought myself a spiffy Specialized S-Works Roubaix at Mike’s Bikes in Sausalito to replace my old Kestrel 300 EMS. I thought I’d occasionally ride the Kestrel but the Roubaix was superior in every way so I ended up selling it to some lucky person via eBay.A few weeks ago I found some sand on a descent of Apline Road and crashed hard. I had open wounds from road rash for nearly two weeks and caused significant damage to the bike. The crash snapped the carbon fiber handlebars, bent the rear derailleur hanger, bent the front brake mounting post, and most likely damaged the carbon fiber fork, stem, and seat post. Not wanting to pull a Hincapie I brought the bike to Mike’s in San Francisco. Normally I would have taken the bike to The Freewheel in San Francisco, as they’re an awesome shop with great wrenches, but I needed to get parts from Specialized so I brought it to Mike’s.

I brought a printed list of things that I knew were damaged and asked them to look through the rest of the bike while they replaced the obviously damaged parts. Justin said that some of the parts, in particular the fork, may be hard to get, but that he’d do his best. That was two weeks ago.

Yesterday I finally got a call back from Martin at the bike shop to tell me that he was done and I could pick it up that evening. He said that Specialized wouldn’t sell me a new S-Works stem. This wasn’t because they didn’t have it in stock but because they wouldn’t sell me a stem without alloy faceplate. You see, they had recently recalled the S-Works carbon stem due to a problem with the magnesium faceplate. It didn’t matter that I already had a replacement faceplate. I suggested that we send Specialized my faceplate and then they could send me a “complete” stem back. I guess this tactic worked since I’m promised a new stem in about a week. In the meantime they would put on a cheapo stem of the same geometry so I could get the bike back.

Lorah was kind enough to pick it up for me earlier today. When she got there the bike wasn’t even close to ready. Apparently they hadn’t done the paperwork nor had they done a final checkup of the bike. This took a long time while they figured this out since it seems that Martin (who wasn’t there) hadn’t done any of this and didn’t tell anyone about what was going on. Once they finally had it sorted out Lorah paid the bill, received our San Francisco Bicycle Coalition discount and headed home. Total cost for parts and labor: $736.06.

I took a look at it when I got home tonight and I can’t believe what I saw. It’s difficult to count the things they screwed up but I’ll try here:

First and foremost they never replaced the derailleur hanger, and didn’t check to see if I bent the rear derailleur. I know this because the old bent hanger is still there and the derailleur contacts the spokes in second gear. They clearly never did any sort of final checkup adjustment. Cost to me for this non-service: $35 for the “Tune Check Over”, $10.19 for the rear derailleur set, $16.99 for the hanger, and $15 for the derailleur install. So far that’s $77.18 that parts and labor that didn’t
exist.

They charged me $60 to install new cables and housings. The same cables and housings were on the bike from before the crash.

They ordered the wrong seatpost. You’d think that given how Specialized slaps “S-Works” all over their parts that it would be obvious that the new seat post wasn’t the same model. They’re also clearly very different designs with different clamping mechanisms. $62.89 for the wrong seat post.

They weren’t able to get the S-Works stem for another week so they sold me an ITM stem with the same geometry for $45. I figure I can use it on another one of my bikes that has a stem that’s too short. This stem didn’t seem new to me as it had gunk all over one side of it. Add $45 for a gunky stem.

There’s also a $10 “BB Adjust” which I can guess means “Bottom Bracket” or “Ball Bearing”. I’m pretty sure no adjustment of any kind took place or they would have noticed the rear derailleur knocks against the rear spokes in second gear.

While they replaced the front brake, they didn’t cap the cable. Left uncapped the cable end would eventually unravel, making for a very dangerous situation.

The crash also partially dislodged one of the Zertz inserts in the seat stays. They didn’t touch it and it’s still partially dislodged.

I brought the bike to them because I had crashed it really hard, caused a bunch of damage, and wanted the “experts” to go over it carefully to ensure it was safe to ride. This is a big deal with carbon fiber bikes as carbon has a catastrophic failure mode. They very clearly didn’t do jack in terms of looking the bike over and sent me home with a bike that isn’t any safer than the one I brought in. If I didn’t have the knowledge to inspect their work I’d have a bike that could cause serious injury.

You’d think that if you bought a $5000 bike that your shop would provide good service. It’s been quite the opposite experience. My bike has has two recalls so far. One for the front wheel skewer, and another for the S-Works stem. A failure in either part would guarantee a very nasty crash. You’d expect a good bike shop to contact their customers who have these defective parts, but not a peep. In fact, Mike’s didn’t even know about the stem recall when I contacted them about a replacement part.

I’m going to stop by this weekend and see what they’ll willing to do to make things right. In the meantime I suggest avoiding Mike’s Bikes and taking your business elsewhere. If you want to buy something from Specialized I recommend Go Ride Bicycles in Redwood City. We bought Lorah’s Specialized Ruby from there and they were great. They’re also the only place in the bay area that both knew about my stem recall and had extra face plates available.

Update:

I brought the bike back and Zach, the manaer was visibly concerned about the work that was done. He asked me to give them one more chance to make things right. I figured I’d give them that opportunity to redeem themselves.

Picked the bike up a few days later. Zach had refunded all the labor charges, wrapped the bars, and sold me the stem and seatpost at cost. He said that three people had test ridden it and it was perfect. I took the front wheel off, loaded it in my trunk, and headed home.

I did a full inspection when I got it home and it turns out they didn’t tighten the front brake attachment bolt. We’re not talking “just a little loose” but rather “going to fall off the bike loose”. I got almost a full turn out of the bolt before it even started to get tight.

I called Zach again and he had no answer for me. He thought that maybe the bolt was stuck against some paint inside the fork and came loose later. I told him that it doesn’t matter *how* happened. They work on these bikes all the time and should have caught such an important thing. He asked me to judge them on what they got right, but I told him that it doesn’t matter if they did a nice job of wrapping the bars when my front brake was about to fall off.

In summary, this second experience at Mike’s Bikes was just another chapter in their saga of incompetence. The moral of the story is if you want something done right, don’t go to Mike’s Bikes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Cycling, Irony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.