I’ve completely lost faith in any local bike shop within my reach. Too many negative encounters have led me to order my bikes online, handle all maintenance myself, and only resort to a local store for urgent parts. So, when people casually suggest “just take it to a Local Bike Shop,” I have to restrain myself from a sarcastic retort. My experiences have been that dismal. Overpriced services, incompetent staff who lack basic terminology knowledge… just no.
The decline from five bike shops to just two in our area over a decade speaks volumes.
Take the time I visited a shop, primarily a ski shop for half the year, seeking a rear rack specifically for my fat tire e-bike. They actually tried to sell me a car rack – for mounting a bike on an SUV! Completely missing the point of what I needed. Or another time, the counter staff had to double-check with the manager if I was even asking for a legitimate product when I inquired about a specific component.
My friend, ignoring my advice, took her e-bike to one of these shops last week. I’m already anticipating the repairs I’ll need to do after they inevitably mess something up. A sad tale for her bike, which she converted into a stationary trainer for winter, only for her father to discard the essential parts needed to revert it back to a regular road bike.
Furthermore, not a single “local” shop would touch spoke repairs or wheel truing, especially when it involved an internal gear hub. This forced me to learn these skills myself. The nearest place that offers these services is across state lines. Finding reliable e-bike repair near me feels impossible.
I even recall another now-closed shop where I went in with a broken spoke. Their solution? An aggressive attempt to upsell me an entirely new e-bike, suggesting I wouldn’t want to keep riding my “big heavy cruiser.”
My cumulative experiences paint a picture of Local Bike Shops as greedy, overpriced, dishonest, and incompetent entities that view customers as nothing more than marks to be exploited. For reliable E Bike Repair Near Me, DIY and online resources seem like the only trustworthy options left.
