Service

Another pet peeve of mine is bad service. Terrible, sub-standard service. I purchased my latest bike from a bike shop in the west... let's call that bike shop P1. Now don't get me wrong, the only reason why I actually bought a bike from P1 was because I did warm up to the owner and believed that P1 was the most convenient and best place to purchase the bike. And that I did, despite the saga and politicking which went on behind the scene at my expense between P1, the distributor of the frame of the bike I was looking at and another bike shop, let's call that shop "Galaxy" which was owned by a cunning, rather ambitious man. That however is another story for another blog post.

Anyway, the bike was purchased and I rode the bike for my Zurich race, the last Singapore 70.3 and the 70.3 race in Clearwater. All this time, the bike performed up to expectation, mine anyway. However, the rear derailleur was making weird clicking noises and the gear shifting simply wasn't as smooth as I had hoped it would be. I brought the bike back to P1 and all I was told was that thats how carbon bikes were, all I needed to do was to tweak the gears a bit as I rode to ensure a smooth transition between a higher to lower gear and vice versa. I took their word for it and continued riding.

After returning from my US trip and the end of year examinations, I decided to bring my bike to the shop I used to frequent before I moved to hall, SW, for servicing. There I told them about the problems I encountered whilst cycling and engaging in gear changing and all. They serviced the bike within a day and called to inform me about the cause of the weird noises. Apparently, brake cables, which is different from the other type of sheathing, was used to protect ALL my cables and that resulted in the irregular noises and poor gear engagement.

Aside from the brake cable incident, there were many other instances that left me ticked off too. The ridiculous amount of time they take to service a bike, the technician's dismissive attitude at times and most pissing of them all... the poor servicing. The last servicing I sent my bike to... let's just say I wouldn't exactly consider it a servicing at all. The gears weren't cleaned, the bike wasn't done up to expectation too. Well... Let's just say that'll be the last servicing I ever do at P1.