What brand bike should I buy?

For any given bike, say an aluminum 27.5″ wheeled hardtail with 4″ of travel there will be dozens of choices. So which brand do you buy? This is a tough question. Some people will say the bike and bike shop are what matter the most. Others will have a strong brand loyalty and feel that is most important.

The local bike shop

The closest bike shop to your house, the one that you can ride to is the one you should develop a good relationship with. I’d agree with this since they are the most convenient. In the 1980’s I lived in Berkeley, Ca and there were three bikes shops near me: Velo Sport, The Missing Link, and Pacific Bikes. Velo Sport was walking distance, but had snobby salespeople. They also catered to road bikers and I wasn’t really interested in road biking. The main brand they carried, Univega was okay, but I was more interested in Specialized. The Missing Link carried Specialized, Fuji, Bridgestone, and Nishiki. Most importantly they had great customer service and classes that I took that taught me about bike repair. Anyways, I ended up buying 6 bikes from the Missing Link when I lived in Berkeley. This was back in the 1980’s and they are still in business. Velo Sport and Pacific Bikes are long gone… so long ago that they don’t even appear on Yelp anymore. Anyways, good customer service and price was key back in the 1980’s at least for my bike buying business.

But what if your local bike shop sucks?

After not being into biking for 10+ years I got back into it. In 2014 I bought a full suspension bike from my local dealer. Why? Great customer service, price, and he had the bike I was interested in.

In 2018 I wouldn’t buy a bike from my local bike shop. Why? Customer service and price. I live in an expensive part of the Bay Area. My two local bikes shops charge full MSRP. What’s worse? I want several customizations on the bike which Mike’s Bikes service department will charge me full labor prices on. But here’s what kicked me out the door was the statement that if I brought in my own parts that they would charge me twice the usual hourly labor fee to install everything. So no bartering, bargaining, or discounts. In fact, even though you are buying a new bike from us, we are going to charge you twice our hourly rate since you are bringing in your own parts. I get it. You want to dissuade internet online shopping for parts and get them to buy the parts from you at full retail so you can make a big enough profit to stay in business. This is a very expensive area to operate a bike shop in, but for me as a consumer, not exactly the deal I was looking for.

Mikes Bikes: I went in there shopping for a street bike. The guy I talked to clearly did not know the product and couldn’t answer basic questions. I wouldn’t worry about Mike’s going out of business, however

Cognition Bikes I would worry they might close their local shop due to high rent and redevelopment in the area. I’ve used their service dept but would not want to buy a bike there since they are full MSRP, who wants to pay full MSRP?

I have bought two bikes from a dealer that is 15 miles away from me. Why? Customer service and price. For the first bike, the owner was willing to bargain on price, give me a some credit for the parts he took off my bike that I had him replace, and had the bike ready for me on time. For the second bike, he ordered it for me based on only email communication. He put all the parts on that I wanted for no additional charge and gave me some credit for the parts he took off. Guess where I’ll buy my third bike?

Moral of the story? Customer service and price.

Brand loyalty:

I’ve bought three brands of bikes, Fuji, Nishiki, Specialized, Bridgestone, and Giant.

Fuji – Just a one off 3 speed for around town and locking up. Bought at The Missing Link. It got stolen 😦 though it was locked up at the BART station.

Nishiki – Bought two 10 speeds used and a 15 speed Cresta new from The Missing Link.

Specialized – Bought a Stumpjumper in 1985 for $675. This was an enormous amount of cash for me at the time. A Hardrock when then came out with SIS shifting in 1987? A used Allez in the 1990s. A new Stumpjumper Future Shock in 1991, and a used Camber 29er in 2014.

Bridgestone – I’ve bought one MB-2, one XO-4, and four X0-1’s.

Giant – Became aware of Giant when I was in Taiwan in 2011. Anthem, two XTC’s, Lust, Seek, Comax, and an Escape.

Total Epic Failures

Santa Cruz – Overpriced. Poor value. Poor customer service

Surly.

I’ve wanted to get a rigid bike for several years now. I narrowed it down to two bikes. I have a very particular bike that I want, a rigid 650b wheeled bike, straight handlebar, hydraulic disk brakes, 1x gearing, 71/73 degree geometry or 0.5-1.0 degree steeper or 0.5 degrees slacker head tube. Aluminum or cromoly frame. At $1549 the Surly Straggler was more than I wanted to spend especially since I’d have to convert the drop handle bars to straight, mechanical disk to hydraulic, and 2x gearing to 1x. Still, I was interested and went to a lot of trouble to find the bike in my size. I failed.

I emailed every Surly dealer in my state, California. The responses I got were:

Frustrated I emailed Surly directly. I sent them two emails and this was the response:

Hey,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry to hear you are having troubles. Thanks for sending me photos, though photos of measurements and angles don’t necessarily help me too much. Bike Sizing is not an exact science due to immense variations in individual body geometry and rider preference, and getting different size recommendations from different people is not an uncommon experience. One easy and reliable way to determine the size of the bike you are looking at is to measure the Head Tube. They are different for every size and it is measured simply from top-to-bottom, not including the headset cups of course. We have a very loose sizing guide on our website, which would place you somewhere between a 54cm to a 56cm as you mentioned. But again that will be dependent on your body geometry and preferences.

As far as reaching out to shops goes, I always recommend simply calling them and asking and getting a direct answer. Emails can get sorted in all kinds of weird ways, can fall through the cracks, or simply be overlooked. I’m sorry you feel like our dealer base if failing you, but we do all of our sales through them and do not sell direct in any context.

Cheers,

Evan Giannobile | Surly Bikes | Brand Support

This email from Evan is the first impression I get from Surly. Note a couple of things:

1. Doesn’t recognize his dealers suck and something needs to be done about them
2. Doesn’t acknowledge how much effort I’m putting into buying a Surly. Buying a bike shouldn’t take this much effort!
3. Doesn’t understand that adding a size decal on the top tube of Surly frames would greatly assist potential customers and salespeople
4. Sizing is a problem that needs to be addressed. If a dealer had the three nearest sizes in stock that I could test ride, that would seal the deal. Perhaps Surly could fund demo bikes? Think of something creative.
5. Evan was of no help to me whatsoever and does not facilitate me buying a Surly. He was even insulting with a condescending demeanor. An epic failure.

Note that the bike I would get would set me back about $2000. Most people don’t spend this much on a bike.

Ultimately, I bought a different brand and bike. After putting 100 miles on the bike, love it!

What is customer service? Answer all my questions honestly and accurately. If you don’t know something that’s fine, but get back to me. As a bike shop employee you should work on getting me sized and