Paul W.
Yelp
Tread was my first bike shop in the neighbourhood. Well, they're the only bike shop in the neighbourhood. They seemed like such a find, with a great selection of bikes and accessories. Within easy walking distance too. How excited I was.
Two tuneups later, I was completely disillusioned.
First, to be fair, the staff were nice enough with general enquiries. Definitely more so when it came to sales, though. That's fine and all but getting a bike serviced there was a completely different matter. A total pain in the ass, to be direct.
The thing that really annoyed me was how each tuneup would be followed by 20-30 minutes of wrangling with the floor crew about something that still wasn't working right, followed by a repeat visit for more wrangling when the problem didn't go away after 'giving it some time'. Part of the problem seemed to be that customers weren't allowed to communicate directly with the mechanics. You'd tell one of the floor crew your grievance, they'd try to persuade you it was all in your head, then grudgingly take it to the back for inspection, and repeat.
To make matters worse, I really did not like the mechanics. I've seen two guys in the back and they were always telegraphing angry vibes at anyone who dared to question their extremely questionable work. Whenever one of them came out from the back to hand my bike back to one of the floor staff to hand over to me (jeez!), I'd say thanks, and this would elicit a look of contempt. Fine, I didn't need to be chums with the bike dudes but I also didn't want attitude for expecting my bike to actually feel tuned up.
The last straw came when I collected my bike and found that the brakes were squealing louder than prepubescent girl during a Justin Bieber sighting. After some fruitless wrangling (jeez!), tweaking (jeez!), test riding the in the parking lot, and more tweaking (jeeeeeezzzz!), I just left. Back home, I saw that the brake pads were completely misaligned. I got out my pliers and spanner, and fixed the fuckers in 15 minutes.
Why the fuck did I waste my time arguing with those people?, I thought to myself. That's when the obvious answer hit me. I didn't have to waste my time with them. And I never did again.