BSO?

[Ivan Ardon]

Yesterday, I did a university bike shed clearance of bikes that had been left behind when last years students left. Included was the same bike as the OP mentioned.

I have never seen such a low quality pile of junk before, it is SEVERAL grades of quality below Asda or Apollo's worst efforts. Thin paint with no primer, dropouts 2.5 mm thick, no grease used on assembly, bolts made of darylea.

I'd be surprised if anyone who bought one managed 100 miles in total before it fell apart and ended up at the dump. If that was my first experience of adult cycling, I'd give it up as a bad job (and I started adult cycling on a cheap Townsend MTB!) They're a terrible waste of money and resources.

 

[PatrickPending]

apparently the average bike does 73km before becoming landfill. As a result many bso s are made to last for these distances. Wouldnt last a day with me not that id ever ride one....


17kg!! 'this bike is not to be missed!!!' !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[marinyork]

IME they won't. One in every hundred might, but that 1% are already seriously committed to give cycling a go, for whatever reason, and learn within a very short time that sub £100 bikes are just not up to the job. Every single person I know that's bought a piece of crap like that has used it for a fortnight then stopped. Excuses I've personally heard are:

I have the utmost respect for people that start off on so called BSOs. Whilst what you say about bikes manufacturing is true, it is not particularly relevant in the context of someone taking up cycling. The £250-£300 price mark is just too high for many of the poor people that start cycling - often for financial reasons as well as cultural ones. When I bought my first adult bike I did wonder for a time whether it'd be the biggest waste of money by a country mile I'd ever spent on something and that was only at £300. Fortunately that's not been the case, but you can easily see where people's mindsets come in. You also have to bear in mind people's finances.

I would say all these things are a world away from someone who is perhaps middle class and lives in a cycling neighbourhood where their neighbour cycles and they have various contacts that cycle, where they have been softened up to view cycling in a different light.

 

[Piemaster]

I've worked with a variety of '3rd world' crews. It isn't what they get paid, it's what they can buy with it. Eg Asked the cook on a ship if he cooked the meal he was serving at home. No. Ok, does your wife cook it? No.
His cook does the cooking. He even employed a maid to see to his kids needs.
Admittedly seafarers do tend to be relatively well paid but $2/hour even 10 years ago isn't much

 

[mightyquin]

I think it's simply that the average consumer doesn't know any better. Everyone knows what a bike looks like, frame, two tyres, handlebars with brakes and of course bouncy suspension on a mountain bike!

If we accept that Mr average consumer wants to buy a bike, and that bike willl be a MTB, because they look 'better' with chunky tyres and suspension etc., then sees something that fits the bill for £100 why isn't he going to buy it?

Show the same person a higher quality hybrid for £400 and they'll think it looks just the same - or maybe worse as the tyres aren't as chunky and it hasn't got suspension - so why pay more?! Why should one wheel be better than another? A bike frame is just metal tube welded together isn't it? Who at Asda/Tesco/Halfords/QVC is going to tell them otherwise?

I'm into my photography. Everyone rushed to buy little digicams to replace their 35mm's, despite the image quality being crap. Then bthe manufacturers got into a megapixel race despite the fact that on a small sensor digicam more megapixels - after a certain point - will mean worse image quality/more 'noise'. But Mr average consumer doesn't understand any of that and probably doesn't want to, brand X is nice and flashy, it's got 5 Megapixels more than brand Y and it's a quarter of the price!

I'm sure we all buy some stuff that we don't know about and make the 'wrong' decisions.

 

[summerdays]

I think it's simply that the average consumer doesn't know any better. Everyone knows what a bike looks like, frame, two tyres, handlebars with brakes and of course bouncy suspension on a mountain bike!

That was me ... I simply didn't have the knowledge about bikes, neither of my parents cycled other than in their youth and full-suspension bikes seemed to be the trendy thing at the time, whereas the other bikes looked more "old fashioned". Now if someone mentions buying a bike in my hearing then I will try to steer them away from that unless they are spending a bit of money and intending to take it off-road.

 

[Davidc]

My experience is also that some people go on from cheap bikes to better ones.

I've put a number of cheap ones together for neighbours and friends (though never down to the level of the things in the OP, only down to catalogue mail order ones and Argos ones) and have always warned that they were a pile of junk. The next stage in well over half of those cases is helping to choose and locate a reasonable next bike. The bikes are often for children ar partner and are bought as a starter bike.

I saw one of the bikes referred to in the OP when I went in to the local one to buy some new shorts. I thought about phoning trading stanndards to suggest they take a look, but in the end didn't. I would physically stop anyone I knew from riding one, on or off road.

 

[I like Skol]

I keep thinking it would be an interesting experiment to buy one of these BSO's and use it in the real world to see and document the failings and shortcoming (if any) and prove if it is really the total disaster we bike snobs keep predicting.

 

[mightyquin]

That was me ... I simply didn't have the knowledge about bikes, neither of my parents cycled other than in their youth and full-suspension bikes seemed to be the trendy thing at the time, whereas the other bikes looked more "old fashioned". Now if someone mentions buying a bike in my hearing then I will try to steer them away from that unless they are spending a bit of money and intending to take it off-road.

Me too. I do know that you pay for what you get though and appreciate higher quality stuff, but when I first decided to get a new bike and get back into cycling my first thought was just buy one of the cheap £100 MTBs for starters.

Fortunately I'm the kind of person that tends not to buy stuff on impulse (always regret it) and do look into things in detail. That's when I thought I'd seek advice on the forums and quickly came to my senses!

 

[tyred]

I keep thinking it would be an interesting experiment to buy one of these BSO's and use it in the real world to see and document the failings and shortcoming (if any) and prove if it is really the total disaster we bike snobs keep predicting.

Someone in Canada has a blog about doing this, putting something 4,000KM on a department store bike. Search for Bike of Doom.


I wouldn't mind carrying out a similar experiment myself but I already have ten bikes and MTBs, cheap or otherwise aren't really my style.

 

[mightyquin]

I keep thinking it would be an interesting experiment to buy one of these BSO's and use it in the real world to see and document the failings and shortcoming (if any) and prove if it is really the total disaster we bike snobs keep predicting.

Do it! That'd make an interesting blog!

 

[Davidc]

I keep thinking it would be an interesting experiment to buy one of these BSO's and use it in the real world to see and document the failings and shortcoming (if any) and prove if it is really the total disaster we bike snobs keep predicting.

Not entirely snobbery, I've seen what happens to the ones I've set up!

Some can go on for quite a time and distance though.

What seems a great shame is that for a few hundred, which is only twice the price of some of these bikes, you can get a reasonable machine. The bike I ride around locally has/ had a RRP of about £300 and was bought for £200 complete with lifetime lbs servicing. It's a perfectly good workhorse with basic components and represents much better value for money than the BSO type bike. It's easy to buy and fit standard spare parts to and will probably go on for years whereas the £99 supermarket bike won't.

As I said earlier I've seen one of the bikes in the OP and that makes the £99 Asda bike look TdF ready.That's not snobbery just straightforward observation by someone who's got a few years experience of bikes.

 

[Angelfishsolo]

As some of you know I started out on an 20 year old Halfords Apollo Kaos. It was Very Heavy and had 10 gears. I had great fun upgrading it and learning about bike maintenance. I managed to get several hundred miles out of it before falling in love with MTB'ing and thus migrating to a more suitable bike. I know that the bike the OP is talking about will be crap but for £69 it is worth a punt. That is the cost of a few rounds of drinks these days isn't it?

 

[Sheffield_Tiger]

It would be a FAR, FAR better bike if it had

• A rigid frame and forks
• Thumbshifters (with the friction option for when it all goes wrong)

Unfortunately the marketing people have convinced the masses that rigid frames = crap and suspension - ANY suspension = good, likewise that gripshift is the only gear selection worth using