Easy money...

[wheres_my_beard]

I just visited my LBS with a guy I support through my work who picked up a puncture recently. He was reluctant to fix it himself, or with my help, so wanted to get if fixed locally. In the shop the helpful assistant told us that an inner tube was £6, and when asked how much it would be to get them to put the tube in the assistant said £7.50.

My initial thought was "hmm, that's not too bad just £1.50 for a couple of minutes work seems quite reasonable".

However, the guy continued ".... that'll be...um... (mental arithmetic seemed a weakness at this point)...

... £13.50 in total" !!!

Is it normal to charge this much for such a run-of-the-mill repair??

I half expected them to do it for nothing if I'm being honest. It's a place I have taken a few of my clients to for parts and help with their bikes, but this has made me think twice about using them. I have to say though that I have never had a bike repaired at a bike shop so I'm not that familiar with how these things work; am I over reacting??

 

[phil_hg_uk]

I guess it depends on the type of bike shop, here in harrogate we have a mixture for example:

One of my customers asked me where he should take his families aging collecton of MTB's for a service and I pointed him to a general bike shop i use for MTB stuff, he sells/repairs the low to mid range family/MTB bikes and he charged about £50 to check over and service all 3 bikes. This customer had previously taken the bikes to one of the higher end bike shops in town and all they wanted to do was sell him new bikes at a grand a time and were not even interested in even looking at his bikes at all.

I have never had an LBS fix a puncture but the above mentioned shop fixed a snapped axle on my MTB for me and charged me about £10 which is fine by me.

I would have thought that anything from £7.50 to £10 all in would have been more like it in your friends case considering the markup on the innertube in the first place, I know when I buy tubes by a box of 10 for specialized ones I only pay about £2.50 each so they will be paying a lot less than that for them.

 

[Sh4rkyBloke]

I *think* (from memory) EBC here in Manchester charge £5 for the tube and £5 for fitting. I only know as I asked them about it once when I was in a rush and also needed to get some other bits from there... thought they could change the tube (slowish puncture) whilst I was shopping there and then get away quickly.... in the end I used their track pump after my bit of shopping and got most of the way home before having to stop and pump it up a bit again.

 

[Beebo]

It seems fair to me.

These LBS shops are not charities. They have to charge for labour, rent, bill, rates, VAT, NI etc - so £7.50 seems a fair price if people are too lazy to do it themselves.

 

[tyred]

It's a reasonable enough charge for something that virtually anyone should be able to do for themselves.

If it's a rod braked roadster with chaincase, it's an absolute bargain

 

[zizou]

Seems fair enough, think i've seen £10 listed on a couple of shops service price list and that isn't including an inner tube

 

[snorri]

I think it's a fair price for the job!

 

[Fnaar]

It's gone up in price...that's inflation for you

 

[ColinJ]

It's a reasonable enough charge for something that virtually anyone should be able to do for themselves.

Agreed!

I think that anybody over the age of about 8 or 9 who rides a bike should fix their own punctures and do other small repairs like fixing/replacing broken chains and replacing brake blocks!

 

[Cubist]

I once challenged a bike shop proprietor to justify charging a tenner to mend puncture. He told me that the moment he takes a rear wheel off a bike he has to index the gears and adjust the cables, because so many people claimed he had knackered the setup for them. He was all in favour of telling people how to do it themselves.

 

[CopperCyclist]

I agree, it's a fair price if you can't be bothered to do it yourself. I always change my own tyres, but admit that you'll be guaranteed to hear me swear at least once every time I change them!

 

[wheres_my_beard]

I would have happily spent some time finding and mending the puncture or just swapping an inner tube (and hopefully demistify the process at the same time), but he was insistent that he wanted to pay the LBS to do it.

It sounds like he wasn't charged more that you guys expected so, I'll assume he wasn't taken advantage off. He didn't seem at all put out by the cost when asked, but he would have no reason to suspect anything untoward was possibly going on (if he was asked for £40 he probably still would have paid to be honest).

 

[HLaB]

If there charging that and they've not went bust, there must be a market for it. I'm maybe wrong but I think the people that can't be bothered doing a simple job like that themselves, are the same sort people not too worry about paying.

 

[bobg]

I spend a good deal of spare time drinking tea in the workshop of my local LBS. I reckon one in every 5 customers wants a puncture repairing and about the same % just want their tyres pumped up.... BTW , yeah, £5 plus the cost of the tube.

 

[Peteaud]

Seems fair to me although ive never taken a bike to a LBS for a puncture.

Take into account tax, insurance, rates, electric, water rates etc etc and its probably pretty reasonable