31 December 2008

Props to Cal Coast Bicycles

Over the years I have dealt with several local bike shops as well as national chains and web merchants. Some of the LBS' have been very hard to deal with. The national chains offer great prices and adequate customer service and the web merchants, well, they're web merchants and have ranged all over the place. But my experience this past year with Cal Coast Bicycles has been extremely positive.

I went to Cal Coast because they are the only local dealer for Ibis, and when I was looking to buy my Mojo SL, I didn't have much of a choice. The entire purchase experience was great. The bike was built up and ready in a day, and they have supported me every step of the way.

When my XTR rear derailleur went out, they offered to give me an XT swap while they were waiting to hear if Shimano would cover it or, when I suggested that they replace it with an XTR and I would pay them and they could just refund me when positive news came from Shimano, they said OK, but would only charge my CC if they heard back from Shimano that the part wasn't covered.

Then, most recently, my Crank Brothers Jopelin-R seat post died. In the period between sending it off to Crank Brothers, they gave me another Jopelin seat post so I could keep riding. When I went to pick up the repaired seat post on 24/Dec, they were actually closed, and had been for about 2 hours, but someone was there and was kind enough to go through the trouble of turning off the alarm, unlocking the store and exchanging the seat posts.

Finally, yesterday, I returned to the store because I was uncertain how to adjust the seat post cable as well as pick up the new Lopes Link for the bike. I decided to just have them install the Lopes Link, expecting to pay for the service. But, when I got the bike back, there was no service charge! Awesome.


Cal Coast also price matches, so I'm never going to pay more than I would at one of the web merchants. And even though I don't get the "10% back" on top of the price match that I would get at that big national chain, the fact that they didn't charge me for the service will keep me coming back for years to come.

Way to go Cal Coast.

29 December 2008

Very DIsturbing...

Wow, I haven't been on my MtB since the 30th of November. That's pretty scary! I guess the rains can be blamed for some of it, and the Crank Brothers Jopelin-R seat post that was in the shop for repair for a around two weeks can be blamed for some of it too. But in reality, I've just been a sloth and haven't gotten off my ass to get out there. I'm off all this week and it seems to be drying out a bit. I've got the seat post back and just need to put it on the bike, mount the seat and run the cable to the handlebar and I'm set.

On a somewhat related note, I'm really bummed about the undesired and unexpected destruction of a NiteRider HID bulb that fell off my road bike after I went over some railroad tracks. Fortunately, even though the light head was sitting in the middle of the road, no one ran over it. I'm gonna have to beg NiteRider to replace the bulb because right now I can't afford to buy a new one and it's still to dark outside to ride home from work without a really good light.