Bloody Halfords. Inept - no - Damn Dangerous. And Ham-Fisted.

[roubaixtuesday]

People often ask for advice on what bike to buy.

I always say:

1. Most important thing is the shop you buy it from.
2. Then what sort of bike do you want
3. Then what's your budget.

The OPs experience reinforces all my prejudices.

 

[classic33]

W.R.C.C. Now go wash your hands

Never played cricket.

 

[Venod]

People often ask for advice on what bike to buy.

I always say:

1. Most important thing is the shop you buy it from.
2. Then what sort of bike do you want
3. Then what's your budget.

The OPs experience reinforces all my prejudices.

In the ops case I suspect no 3 and 2 came before 1.

But for somebody with no knowledge of bikes I would agree with you.

 

[Johnno260]

Shop you use is a huge factor, with my LBS I could drop in and little niggles were sorted there and then, also any advise he offered I would then purchase the parts/items from the store to support the shop.

I'm gutted the store is shut now, but he is now a mobile bike mechanic, so that's better then nothing.

 

[Globalti]

This is the Halfords I had my first 'proper' bike from in 1958.

You can just tell from the look of this man that he knew what he was doing.

Wow, that's the shop window equivalent of a website!

 

[Rusty Nails]

Wow, that's the shop window equivalent of a website!

As a kid I haunted that shop for a year before I got my Raleigh Trent Sports for passing my 11+.

 

[Shearwater Missile]

We used to see a few Puchs' thanks to the Sears catalog, which offered them, and the mopeds. Puch was a buy-up from their regular 3-speed. My Dad had a Raleigh 3-speed, but, when I was a kid, he was the only adult male I saw riding a bicycle regularly, and he rode, and trained us to ride, not on the sidewalk, but on the street. My mother also had a bicycle, as she sometimes had to go farther than she could walk. Driving a car never crossed her mind.

I have searched for pictures of my 1970/71 Puch bicycle but can`t find anything similar other than the shape of the bike in your earlier post. All I remember was that it had a distinctive curved double crossbar I think. It was in dark red and purchased for the princely sum of £18 I believe from Groves Garage in Hadleigh, Suffolk. I suppose it is true to say that I cut my teeth on that bike and once I`d grown out of it (18months later) I moved onto my Raleigh Olympus 5 speed. Happy days of cycling before the roads got to the stage they are today and blighted with fast traffic. IMO

 

[rogerzilla]

I liked the Puch badge. It was a bit like a BMW badge.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

I liked the Puch badge. It was a bit like a BMW badge.

Is that reason to like it?

 

[confusedcyclist]

I've met some very knowledgeable staff when it came to finding compatible derailleurs for my Frankenstein mixed group set drivechain, they sorted me right out. I've had a chain fitted in an emergency. They didn't cock it up.

 

[Slow But Determined]

To be honest this is not just a Halfords problem. In my mind it is symptomatic of Britain (and perhaps other countries) over the last 30 years where proper apprenticeships were shelved in a drive to put more money on the bottom line.

If you couple that with the way all young kids were directed into computer based jobs you were left with a dearth of people with hands on mechanical / engineering skills.

When I started out in the motor trade (40 odd years ago) the apprentices would go through rigourous on the job / college / manufacturer training to achieve the required skill set.

As time passed the training got less and less and in the last 20 years or so I was constantly astounded by the people who were taking a spanner to a customer's 30/40k car.

Such was the skill shortage, valeters, tyre fitters etc were given jobs as mechanics (or technicians which became the terminology)

Unfortunately we now have Blair's dream whereby most young kids are going to "university" to study (for a good many of them) courses that will not net them a decent job at the end.

I do worry for future skills in this country but I suppose the next generation won't be my problem!!

 

[Shearwater Missile]

I can echo the last posting. I served an apprenticeship from 1975 to 1980 in electronic repair (C&G) actually it was for TV and Radio and I loved the job. You never stopped learning especially as newer technologies came on the scene, remember Ceefax and NICAM and more recently Plasma and LCD ? The courses that were once run at the local college finished years ago, when the manufacturers started the training, either at their premises or would come to my employer`s workplace. Now and for several years training has been given over the internet.
When I retired early in 2017, three of my work colleagues also took early retirement, their choice I can assure you. We could see how things were going. Sadly the company lost many years of experience of which will never be replaced. When we finished we left one qualified engineer and lots of helpers, a bit like Santa really !

 

[rogerzilla]

There's a definite race to the bottom in skills. The UK cost of living is so high that the minimum wage was brought in, but employers can't always afford to pay experienced staff at, say, £25k and minimum wage staff at a higher rate of £15k (when they used to be on under £10k), but they still need the bodies to cover every location, so they just keep the cheaper people.

 

[Shearwater Missile]

You are quite right about keeping the cheaper people. The year before we all finished we`d gone to a 4 day week which the company were quite happy with, it kept their costs down and gave us more leisure time. I liked it so much that was when I decided to call it a day. Still got to wait a few years for the state pension that`s if they don`t put up the retirement ages again. BTW I never got to £25k, only in my dreams. Still I did 42 years with the same company so can`t complain.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

There's a definite race to the bottom in skills. The UK cost of living is so high that the minimum wage was brought in, but employers can't always afford to pay experienced staff at, say, £25k and minimum wage staff at a higher rate of £15k (when they used to be on under £10k), but they still need the bodies to cover every location, so they just keep the cheaper people.

This situation cannot go on forever, because the companies who practice it are relying on the skills & experience of the more highly paid properly trained staff to prop up their increasingly shaky operations. Recruitment of new staff on lower wages coupled with minimal training is the new operating model in many industries. On paper, every time a high paid skilled worker with a final salary pension retires and is replaced be someone on less money and with a inferior pension, the employer appears to be saving money. It is only just about sustainable as long as there is still a critical mass of experienced staff left, who actually do know what they are doing. The company makes a bit more profit in the short term and the directors award themselves a nice bonus as a reward for their fantastic management abilities. A few years down the line all the experienced staff have gone and the whole operation will fall flat on it's face. The directors will leave with a golden handshake and go on to inflict their "abilities" on some other company, with the same predictable outcome.