1 - We demand 24 hour delivery by courier then whine about the roads being choked with white vans, many of which are actually running around mostly empty.
2 - As a consequence couriers are expected to make 45 drops a day so it's no surprise they drop and run or chuck stuff in gardens. I've been that delivery driver and the stress to get your drops done is unbelievable, especially on days of heavy traffic or when you are wasting time trying to rouse the dozy consignee. Your courier is not some lovable 1930s Postman Pat character, he's a bloke with a driving licence.
Naturally people want stuff delivered fast and cheap and at some point that means cutting the quality of the service. Isn't the only way to stop this to complain when the service falls below the minimum acceptable? If people complained every time a courier chucked something over a fence without even ringing the doorbell then surely the courier companies would re-balance their service to be a bit more expensive and a bit less crap?
4 - Next the bike will need a service or repair and the OP will have to find a bike shop prepared to spend time doing an un-economical repair to a bike that they didn't sell. This and customers who buy parts on the web then expect the LBS to fit them, is what is killing the owner of a shop I know in Ramsbottom; he can't support his family and is looking for another job.
Maybe this is naive but why can't they just charge more to match what they would have made from supplying the part themselves? It doesn't seem like this would be hard to explain to the customer since it should not be surprising that they make some of their profit from the parts.
Cycling seems really odd in that there is often such a huge price disparity between physical shops and online ones. In other spheres is is common for the prices in real shops to be equal or even better than internet prices but for cycling the online shops are often 50% cheaper. A while ago I wanted some replacement mudguards and since I was at the LBS and was feeling charitable I asked them to order me some. I had had good luck with SKS longboards so I wanted those specifically. After a week or two of delays I asked him to cancel and bought them on the internet. They were literally half the price and were delivered to my door in a couple of days.
I don't know what markup they charge but I feel that they could have ordered them on
CRC themselves and passed them on to me at a healthy markup while still being quicker and cheaper than what they were going to charge since I wasn't asking for fitting. What the hell is up with their suppliers? Under such a bonkers system it seems like it would be a win for both buyer and shop for the buyer to bring in their own parts and have them fitted at an hourly rate that can support the shop.
There's a simple answer: find a good independent local bike shop, support it, get to know the owner and staff, take them biscuits, test-ride their bikes then buy from them. Most retailers will give 10% to 12.5% discount and will of course sell you old models even cheaper and you will get the full after-sales service and quick adjustments free of charge from then on.
LBS's can be fantastic but it depends a lot on what you have near you and even on who is currently manning the shop. When I lived in London I had Muswell Hill Bikes who are great, though it kind of depended on the owner being in. When I was first looking to buy a bike as an adult I first went to
Evans with my ID and £50 deposit for test rides. I was turned away as I only had
one form of ID and needed two. I just wanted to borrow a cheap hybrid, not a bloody Faberge egg.
I went to Muswell Hill Bikes and they didn't ask for a deposit or even ID. A couple of years later I needed to buy a chain tool there but they had run out. Since the part time mechanic wasn't in, the owner handed me their very expensive and only workshop chain tool and asked me to bring it back in a few hours! This was on the basis of having bought a £300 bicycle from them. Having that kind of relationship is fantastic but you need to be pretty lucky to live near a shop like that.
