Really horrible BSO's - why do people buy them?

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gbb

Legendary Member
Location
Peterborough
And yet....
Former colleague brought a Toys R Us 'racer' a few years back, £50, half the normal price.
TBF he rode it a fair bit to work and it did ok, despite having tyres made from rubber about 6mm thick. It was never a looker, it wasn't ever going to compete in any way with a budget road bike from any leading manufacturer but even so...it fulfilled his needs for quite a while.
 

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
In the end I guess you can break it down to...
Some people are stupid and won't be told.
Some people are stupid enough not to realise a sub £100 BSO Is usually going to be carp.
...

I think many are just optimistic.
 

mgs315

Senior Member
I remember as an 18 year old being left behind on what I thought was a substantial hill on my dad’s old BSO when cycling to the local pub for a few shifts. I thought I was unfit until I tried a mates BSO at Centre Parcs recently (I myself didn’t have my posh carbon with me, still an 11.5kg Triban) but fark me that suspension made it twice as hard to pedal as even the most basic non-BSO road bike.

I laugh when I reach that apparent hill I hated as an 18-year-old now that I’m 30 but know a bit about bikes. I’d call it a false flat these days.
 
It was a dual suspension Raleigh bike that made me find this forum originally...

I had been riding just to the train station each day for work on an old carrera mtb with front suspension (bought for £15 of a gang of kids) and the wheel basically fell apart, the seatpost was always stuck and was heavy... It broke....

So, I borrowed the Raleigh from my now brother-in-law, and I just couldn't believe how shite it was... It was like riding a bike with a pogo stick attached to each wheel........... And I reckon it wasn't as bad as the Dunlop ones....

So I searched the Internet, found here and asked about a few of the bikes I had found - I ended up getting a dawes discovery 601 which I was (and am) very happy with - all parts were replaced as they wore out and I've done over 25k miles on it... This year the second set of wheels disintegrated through wear and it sits in my back garden as I've decided that a new secondhand bike is cheaper than new wheel. That and I'm using my sons giant defy 5 for commuting and my own road-bike for weekend rides..

One thing I detest on these bikes is the plastic brake levers....
 

Rickshaw Phil

Overconfidentii Vulgaris
Moderator
When I first started to cycle commute I didn't want to leave my Raleigh chained to railings so bought a cheap Apollo which I reasoned I wouldn't really care about if it got stolen. That lasted five years then a lot of parts wore out at the same time. Browsing my local Halfords for the bits needed to repair it I found I'd need to spend a good £80 or there was this on offer at £60:
DSC00091.JPG


At the time it seemed like a no-brainer (yes, I know now!) and I was stubborn enough to ride it round for another five years until it wore out and was replaced by the current knockabout bike (far worse quality components when new but a much better ride).

It was really awful and looking back I'm amazed at some of the rides I did on it. I even went over the Long Mynd a few times - one trip in particular sticking in the mind as it took five hours to cover about 30 miles.:wacko:

Edit to add the point: I did think that I was getting a bargain at the time and not having tried it before thought that suspension was a nice idea and that I'd like to give it a go. I suspect most people buying these heaps are falling into the same trap.
 
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fossyant

Ride It Like You Stole It!
Location
South Manchester
Any cheap bike is ruined by adding 'suspension'.

There is a reason a Fox or Rock Shox decent fork is around £400 upwards. Rear air cans are about £250 upwards.

Should have gone to Decathlon
 

Rickshaw Phil

Overconfidentii Vulgaris
Moderator
Any cheap bike is ruined by adding 'suspension'.

There is a reason a Fox or Rock Shox decent fork is around £400 upwards. Rear air cans are about £250 upwards.

Should have gone to Decathlon
Well, yes. I know now. This is quite a few years ago and I'd never heard of Decathlon then (if they'd even opened their Wednesbury store at the time).

Halfords is walking distance hence ending up there.
 

Gixxerman

Guru
Location
Market Rasen
I can see how people can be fooled into getting one of these things instead of a proper bike. I almost did the same. For me it was largely ignorance. I was returning to cycling having last owned a bike 35-odd years previous when I was a kid. I started looking in the normal places (Halfrauds etc.). I had fallen into the full-sus camp as that is what I saw was most popular. Luckily for me, a more informed cycle mad work collegue offered me some advice. Get something decent he said else you will not enjoy riding it and it could put you off riding. He gave me a list of reputable makes and from what I wanted it for, he suggseted that a hybrid would be a better fit than a full-sus. Plus to get a decent quality full-sus it would be a lot more money. Anyway, I did a bit of searching. I was initally shocked at the prices. They were all round the £400-£500 range for a decent hybrid. I had it in my head to pay £200 tops as that is what I had in my mind was a good price for a bike. Afterall its only a bike isn't it?; It isn't that complex (I thought). In the end I went for a Trek 7.3FX at £425. I still have it and despite doing many miles on it, it is still original and the only parts I have changed are chains. So I was one of the lucky ones who got some good advice and was saved - many are not.
On the flip side. a relation recently wanted a bike to get round town on. She looked online and in catalogs. She asked me about a bike she had seen in a catalog of some sort. It was the ubiquitous budget double-bouncer at the sum of £149. My heart sank. I told her to give me the money and I'll get her a much better used bike for that money. She said why get a used bike when she could get a shiney new one for the same money? I tried to explain, but she just didn't get it. Anyway the "thing" arrived and I was asked to put it together. The front wheel was so far out of true that it would never have cleared the brakes so I didn't even bother to attempt the build. She sent it back. Good I thought, she's had a change of heart. Nope, so just got a replacement. Again it was my job to build it. This time the wheels were not that bad. Ten minutes with a spoke key got them quite true (how long they'd stay like that was anyone's guess). It had plastic brake levers. The seat was in instrument of torture. It weighed at lot. The rear gears would not go all the way into top, and would also over travel at the bottom and the chain would fall off. Index screws were adjusted and this was fixed. However, despite a lot of effort, I just could not get the indexing to work anyway near reliably. However, when I was finshed, it was at least safe to ride. I lasted less than a year, depsite light used, before the the BB fell to bits. The cost to fix that and other issues that had developed, made it uneconomical to repair, so it became another destined to landfill.
 
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Gravity Aided

Legendary Member
Location
Land of Lincoln
Online shopping may well be a component, but the retailers like Wal Mart and the other big box stores prey on the lack of acumen among the general public to sell them shiite. And the fact is, with retail being so large and anonymous these days, who cares?
I sure did, when my name was on the door, in the photo industry, I can tell you that. The fact is that when people buy things from retailers they have no connection with, some awful things can happen. The growth of online retailing is nourished in the manure spread by irresponsible retailing.
 
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