I bought all the necessary HS removal and installation tools after a teenage employee of an LBS removed my crown race with a center punch. That sort of thing doesn't happen at shops whose owners at on this list, but most of us are not fortunate enough to live near those shops.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX
Doug Van Cleve <dvancleve@gmail.com> wrote: No offense bike shop dudes (and dudettes ;^),
But I am the only one with carte blanche to mess up my bikes through oversight, inattention etc. In Lou's example I would also insist that the shop fix their mistake. I can mess things up just fine by myself. The few times I take my stuff into a shop it is because I thought I might mess things up and they are the professionals. My most recent example was getting a Nuovo Record crown race removed from a Vitus 979 fork. I took to to a "good" local shop and they mutilated the crown race in the process of removing it. They didn't charge me, and I regret not making a bigger deal of it, but I won't ever take anything back there for service and I generally avoid the shop (wasn't a big customer anyway). I understand Grant's point, after all we are all imperfect, but high end shops should be treating expensive/rare frames with kid gloves IMHO.
Just my 2ยข,
Doug Van Cleve Chandler, AZ
On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 10:21:02 EDT, loudeeter@aol.com wrote:
> The "one scratch" rule notwithstanding, I don't know where the line is drawn
> for bike shops. An extreme was related to me by a local rider here in
> Orlando. He had sent a Gios Professional for paint and had used the local bike shop
> to handle the transaction. The bike arrived back from the painter fine. He
> asked the shop to install the headset. They didn't "face" the headtube first
> (or so he says) and the result was a large 1/4 inch chip in the paint on the
> headtube-headset junction. His argument was that a professional shop should
> have known that they needed to remove the paint from the edges of the headtube by
> faciing prior to installing a headset. He insisted that they return the
> bike to the painter for a COMPLETE repaint. Apparently the shop complied. I've
> often wondered about how a shop can stay in business if all customers are like
> that. Lou Deeter, Orlando FL