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Dear Halfords
i work in a bike shop, i am the mechanic, a good one, trained and qualified. what i would like to ask is:- can you as a brand please stop selling such poor quality rubbish such as your own apollo brand, it's horrendously poor quality, badly made, poorly assembled mass produced rubbish in the shape of a bike with some of the worst designed and made parts i have ever come across in my 20 years in the cycle trade. what exaggerates the terrible bikes is they are put together by your untrained disinterested (in bikes) staff or given to customers to assemble themselves, either way they can not be considered safe to use by the end user, most of which are kids. you as a company should not be allowed to sell bikes, it's wrong of you to do so in this manner.
i have to put up with your customers coming in to my workplace upset because there are limits to what can be done to repair these bikes, limited by the lack of quality in the components, upset when i have to tell them to replace a part as it's dead or the parts are simply unavailable to repair. what compounds the issue is most of these customers always want to pay the least amount for anything as they already got sucked into your "50% off" promotion which we all know is a blatant sales lie, the bike was never "£400" and "now only £200" the rrp should at most be £100 and even that is a rip off for such an utter pile of scrap metal.
so please stop selling these bikes, get some actual trained staff and concentrate on selling bikes like the Boardmans after they have been checked properly by trained mechanics.
selling apollo etc bikes can only damage your reputation, upset customers, put people off cycling and cause bike mechanics across the country to hate you as a brand.
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while i know there will be some useful staff in selected shops who will do their level best to sell a better bike than the apollo brand, this week i have had the misfortune of attempting to repair some utter dross where the customers simply don't know or can't comprehend just how bad the "bikes" they have bought are. i understand people have a budget which halfords and toys r us etc cater for price wise but these bikes do nothing for the industry but make the owners hate riding and think they are being ripped off, by halfords for selling them rubbish when they finally realise it's rubbish or they feel ripped off by the local bike shop because they simply don't understand why it costs a lot to repair their bike at not far off the price they paid for it.
i have been so frustrated dealing with these customers this last few days, they are very unhappy to be told "it will cost £XXX" or "i can't repair that i have to replace that part, i realise it's only 3 months old but . . . ", but to give them bikes back that are repaired and safe is simply what i want to do but i'm limited by their budget and misunderstanding of what the "bike" actually needs to be safe.
i just wish these poor quality objects simply didn't exist.
i work in a bike shop, i am the mechanic, a good one, trained and qualified. what i would like to ask is:- can you as a brand please stop selling such poor quality rubbish such as your own apollo brand, it's horrendously poor quality, badly made, poorly assembled mass produced rubbish in the shape of a bike with some of the worst designed and made parts i have ever come across in my 20 years in the cycle trade. what exaggerates the terrible bikes is they are put together by your untrained disinterested (in bikes) staff or given to customers to assemble themselves, either way they can not be considered safe to use by the end user, most of which are kids. you as a company should not be allowed to sell bikes, it's wrong of you to do so in this manner.
i have to put up with your customers coming in to my workplace upset because there are limits to what can be done to repair these bikes, limited by the lack of quality in the components, upset when i have to tell them to replace a part as it's dead or the parts are simply unavailable to repair. what compounds the issue is most of these customers always want to pay the least amount for anything as they already got sucked into your "50% off" promotion which we all know is a blatant sales lie, the bike was never "£400" and "now only £200" the rrp should at most be £100 and even that is a rip off for such an utter pile of scrap metal.
so please stop selling these bikes, get some actual trained staff and concentrate on selling bikes like the Boardmans after they have been checked properly by trained mechanics.
selling apollo etc bikes can only damage your reputation, upset customers, put people off cycling and cause bike mechanics across the country to hate you as a brand.
---------------
while i know there will be some useful staff in selected shops who will do their level best to sell a better bike than the apollo brand, this week i have had the misfortune of attempting to repair some utter dross where the customers simply don't know or can't comprehend just how bad the "bikes" they have bought are. i understand people have a budget which halfords and toys r us etc cater for price wise but these bikes do nothing for the industry but make the owners hate riding and think they are being ripped off, by halfords for selling them rubbish when they finally realise it's rubbish or they feel ripped off by the local bike shop because they simply don't understand why it costs a lot to repair their bike at not far off the price they paid for it.
i have been so frustrated dealing with these customers this last few days, they are very unhappy to be told "it will cost £XXX" or "i can't repair that i have to replace that part, i realise it's only 3 months old but . . . ", but to give them bikes back that are repaired and safe is simply what i want to do but i'm limited by their budget and misunderstanding of what the "bike" actually needs to be safe.
i just wish these poor quality objects simply didn't exist.
