Buying a bike in Belfast

belfastgirl23

anyone had good experiences in buying a new bike in Belfast? Ideally looking for proper sales advice (not just trying to get you to buy the most expensive thing they can), and some after sales service. I'm especially thinking about the Bike Dock, McConvey's and Life Cycles at the minute since I can get a discount at all of them.


Oh and if any short women have found particularly comfortable bikes I'd love to hear about it....

Sigur_2

How much are you looking to spend?

A family friend owns;

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/

Its bicycles are quite expensive though but it has a huge range, you can go in and talk to trained and knowledgeable sales staff. The owner lives for bikes, what he doesn't know about bikes isn't worth knowing.

belfastgirl23

Cheers for this Sigur - will have a proper look at the site tomorrow and maybe take a run up...

miserly_mum

Sigur wrote: »

How much are you looking to spend?

A family friend owns;

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/

Its bicycles are quite expensive though but it has a huge range, you can go in and talk to trained and knowledgeable sales staff. The owner lives for bikes, what he doesn't know about bikes isn't worth knowing.

My OH is a supervisor in Chain Reaction and they aren't that expensive but it really depends what you are looking for?

You can get specialist bikes costing thousands or bog standards which aren't anymore expensive than anywhere else.

They can "tweak" a standard bike to your own specifications (which might suit you as you say you are quite short) and will stand by their goods 100%.

fredy34

chain reaction cycles are great. very helpful.
real cycles in carryduff also very good (mostly high end stuff)

biffo

Don't buy a bike from Halfords. they're cheap but i've found the customer service completely woeful. i've had to get the bike brought in to be fixed 5 times in the last year due to problems with it and each time I've been cursing myself from having bought it from them. I've since bought a new bike from McConveys and found them friendly and helpful

RooBee

My OH uses McConveys to buy from and to service/repair his bike. He has had Giant mountain bikes for years and gets good mileage out of them for the money. I have a ladies Giant as well...it doesn't get as much use as it should but it is fine for me though and I'm not exactly tall.

Depends what you want the bike for really as to which type to go for but Giant is a fairly good quality brand at a middle of the road kind of price, IMO.

marcais

I've used both McConveys and Bike Dock in the past and would have no hesitation in recommending either.

It might be worth looking into getting your work to sign up to the cycle to work scheme. You can get more details here: http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/.

Basically you pay for the bike over the course of a year through a salary sacrifice which ends up saving you somewhere in the region of 40% off the cost of the bike.

Our place does it with Bike Dock and I've bought bikes for myself and OH through it over the past couple of years.

belfastgirl23

marcais wrote: »

I've used both McConveys and Bike Dock in the past and would have no hesitation in recommending either.

It might be worth looking into getting your work to sign up to the cycle to work scheme. You can get more details here: http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/.

Basically you pay for the bike over the course of a year through a salary sacrifice which ends up saving you somewhere in the region of 40% off the cost of the bike.

Our place does it with Bike Dock and I've bought bikes for myself and OH through it over the past couple of years.

Thanks marcais, we do have this at work which is pretty much why I was thinking it would be cheaper to buy new than to upgrade the old. Gonna try the 3 retailers signed up to the scheme this weekend...good to have the recommendation.

eoghan

Two friends warned me against going to McConveys. However, as I was able to leave my bike there and walk home, I took the risk. Big mistake.

Some minor and easily rectified mistakes were made by McConveys when fitting some new gear to my bike. I asked for these mistakes to be adjusted and was subjected to a quite remarkable string of insults from one of the boys on the fitting floor and his manager.

It was agreed that the shop's owner would call to resolve the situation. This never happened.

Go to Bike Dock.

drew2k9

i would highly recommend mcconveys contrary to the above post, i have never had a problem with this over the years, and have always found them to be very good servicing and parts wise, as well as having the know how to sell you what you are after!

maybe the other eoghan caught them on a bad day, but i would go out of my way to use them compared to the likes of bike it etc.