Cycle Surgery, Mayfair, London

Cyclesurgery are money grabbing conmen. The staff may be pleasant enough to deal with but that is down to individual personality. The companies policies and prices are outrageous and the standard of what they call a 'service' is very poor indeed. I purchased an Orange P7 from them and when i returned it for its free checkup (which in the documentation states will void your warranty if you dont have it done) a month later and pointed out all the things that needed tuning and sorting out....they did absolutely nothing. Brake disk still rubbed and the tracking was still out on the gears. When i pointed this out to them over the phone they fobbed me off with excuses, which judging by the other experiences on this site, is standard cyclesurgery practice.
I also find that prices in store are frequently higher than on the website. Another fact which they are quick to dismiss with some more cyclesurgery guff. Don't even get me started on their 'pricematch' promise as they will do anything to avoid it.

Opportuninst theives is how i would describe cyclesurgery in 2 words. Avoid at all costs.

I bought a £2000 Specialized enduro and this is the story of my pain in dealing with them

When I collected my Specialized Enduro from your Highbury branch on 25/3/8 at the prearranged time I was delayed as the work was unfinished and I left just as the shop was closing. So when I noticed that the front gear change was not selecting the high gear it was too late to return immediately, I had meant to contact the shop partly because there had not been a fault with this before I brought it in and to some degree I had felt that changing the front and rear gear cable had been unnecessary additional work.

When I initially tried to adjust the cable resulted I noticed that the cable had been mis-routed and the clip (under the Allen bolt) was incorrectly placed, assuming this was the problem I attempted to fix it myself as returning to the shop would have been far more of an inconvenience. Struggling to fix it I damaged the cable and had to buy another one (for the reasons I was informed of later it was not possible to fix it).

When I was routing the new cable I noticed that the RH chain stay was cracked, I contacted the Camden branch where I had purchased the bike and discovered that this was a know issue with this model. They fitted a replacement part at the cost of labour in a very short time which I am of course very grateful for. While discussing the issue I learned that there had actually been a product recall by the manufacturer to remedy this problem, I pointed out at the time that my details were recorded on your system but I had not been notified of this potentially dangerous problem.

When I took to bike to the Camden branch I asked if the front mech cable could be fixed at the same time, but when I collected it the mechanic said that he was unable to fix it and recommended I return to the Highbury branch and get the problem remedied there. When I began to explain the problem th4e shop manager was dismissive of my concern that the cracked frame was obviously apparent when working on the front gear cable but had been missed by their mechanic. But he agreed to remedy the problem with the front mech immediately.

I waited for approximately 1 ½ hours at the shop but was finally told that problem was due to the fact that they had fitted the wrong bottom bracket (at the same time as the other repairs) and I would need to return when the correct part was available. The mechanic defended the fact that he had not noticed the cracked frame by saying that examinations were only carried out as a part of a service, I attach a photograph to show how apparent the crack was. When I got home I noticed that the new chain stay had suffered some amount of chipped paint while in the shop at Highbury (I had looked carefully when collecting it at Camden and there was no damage to it) I have also attached a photograph of this damage.

Due to the amount of wasted time and disruption I have suffered, I feel the least I should request is: a refund of the labour costs for work on my bike at the Highbury branch and repair of the damage caused to the new chain stay. I would also like you to explain why I was not informed of the manufacturers recall for the potentially dangerous fault to the chain stay when you had record of my details and your view of how the mechanic missed such an obvious fault to my bike when carrying out work in that area.

The head office ignored my complaints by email and letter and did nothing, a short time later the chain snapped while I was out on Cannock Chase

I then realised how poor they actually were and gave it up as a bad debit

however a year later I decided that the frustration of my chain falling off every time i rode it deserved to be addressed and wrote this letter

I sent the enclosed letter via email and by post to your address in Procter Street last year and received no reply, I have put up with some level of discomfort and disruption since this time mainly due to the chain slipping off when back pedalling or simply pushing the bike backward.

I recently put the bike in for a service at another shop and without me explaining the problem they confirmed that it cannot be simply resolved by adjustment to the existing parts.

I am planning to have some more work carried out on the bike and wish to have this problem resolved, I am willing to allow you the opportunity to repair the bike to the standard I had paid for and I propose to fetch the bike in to your Highbury store on Thursday 4th June at approximately 4.30 pm and would expect to have the work completed before the shop closes.

The alternative is I will instruct another retailer to carry out the work and will seek to reclaim the full costs of this from you by legal means if necessary.

As I stated in my previous letter I also expect a refund on labour costs from the previous works carried out on my bike as compensation for the time and effort your negligent servicing has caused me.

of course they ignored this letter too until I phoned them the day before I had asked them to fix it …...

when they told me it would take at least 3 weeks to get the part in store I began to suspect that I would be given the run around and would be endlessly fobbed off with excuses why they could not do the work, then I decided that I could not trust them to carry out any work on my bike as they were obviously obstructive and had previously caused damage to the bike when attempting to fix it …......

SO TAKE THIS WARNING TO HEART

DO NOT TRUST THESE PEOPLE

NEVER BUY A BIKE FROM THEM

AND DON’T TRUST THEIR SERVICE ….THEY ARE NOT SURGEONS…..THEY ARE BUTCHERS

I would agree that the Cycle Surgery shops are very good, with friendly and knowledgable staff but I wanted to add a word of warning about their mail order service, which is the worst I have EVER come across, not just relating to bikes. Two other friends of mine have had problems with them and most recently I tried to buy a bike online. It turned out that they didn’t have the model in stock so they agreed to send another one instead, three seperate days were agreed for delivery and every one came and went. Phone calls were not returned and in the end I gave up and cancelled the order, deciding it would be better to buy one from a shop instead. The staff at the Kensington branch were very helpful and even fitted the lights I already owned to the bike for me but, somewhat unsurprisingly given their record, the mail order staff still charged me for the bike that they never dispatched.

A decent bike shop on the 1st floor of Selfridge’s in central London. The staff in here were friendly, knowledgeable and they helped me pick out the right bike for me. As well as having a decent stock of road and mountain bikes, they also have a great selection of peripherals - locks, lights, speedometers, clothing etc. etc.

If you buy a bike from cycle surgery, in addition to getting a 1 year warranty, you can also pop back in to any of the branches in the first 2 months for a free bicycle check-up. I thought that was a cool idea.

Highly recommended.