£10 to fit a spoke!!??

[unkleGsif]

My LBS charged me only for the spokes when I had a wheel built from scratch a few weeks ago.....

He also gave me 2 chainrings for my SS build, and a canti boss to repair my damaged one, and he said I can have some brake cables for gratis tomorrow as well

All I do for him is give him a shed load of food when he comes in the shop on a Saturday, which isnt even mine... so my boss is paying him for it

G

 

[jax13]

Not distracting from the fact the price charged sounds very reasonable.

But if the shop is charging a tenner including VAT, then he will be charging £8.33 net. However on his profit he will also have to pay tax, at somewhere between 20%-30%.

i'm glad someone else understands vat! £8 plus vat is £9.60. £2 of vat is what you would pay on £12 over the counter.


my opinion, if your lbs charges £10 for replacing a spoke they didn't supply & a re-true, & more importantly your very happy with the end result I don't see the issue.

a 2-3 day wait is perfectly acceptable, as others have said, what makes you think they don't have a workshop full of bigger, better paying jobs that were in before you & where the customers had the decency to buy the parts from the shop too (thus making them more money & enabling them to stay open where so many independent shops are failing & closing down.)

according to your profile, you don't live too far away from northwich. why don't you pay it a visit one day & count the empty town centre shops & see what internet sales & out of town retail parks are doing for the economy & small independent businesses, while your at it - try and find a shop in town that will do a spoke replacement & re-true for less than you just payed.

I genuinely don't see a problem with what you payed, it seems pretty fair to me.

 

[dbmtb]

you don't live too far away from northwich. why don't you pay it a visit one day & count the empty town centre shops & see what internet sales & out of town retail parks are doing for the economy & small independent businesses.

Sound of applause coming over the North Sea.

 

[Easy_Rider]

Yeah of course that's right about VAT. I was in bed typing on the phone

Good point about the tax on the profit.

 

[IWish]

I've clearly lost this one. So I'm just going to give a final thought I have for others to add onto later.

I stopped going to my LBS unless I desperately need a part because I feel they charge too much. At the same time I begrudge going to to CRC or other online stores. But I would rather go where I have better value for money than a LBS. I tried to get a FSA Platinum ISIS BB from 3 LBS and got no info from one, told I wouldn't be able to get one from another and a 3rd despite multiple calls and visits gave me no price or timescale to supply.

I don't like that so many small businesses are going out of work but I feel everyone has a right to pay what they feel is a fair price. I personally don't think LBS prices are expensive for the most part. I will give some shops credit with good prices and great service but some aren't so good.

I'm sorry if I caused offence to anyone but my opinion is my own.

People who do there own work are taking away from the LBS too.

So in essence everyone on this site is taking away from labour costs at least from there LBS. If you own or work in a bike shop you can't say you pay your own shop the full price inc VAT and TAX for any work you do. If you do it yourself after before or during work you are still taking money away from your shop.

Take from that observation what you will but I'm quite happy we got some degree of debate here without real argument or hate. It's good for the site

 

[Carge]

My LBS charged me only for the spokes when I had a wheel built from scratch a few weeks ago.....

He also gave me 2 chainrings for my SS build, and a canti boss to repair my damaged one, and he said I can have some brake cables for gratis tomorrow as well

All I do for him is give him a shed load of food when he comes in the shop on a Saturday, which isnt even mine... so my boss is paying him for it

G

This is a p*ss take, isn't it?
You get bits for free at your LBS cos you give the LBS bod free food when he comes into the shop that you work at???
Struggling with the legality of this, if it isn't a p*ss take :shock:

And to the OP - £10 I'd happily pay my LBS tenner for truing a wheel :roll:

 

[stevet1]

I'm struggling to understand how you can manage to measure a spoke to within .5mm, and what difference .5mm makes anyway - surely a 258mm would do fine.

 

[IWish]

I thought that but looking at the 2 sizes between and a tape measure and a ruler it's a .5mm...

 

[dbmtb]

People who do there own work are taking away from the LBS too.

So in essence everyone on this site is taking away from labour costs at least from there LBS. If you own or work in a bike shop you can't say you pay your own shop the full price inc VAT and TAX for any work you do. If you do it yourself after before or during work you are still taking money away from your shop.

No. People who do their own work at home or at their shop are not taking away from the LBS as this is not work that would be paid for. It's like cooking your own dinner or making your own coffee.

When you charge others for work without involving the tax office etc, you are taking away from real businesses, the state coffers and ultimately from yourself when there's no money to pay for schools and no shops to do the stuff you can't do yourself. Because this work WOULD have been done by a professional.

Would you think it was OK if someone is doing your "real" job "off the record" thereby costing your employer's industry lost earnings and ultimately leading to your redundancy as an employee?

Internet trading is an evil to be lived with that ultimately can create work when people break stuff they tried to fit themselves. So I'm OK with it. As long as it's legit.

With regard to pricing generally - that's fair game as long as it's by the book. If a shop wants to burden themselves with 3 lots of warranty responsibility and 3 times the work to make the same money you can make with a third of the responsibility/investment that's also OK. These outfits tend not to last as their overheads are so big.

It's only when you're not going by the book that you can rightly expect professionals to get in a flap.

 

[jax13]

People who do there own work are taking away from the LBS too....

ok, hang on.

I take work away from local cleaning firms because i do my own hoovering.
I take work away from the local laundrette because i own a washing machine
I take work away from the local butty van because i make my own sandwich at lunch
I take work away from a kitchen fitter because we did that ourselves
I take work away from local electricians because I fit my own lightbulbs
I take work away from landscape gardeners because I own my own lawn mower
I take work away from the local taxi firms because I can drive myself
I take work away from the local garage because I do a lot of repairs & servicing on my own cars myself
I take work away from painters & decorators because i do that myself
I take work away from dog sitters because we get family to look after the hounds when we are away

want me to carry on???


The only exception to this is that I genuinely used to take work away from my local model / hobby shop because I had an ebay store selling airfix, scalextric, hornby trains etc. I struggled to find a wholesaler that would stock me because of not having a shop front so in the end I used a toy warehouse type wholesaler instead of dealing with hornby etc. directly (which ultimately cost me more than it should of & lowered my profits). I no longer run the shop, I closed it down after 18 months for other reasons but if it had carried on building the way it did at first, it would probably be supporting me on a full time income by now & I would have been looking into opening a small high street shop of my own to work from to give me a second outlet. One thing I realised when I was chatting with my local hobby shop owner was they get a lot of window shoppers coming into the shop to see products in the flesh before they buy them online at a better price. This isn't right & a lot of people seem to be buying online at a discounted price the lbs cannot match because of their overheads then going in when they have a problem or need a job doing that they cannot do themselves. The profit margin in parts is probably not that high, but every little helps & local shops will ultimately struggle to survive as well stocked shops if they are not selling stock & just doing repairs with bargain bought parts.