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Anyone else feel guilty?

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trekcarbonboy:
I stopped by my local shop where I have been buying my bikes since 1992. I just needed some new road tires and couldn't shake this guilty feeling knowing that I'm building a new bike and not giving them that business. They don't know yet but eventually we'll be out on a ride together. Feels like I'm cheating on them.
I know they can't sell me a bike as nice for the same price but it still doesn't feel right.   :-\

Molothi:
Hi trekcarbonboy
Don't feel guilty - today you're building a new bike without them... but who knowns if you won't do it with them again later ?

I was a regular customer to my local shop too, but when you want a dream to come true ... sometimes you need to find other solutions than usual ones, specificaly when it's a question of money
when you can have a better build for lower price... why hesitating? It's not an act of betrayal against your local shop... it's something they can understand
and it's also challenging for them to get you back in their shop

as I said I was a regular customer too, I previously accepted to pay a little more than what I can find on the web for a while (to expect a good and quick local support or having some easy doing sometimes)
but after a bad experience for a question of guarantee on a frame, I decided to stop spending (wasting) money in something I can get for a lower price elsewhere - I don't want to buy well know brand frames anymore because they are too expensive compared to our great Chiner frames  ;) and for me the price does not make always the difference

I know that my story is a little different than yours, but that the reason of my presence here, and why I build a great bike based a Chiner frame (my lovely FM 196  ;D )

you can feel good, don't worry for that  ;)

MTNRCKT:
I casually know the people that own our local town bike shop but they simply can't come anywhere close to getting me what I want for the price I want to pay for it. I still go in there frequently and buy drinks and power bars and some accessories occasionally and they seem to do pretty well with their service department. I guess I do feel a lil guilty but not enough to pay an extra few hundred dollars to them and still have a lesser bike. They sell mostly mid-tier Treks and Raleigh and really don't have a single bike in there that I'd want. By purchasing from them out of loyalty I would basically be saying "Your dollars are more important than my dollars"... And trust me, that's not the case. I needs them dollas!

trekcarbonboy:

--- Quote from: MTNRCKT on May 06, 2015, 03:13:50 PM ---I casually know the people that own our local town bike shop

--- End quote ---
That would make it easy but ours is definitely more than a casual relationship. Been riding with them forever (but not much lately). Been to their daughters graduation, wedding, and parties at house. I can drop my bikes off at their house which is 3 miles from mine if I don't have time to make it to the shop. I can borrow a bike anytime I need.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to loose any sleep over it but it's weird.

Carbon_Dude:
Sometimes I feel a little guilty, right up until I look at my bank account and see that I still have money in it  :P.  I have a close friend who owns a LBS and have created a good relationship with another LBS that's just a mile down the road from me.

I think both shops understand that if I am willing to put in the time to do the research, and learn all the ins and outs of building my own bike, they don't mind helping me where they can.  In the end, we are all fellow riders.  The shops know that I will still need some parts and accessories, so while I'm not a big dollar customer, I'm still a customer.

The LBS are there to cater to people who just want to buy a bike and ride it.  Those people don't want to know how or spend their time working on their bikes.  Some of them want the big name brand on their frame to show they paid lots of money for their bike.  I, on the other hand, want the most for my money and am happy to have a nameless frame.  Which really says the only thing different about my bike is the frame, all the other parts are pretty much the same as all the $5k-$10k bikes, Shimano, Fox, SRAM, Rockshox, etc so really, not that much of a difference IMO.

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