Anyone else feel guilty?

[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  )

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]

I casually know the people that own our local town bike shop

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  .  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.

[MTNRCKT]

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.

Yeah, that's a slightly more intimate relationship than I/most people have with the LBS owners. Sounds like ya'll are pretty close friends; That would make it a little more difficult, lol.

[Izzy]

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.

This is the part that gets me. I don't feel guilty at all. My lbs is always in "pushy sales mode" and any attempt at casual conversation about mtb riding or mtb gear is pointless. Which is fine, run your business however you like, but it blows my mind how so many people in business fail to see the power in building relationships. Whenever I've brought up building my own bike via parts ordered online they pretty much acted like they literally didn't even hear me and kept talking about whatever it was they were trying to sell me. just an overall bad vibe that didn't win me over a s a customer at all. I don't get it. Even if I don't purchase my bike from them, I will most likely spend a few hundred on bike related gear every year after the initial bike purchase. I swear this guy, who was the owner, honestly didn't care either way.

I realize this likely isn't the norm, it just baffles me that there are people like this run and own businesses.

[cmh]

I'd really like to support the local shops, I do really like the ones we have around here, they're great folks which are doing awesome things for the community. I'm also at a point where I can afford a little extra to go with the local option. My problem is dealing with them. They're great folks, but time and time again, I tell them I'm looking for something, and either have to follow up incessantly - or it just doesn't happen.

Case in point - I've got the Rumblefish from 2011. Great bike, but since Grace only rides MTB and I only had one bike, I have been looking for a backup bike for a couple years now. I have mentioned this, more than once, to several of the local shops. The only problem is I've got this funny requirement that I get to actually demo the bike - a proper ride on trails that I know. This appears to be an insurmountable obstacle, because to this point, I can think of one bike that I've gotten to demo, and that was even not in the brand or type that I was specifically looking for. I occasionally hear about demo days (like the Specialized demo day coming up at Nox on Monday) but peripherally, through Facebook or something like that. Nobody at any of the shops I've talked to seems very interested in finding me a bike. If I find a bike that I like, I've already got the approval for buying - (nice having a bike riding spouse!) and would be happy to go with the local shop if they showed even half an interest in selling me a bike.

Another case in point.  I picked up some tires from the local shop a couple weeks back - Conti X-King ProTections. They don't stock the RaceSport because they're light and flimsy and really race-day tires, so I asked them to check if they could get them. He wrote it down, said he'd check and get back to me. I'm still waiting for that call... a month after I had ordered and received a pair of RaceSports from an online shop in the UK. I even gave them a week or two to get back to me before I ordered online.

Yet another - I've special ordered stuff that I *knew* I could get from Amazon, prime-eligible, which means I could have it on my front porch in two days... but I decided to throw the LBS a bone. A couple weeks later, I get a call asking me if I was going to pick the parts up. Well, sure, if I had been told that they were in. Seems like communication is a real tough thing.

So yeah, I understand the plight of the LBS - and I still highly recommend several shops in the area. But come on, so many basic things that I've given them chances on time and again, and they keep screwing it up. Since I don't need them for service, the only business they're going to get from me is sales, and if they keep making that so difficult, what's left?

But ultimately, when I ordered the fatbike online because I wanted to check this fad out without making the 2x price bump to a comparable name-brand bike, I did still feel kinda guilty for riding around on a Motobecane, which I'm fairly certain is the French word for "didn't buy this at a bike shop". But it still didn't stop me, and as time goes by, it's bothering me less and less.