I've ordered from Bike 24 as well and had the same experience. They were also good at responding to email questions.

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No coasting in running and no crying in baseball

I live in Germany and order more or less everything triathlon related from Wiggle. It is normally free shipping or something like €5 for next day from the UK to Germany.

If I am not sure about colour / size etc. i order multiple sizes try them and return the stuff i don't want. I literally ordered 8 wetsuits a few months ago, tried them all on, wasn't sure about any, and returned them all free of charge. A week later the €2500+ was refunded no question asked.

I cannot recommend their service enough - my only grumble is that they don't stock brands i like e.g. XLAB and Specialized, which i look elsewhere for and usually end up at sigmasports.co.uk, who i would use more if they didn't charge postage.

I read reviews that these are legit sites but takes a few weeks to get your product.. how are they so cheap?

I blame it on the bike part distributor cabal in the US. European shops obviously get the products for a lot less money than US shops. All the stuff comes from Asia so the fact that the US$ is stronger compared to the Euro shouldn't factor in. At any rate, UK shops were still cheap when this wasn't the case.

Look at Ribble. Best prices, free shipping over $100, and good service IME.

PBK started doing this thing where that if your order exceeds a certain amount (it appears to be $250 USD) that they automatically turn over your package to an intermediary who holds the package until you pay the duty, then they will release the package for its standard 10-17 day shipping.

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Proud Representative of Slowtwitch Anti-Atheists Society.

do any of you know what the freight and duty turn out to be if you buy a bulk pack of, say, conti 4000s? can you give me a sense of the transaction?

for example, you can buy this tire for about $46 at PBK. i went to one online store in the U.S., found it for for $56, no freight, no tax, and $5 in lucky bucks toward a future purchase. so, pretty good savings at PBK, but some risk involved in a long wait + customs flagging.

what will PBK do if you wait? what kind of bulk price might i expect? what time of year? how many tires? does the bulk buy exceed $200 and if so what bad things might happen?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Merlin cycles. Ordered a SRAM Force 22 groupset, paid about 300 less than US based stores, also got a stem, handlebars and some tires, free shipping via UPS. Placed the order on Monday morning, had the stuff Wednesday afternoon. Can't really beat that.

Their shipping is too slow for me.

I ordered the product on 10/9 (Dura Ace C24 TL wheels) - and it is 19 days later and I still don't have an expected delivery date. Their website says 4-6 days to the US for tracked-shipping. I have called three times, and they asked me "What seems to be the problem?" I don't feel like they have done enough to work with their shipping company to help the package through.

Now true, it seems like customs was a significant part of the delay... but, if you look deeper into it, other shipping companies don't seem to have such issues with customs. I got my stuff from Merlin in 5 days. I get stuff in ePacket from China pretty quickly. ProBikeKit just uses a shipper that seems to have poor relations with customs.

I ordered a saddle from Chain Reaction recently; good price, fast shipping (DHL) but I ended up returning it & ordering another saddle. Cost a fortune to ship back to the UK. Just make sure you'll be happy the first time when you order from overseas. So, saddles, clothes (if you're not sure of the fit), I'd be a little leery of ordering international. P.S. ended up seeing the same saddle on sale domestically for about the same price - d'oh!

I buy from both of them, as well as Merlin and a couple of other UK based outlets. Certain products come out cheaper, especially Shimano and Mavic stuff - their Euro pricing is bizarre, and the strong dollar helps. Generally, things go smooth unless the customs fuck it up.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment

Hear more expensive (200+) PBK orders tend to get customed.

I would really like to know the relationship between PBK and the customs broker. I suspect that there is some sort of kickback scheme between the two. As other, larger, UK shippers don't use the a customs broker it can't be for standard trade/import reasons.

I live in the ME and when I'm here, the UK or France I make all of my purchases through Wiggle, CR, Merlin - have never used PBK.

Shipping internationally, I aggregate orders to pay no shipping and outside the EU I pay no VAT.

All my stuff arrives within 4-6 days, I think they're awesome

Hey Slowman

if you're interested in a really good price for the conti tires, check out bike24.com. I guess the fact that they are based in Germany allows them to offer the lowest price for contis I've see so far.
Can't tell you anything about shipping and taxes if you order from the US though as I benefit from living a neighboring country and pay no shipping for orders over 250€.

I bought some Schwalbe tires from Bike24.com last summer and was happy with the transaction.

I'd buy from them again.

I've also purchased items from Wiggle and PBK, they were all about the same experience...good, and the delivery time was not unreasonable.

jaretj

When I buy online it is almost always from bike24. Once in a while I buy from Wiggle but I find that bike24 has the better prices compared to Wiggle.

I have only discovered 3 downsides of bike24.
- Limited choice when it comes to size 13+ (UK) shoes
- No mavic products shipped outside EU (doesn't affect me)
- No Specialized products shipped outside Germany (My favorite LBS sells Spec anyway, so no problem there)

So far I have been lucky as I have never made any bad experiences with buying bike/tri stuff online. (PBK, Bike-discount.de, Bike24, Wiggle, FLO and Power2Max)

I have been using Ribble as well lately. I have an APO address at the moment and stuff from the states takes 7-10 days to get here with priority shipping. Ribbles stuff takes a bit to dispatch from their stores, but even with that being said it takes about the same amount of time to arrive as stuff from the states.

I bought a set of DA cranks and a set of DA pedals from Probikekit and received them with no issues, shipped to South Carolina.

Ribble seems to be my go-to online retailer these days also. I ordered a set of 6870 brifters on 10/20 and received them on 10/27. The trick is to keep the value under $250 to breeze through customs and avoid any import issues.

That is partly correct. You'll still have to pay GST and PST (if applicable) and a brokerage fee if it comes through Canada Posts, unless you are lucky and get a lazy customs officer. Unfortunately, that has never happened for me and I have always paid taxes on packages from bike retailers. It still ended being cheaper than anything in stores locally.

I've ordered from Wiggle, Chain Reaction, PBK. Wiggle is by far the best experience I've had.

My order from 10/9 came today.

So 20 days from when I placed the order on a Friday, and 17 days if we spot them the weekend since maybe nothing happened on the first weekend.

I bought a TT frame and headset from Chain Reaction and It got to the US in maybe 10 days. The headset was missing the bottom race and I called them and got a complete (2nd) headset in 5 days.

Updating this thread again...

I ordered a 2015 Orca Alpha wetsuit from Wiggle on the night of Thanksgiving (11/26/2015).. great deal and also used a $60 off coupon :)

I just received the package from DHL this afternoon (11/30/2015). Looks like it shipped from the England.. pretty impressive ! Also, no duty or custom charges.

I ordered a LOT of stuff from chain reaction cycles, ProBikeKit and ribblecycles. I'm in Canada where everything is overpriced and ribblecycles is usually the best place for groups, it's incredible, half the price year round than what it is in town... I get hit by customs every once in a while but it usually isn't much and the total usually is less than what I would still pay for in town.

Usually I wait one to two weeks. And that's about what I have to wait at the lbs because they often don't have the parts in store...

Bike24 are great, but seem a touch slow, to me. I've waited upwards of a month from them before.

Counterpoint: I ordered a set of C24's on saturday from one of the UK retailers and tracking has them arriving tomorrow with their free shipping option.