A LBS anology

Triathlon Forum
1

Since the subject of a bike purchase being not just about the bike but it being about the relationship between purchaser and shop I thought that I would present an anology.

I was married last year. Through the marriage I dealt with a lot of high end retailers. I pruchased my engangement ring at Tiffanys. I know that I would pay more for the stupid box but I was sure that I was not buying a piece of crap. I know that I could have purchased the “same” ring in the diamond district for half the price, but I don’t know enough about diamonds to know what I was getting, plus I have seen some of the “same” rings on other people… I can assure you that I could easily pick out a fake… Now I also purchased my wedding bands through tiffanys becuase of a friend who worked there could get me set up…

Now in the several years since my first purchase I have found that in any tiffanys in the world you can walk in and have them clean and polish your jewelry whether you bought a 50 dollar silver pendant to the bling bling. They will take it polish it clean it etc. They will also resize your ring as many times as you need forever… no charge. Anything they charge for is extremely reasonable ie. engraving etc.

Now… the bad player…

One of our wedding gifts amazingly enough was a matching set of Cartier watches. Being a self professed lover of all thigns timex this was a big step up. Well 2 days after the wedding I went to the Cartier store at the Stanford shoppign center in Cali. Now I was dressed in jeans and not some billion dollar suit but this woman was giving all this attitude and was giving me a hard time because I wanted the size of my watch to be adjusted. We left soon after I expressed my desire to beat the crap out of her to my newlywed wife. Well fast foward a year my watch stops while on vacation visiting my parents. So I go to the Cartier store in the mall nearby. My plane is leaving the next day so I ask to have the battery fixed and they tell me it would take 3 days and there is no way they can do it… I then ask if they would be willing to ship it to my house… she says “I’m sorry we don’t do that” so I say Oh but you have a store in NY… whe replys “Oh I thought that you were from Japan” this kind of annoys me cause she is not extending herself to try to help me right off the bat… but the kicker comes here. OK We can do that … so I fill out some paper work and she says it is going to cost 350 dollars!!! They will only replace the battery if they do a full service, it will take 2 weeks… and may cost more. When I mention that this is a year and a half old she asks me for my receipt for the watch… I reply with who the hell brings that kind of thing on vacation. She also mentions that it is impossible for anyone else to replace this battery…

Well after suppressing my desire to strangle this woman I go to the jeweler and have the battery replaced in one hour for 22 dollars.

Now the analogy…

Bikes are expensive, many of them more expensive than the engagement ring I purchased workign as a lab tech at columbia… With things this expensive the ownership does not end with the purchase. Little things breakdown and need to be attended to. Sure a shop like Tom’s will be more expensive than ebay but you are nto just buying a bike. You are buying that last minute fix when your bike breaks down the night before a race. If your purchase does not include that you need to take your money elsewhere. When your LBS comes through its like the master card commercial… Priceless…

I work 12 - 16 hour days in the hospital 5 to 6 days a week as med student, I don’t have the time to drive to the city to drop off a watch and I don’t have 350 dollars of loan money to waste on a 5 dollar watch battery.

Customer service does not matter that much when you are buying smething cheap but when you are talking about thousands of dollars you better hope that there is going to be someone to help you when things go wrong. Why Save 100 dollars on a bike if you have to spend an extra 500 dollars over the life of the bike? The other lesson is that just because someone has a big name… it doesn’t mean sh*t I would buy a bike from Tom in a heart beat because of how often I hear about him from his customers, I would buy a bike from Paul Levine in a second becuase of my experience with working with him (he is a bike fitter and a custom frame builder)

Who you buy from can be worth more than how much you spent… think about it

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Congratulations on getting married! I hope you remember that the only person your medical training may be harder on than yourself is the recipient of that ring you wrote about. I admire people that still have the wherewithall to go to medical school. It’s tough in the real medical world…a group of cardiovascular surgeons, whose collective pay dropped about 70% the past ten years…yes, you read that correctly, just quit running their own practice and are now working for the hospital. The last straw was malpractice insurance going through the roof…it was going to cost nearly ONE MILLION DOLLARS to insure six of them for a year. This is a group that put together a nearly 20 year record of having one of the best risk-adjusted set of results in heart surgery in the USA. Obviously, cardiovascular surgery isn’t something that is loved by either the Payor insurance companies, nor the malpractice insurance companies.

I hope you find some niche that you really enjoy. Selfishly, I hope it is athletically related, there are too few athletically-minded doctors in my opinion. I also hope you can keep in mind your Tiffany’s experience as you set up a practice somewhere. It will be really difficult to do this as you deal with the constant frustrations of paperwork-requiring and non-paying insurance companies, non-paying patients, and increasing premiums from the malpractice insurance companies. I hope you can pull it off, it isn’t getting easier by any measure. If you do, you’ll have people beating a path to your door. Hopefully, some of them will be willing to pay in cash…I THINK athletes are more willing than most people to spend money on their health…too many non-athletes seem to think their health is a given, and should be warranted and therefore cost them nothing…not even the cost of fore-going ice cream every night.

Taku’s Medical and Bicycle Shop Emporium…it’s a thought you should at least consider.

Best wishes!

3

The best cutomer service I have received is from L.L. Bean. I once returned an 8 year old Maine Warden Parka that started to leak like a seive in the rain. I had expected it to last 10 years when I bought it, so I returned it. In the mean time I had gained a few pounds. For only the difference in cost, based on the 8 year old price, (not the current price), they exchanged my coat, and did not charge me shipping. If they only sold aerobars…

I find that the best retailers are the ones that have figured out that their job is not to sell me a widget, but to sell me every widget and widget accesory I will ever buy in my life. It’s not just relationship the store has with it’s customers, it’s the culture the store develops with it’s employees. When you find a good store, tell everybody. We all tend to complain about the bad ones, but don’t praise the good ones enough.

Paul

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First off, Taku, congratulations on your wedding. That’s great news.

I agree with you 100% about everything you mentioned in your post. I bought an engagement ring at Tiffany’s once also and it was an excellent experience. The diamond itself was utterly incredible.

They have demonstrated consistently excellent customer service.

And finally, thank you for the nice card you sent me recently.