I just called my LBS and asked if he had either the Fizik Arione or the San Marco Apside Triathlon. He said he had one and could order the other. I asked what his return policy was and he basically said, you buy it, it’s yours. I can understand that he can’t sell a used saddle, but how can I know it works for me unless I ride it a couple of times? Even if it’s only indoors on my trainer.
Comments?
LBS here has 30 day return policy on saddles.
My dad buys 3 or 4 saddles from performance bike, tries them out and returns the one’s he doesn’t like. Been doing it for years. I’m not sure if there is a restocking fee but if there is, It can’t be that much.
IMO, buying saddles is a crapshoot (no pun intended). They all hurt my butt, some less than others.
Just a little addition. When my dad tries a saddle, He sits on it for a couple of minutes to see if his sit bones are supported. He doesn’t ride it for 50 miles to decide if he likes it, so he is not returning a used saddle. I would say that’s the same as trying clothes on before you buy them.
jaretj
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You should have 30 days to return anything for a full refund. There shouldn’t even need to be a discussion. Nevertheless…
If I buy a Fizik Arione from performancebike.com, I can return it for any reason and get a full refund. If I buy it from my LBS, and use it, then I can’t return it? Color me confused. I can buy clothes at Filene’s, wear them, and then return them, but I can’t use a chainring and return it? Neither is saleable once it shows wear, and the clothing is more likely to show wear after one use than most bike parts, so what’s the difference?
In all my years as a sales guy, I have found that it is just good business practice to have a liberal return policy. It keeps your customers happy. Will people take advantage of it? Sure. But they are in the minority. In one somewhat messy situation, I gave a refund on a two year old receiver because the customer was being such a, well, dick. And he was wrong. The equipment worked fine, he just couldn’t wire his speakers correctly and kept tripping the amp’s overload circuit. But it was not worth the hassle of dealing with another knucklehead who would just take up my time, and my district manager’s time, until he got what he wanted. Which turned out to be some junk that wasn’t half as good as what he returned, but cost the same. (The fact that I recall this incident 7 years later is good evidence of the unnecesssary stress it inflicted upon me.)
MA has laws that state that you must offer a minimum 7 day return/refund policy(although 30 days is standard), but a lot of scummy retailers(not specifically bike shops) weasel their way around it by listing items as sale, special order, or clearance merchandise, in which case it can be exempted from the law.
The bike shop guys might tell a different story, but in electronics, and most other retail, you can send your returns/damaged goods back to the manufacturer/distributor for credit, so if a customer returns something, your only cost is the time it takes to process the return. Shipping damaged/returned goods back to your supplier is (more or less) a standard cost of doing business.
File this under “another reason I shop online.”
Well, speaking as a retailer our saddle exchange “policy” is like Middle East politics- it changes with every situation and is dependent on circumstances.
If a person wants to exchange a dog saddle for an Arione, which we can;t get enough of, we aren;t likely to be compelled to do that unless they are spending some serious coin- like $3K + or more. Then, maybe. I’ve got customers lined up to pay $159.99 for Ariones so giving them away is not only not fair to me, it isn;t fair to the guy at the counter with his gold card out saying “Why isn’t my $159.99 any good here?”
It’s tough to say. Honestly, for a “Gold Key” customer we’ll do whatever they want. For a person we don’t know we may not be inclined to simply hand them a $50 bill with our compliments. It isn’t a matter of being cliqueish or a snob or anything. It is a matter of what we can do financially. If we exchange one saddle then what is to keep every person from bringing back their saddle to turn it in for a new one.
Sometimes people forget buying equipment is not a “subscription” or a trial purchase- it is a purchase. You buy it, you own it. If you want to get rid of it do what we do: Sell it on E-bay.
{Sometimes people forget buying equipment is not a “subscription” or a trial purchase- it is a purchase. You buy it, you own it.} reply
That’s not the way many on-line retailers see it. Performance will let me try out a saddle or 2 or 10 , choose the one I like and return the rest so why would I go to my LBS with an inferior and ever-changing return policy?
{If we exchange one saddle then what is to keep every person from bringing back their saddle to turn it in for a new one.} reply
We’re talking about a 30 day or maybe even 10 day return policy, not a revolving door.
I just rap a little electrical tap around the seat rails. Ride the saddle for a few weeks and see how you like it. If you do not like it, the saddle still will appear new and able to be resold.
I would not blame an LBS for not taking back a saddle. If it is scratched on the rails, it is not new anymore. Someone mentioned cranks, I for sure would not try to return a set of cranks (unless there was a defect). There will be obvious usage of the part and reselling them as new would not go over well with customers.
Some people do not care if what they are buying is new or use (I do not), but there are others that do.
Hey Herschel34,
good observation, but I want to point out several statistics I just learned from a buyer for a big national chain- now I am paraphrasing these statistics becasue I don’t recall them exactly, so this is just the gist of it as I recall, FWIW:
Online retailers rely on a significant percentage of “incorrect” sales being delivered and never being returned. Customers intend to make the return but never follow through. If only 1 in 50 purchases results in a transaction like this the retailer benefits enormously. The assumption is that if the customer could have returned the item in person, they would have. But the logistics of havig to box it, mail it, etc. have prevented the return from happening. It is this “wall” that makes internet purchases “stickier” and more profitable for the retailer. The bigger the retailer, the more profitable. For an outfit like Amazon.com it amounts to tens of millions per year. They depend on those “incomplete returns” to maintain margin. Brick and mortar doesn;t have that as readily.
According to J.C. Penney statistics there are several million dollars of gift cards out there that will go unredeemed. That is a huge margin builder for some retailers. That is why they have become so popular among retailers. The redemption rate is only about 85%. That leaves 15% of gross slaes of gift cards on the table as pure gross profit with almost no cost of goods sold.
If I could increase my gross sales volume by a factor of five and decrease my return/exchange rate at the same time by putting our customers in a position where they had to jump through the hoops to make returns, evenif we include pre-printed return labels and forms in their purchase, then I woud exchange everything sold in 30 days without a need for explanation. I would have the money to do it.
Right now, I don’t have enough money to do it. Increase my sales volume by 5X and I do. Bottom line.
I typically am the kind of person who enjoys doing my research, and then makes a carefully considered purchase. Most of the time the sales person is just an annoyance that knows less than I do about the product I am looking to buy. Local bike shops seem to be the one place where I stray from this. No matter how much I read on this forum and others and learn about fit and aerodynamics of race wheels, I still greatly value the input of the few bikes shops I patronize. None are actually local (<1hr) but I travel to these stores for the advice and try to support them as much as I can. I constantly hear on this forum about how LBS’s are superior to mail order because of the service they give. I have found this to be particularly true with saddle purchases.
The first time I ever visited Two Wheeler Dealer (blatant plug) in Wilmington, NC. I was looking for a new seat. I talked with the salesperson, and he not only discussed the seat I was interested in intelligently, but when he found that the only one he had was already mounted on a bike on the showroom he put the bike on a trainer (frame was close to my size), adjusted the seat, and let me spin (my bike was at the hotel). When I told him I was still hesitant about the purchase, he told me to ride the seat for several hundred miles and if I didn’t like it to bring it back. I let him know I lived more than 100 miles away and it might be a while before I got back. He said the offer still stood and that my satisfaction was most important. His price was also within $5 of mail order.
I still to this day visit Two Wheeler Dealer every time I visit Wilmington, and they have been in business for at least 25 years to my knowledge so it must be working for them.
There is another large specialty store in NC ( to be left unnamed) that had the saddle my wife wanted to try. They took a totally different tack when we were shopping, and to this day I have not shopped there again. Fitting a saddle in my opinion is just as important as fitting a bicycle, it just can’t be done in an hour in a shop. That is why in my opinion good bike stores offer a return policy on saddles. It is the long-term investment and I don’t believe too many people abuse it.
Further to Tom’s point but it does come down to Customer service…
We do it, and have no probs in taking seats back (30 days) at full refund (unless it’s been hacked to pieces)…cause someone else will come in and want to try it out, and we’ll sell em the 2nd hand one to try it out, with a refund policy attached to that, hoping they’ll come back and order a new version of that…which does happen…keeping the customer happy, and the bank manager happy
As much as I have bagged on some LBS’s, I would defer to their return policy. It’s better that you have found out about it now rather than after you bought it.
Do I think it’s fair? Only reason why I would side with the LBS is that clamping a saddle would scratch up the rails, making unsaleable in new condition. Also, you can get dirt and all that crap underneath the saddle. It would be hard to sell a “new” saddle as new after it got clamped and dirty.
Idea for the LBS: a demo seat/seatpost combo. For a deposit, you can let riders try out a saddle risk-free. The you could sell it at the end of the model year. I wonder if anyone would consider it?