Rich wrote:
NYC XYZ wrote:

Whatever happened to the friendly neighborhood bike dealer?

Maybe he went out of business talking to people that weren't buying stuff.


I contacted Peter Stull, "The Bicycleman," and though I found him
friendly at first, after a long ten or thirteen-minute telephone
conversation he hangs up on me 'cause a customer suddenly walked in the
door.

How much of his time did you expect? He's in business, and his first
priority should be the people that made the effort to get to his store.
He sounds friendly enough to me.

The converstion in a retail place should in ALL cases be ended by the
'customer', not the employee. A bike shop is supposed to be the expert,
the person that listens and then, perhaps, sells. Sometimes it IS a
chat room, and that's how you grow your biz. If a person is comfy just
talking, then he will be comfy later giving you money. Pretty simple.
NOTHING is so important in a toy store, that the employee shuts a
person down, in order to talk to another, even if they have a $20 bill
stuck in their nose, waiting to buy. The surly attitude displayed by
some in this thread is WHY many bike shops go under. They commit
suicide, they don't go outta biz.


So I get in touch with another dealer, Northeast Recumbents. E-mailed,
phoned, left messages...nothing. Finally got through to him last
weekend, set up a look-see tomorrow. But there's rain in the forecast,
and now this dealer is incommunicado.

WTF?!

They're running a business, not a chat room.

Are my expectations out of order?

I think so.

Rich