tyres in Swindon

[Carsick]

Ok, need a new pair of tyres again.
Where do people recommend in the Swindon area? Preferably somewhere that stocks Conti's.

[gixerjonny]

Steve Lynham

Address: Kingsdown Farm Kingsdown Road, Swindon, SN25 6PB

Telephone: 01793820630

[ONFIRE]

Have ordered from FWR before then had Steve Lynham, fit them around about £10 wheel.
Get a quote first hes very competitive, or you could go to Bike Treads..

http://www.fwr.co.uk/

£149 A PAIR Continental
Road Attack

[Foo]

dont bother with 'tyre treads', biggest bunch of rude to$$ers I've ever met - in my opinion of course

[ONFIRE]

They're good at putting your tyres on wrong direction ;D ;D ;)

[furry]

dont bother with 'tyre treads', biggest bunch of rude to$$ers I've ever met - in my opinion of course

cue gav ;D

[ONFIRE]

Who's a :P ? ;) :-X

[Carsick]

Bugger, tyres are expensive round here.
In aber, I managed to get a pair of Road Attacks fitted for £147 all in. Best I can get for them here is £167 and they need to be ordered.
Bike Treads want £205 for a pair of Z6s!

I'd go to pro-tyre but I'm not convinced that the slow puncture I've got will be ok for that distance. Looks like I'll be going to Steve.

[Gav]

dont bother with 'tyre treads', biggest bunch of rude to$$ers I've ever met - in my opinion of course
Everyone is entitled to their opinions i guess....so what did we do to have such an effect on you????

[Foo]

firstly moaned like hell cause i brought 2 bikes in and 4 sets of wheels and supplied the tyres myself. (1 set of dry ytres per bike and 1 set of wets per bike)

told me I'd have to come back in the afternoon to collect, but i'd rung ahead and was told it wouldn't be a problem as they could do it whilst I waited.

the old guy was swearing at me when I explained this and told them I had to get to Cadwell before lunchtime

had me wait for over an hour for the tyres to be changed

they put the front tyres on the wrong way round then got ****ty (more swearing) with me when I pointed this out and told me I should have told them (huh) and i had to wait another 1/2 hour

and then, to add insult to injury charged me 20 quid per wheel, FFS I can get them done for a fiver per wheel at the track so it cost me 160 quid for 8 tyre changes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUCH

[Gav]

Ah i see.....well if ya will be differcult....lol

I think ya may have picked a bad day to bring your bikes in.
And the price you were charged is right, as unfortunatly we need to make money some how and if were not selling the tyres were else are we meant to get it....

[desmojen]

Ah i see.....well if ya will be differcult....lol

I think ya may have picked a bad day to bring your bikes in.
And the price you were charged is right, as unfortunatly we need to make money some how and if were not selling the tyres were else are we meant to get it....


Whilst I totally accept that you need to make money etc, £20 to fit a loose tyre is verging on ridiculous. I mean, it takes ten minutes ffs!
One really good way of making money is customer satisfaction. You see the trick is this, happy customers come back, and they pay you money again and again and again. Unhappy customers do not, and they also do not recommend you to their friends.
Swearing, bitching, keeping people waiting hours etc does not make for happy customers.
This sort of thing is the very reason that I go out of my way to buy tyres from a guy back home (Mark at Holbeach Tyres) He's never let us down and always does us a decent deal, more than can be said for most places down here it seems. :-/

Nothing personal Gav, just my observations.

Jen.

[Gav]

Fair comment Desmojen...and point taken

We do have a very good reputation and a very large return customer base....and offer a very good service 99.9% of the time........!!!!!!

However we all have days when it just does not go according to plan.
£20 per wheel is corrext if we are removing the wheel from the bike, £10 labour to remove/re-fit the wheel....
£10 to fit the tyre(the one we didnt sell so we didnt make any money from remember!!!!!!)
Now i do realise this may seem very off to some of you, and thats upto you to decide...but this is the thing, if we fitted New tyres that the customer supplied themself for free we wouldnt make any money and the shop would close....becuase as with everthing now adays tyres can be bought on the net very cheap, and because the comapnys selling them are buying such a large amount from the suppliers they are getting a huge discount and can sell them alot cheaper than we can buy them for....but can you be sure the tre you recive has not sat on a shelf for the past year????

As for the keeping people waiting, we operate a turn up and wait your turn policy and when we are busy this can mean long waits for some jobs, as we try our best to turn the work around as quick as possible, but to do this we have to ensure we are doing the jobs in the order that will best satisfy the majority of customers.........

Gav

[Gav]

firstly moaned like hell cause i brought 2 bikes in and 4 sets of wheels and supplied the tyres myself. (1 set of dry ytres per bike and 1 set of wets per bike)

told me I'd have to come back in the afternoon to collect, but i'd rung ahead and was told it wouldn't be a problem as they could do it whilst I waited.

the old guy was swearing at me when I explained this and told them I had to get to Cadwell before lunchtime

had me wait for over an hour for the tyres to be changed

they put the front tyres on the wrong way round then got ****ty (more swearing) with me when I pointed this out and told me I should have told them (huh) and i had to wait another 1/2 hour

and then, to add insult to injury charged me 20 quid per wheel, FFS I can get them done for a fiver per wheel at the track so it cost me 160 quid for 8 tyre changes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUCH



Oh and this isnt meant as a dig or to get at you, but this is where our problem is...

You would have known you had to be at cadwell for that afternoon....so why on earth leave it till the last possible minute to get it done puttin pressure on people that could have been avoided by some forward planning...
Like i said really not meant as a dig so please dont take offence to it...Gav

[R1chie]

firstly moaned like hell cause i brought 2 bikes in and 4 sets of wheels and supplied the tyres myself. (1 set of dry ytres per bike and 1 set of wets per bike)

told me I'd have to come back in the afternoon to collect, but i'd rung ahead and was told it wouldn't be a problem as they could do it whilst I waited.

the old guy was swearing at me when I explained this and told them I had to get to Cadwell before lunchtime

had me wait for over an hour for the tyres to be changed

they put the front tyres on the wrong way round then got ****ty (more swearing) with me when I pointed this out and told me I should have told them (huh) and i had to wait another 1/2 hour

and then, to add insult to injury charged me 20 quid per wheel, FFS I can get them done for a fiver per wheel at the track so it cost me 160 quid for 8 tyre changes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUCH



Oh and this isnt meant as a dig or to get at you, but this is where our problem is...

You would have known you had to be at cadwell for that afternoon....so why on earth leave it till the last possible minute to get it done puttin pressure on people that could have been avoided by some forward planning...
Like i said really not meant as a dig so please dont take offence to it...Gav


Gav.........Foo isn't the most organised person I know, but that doesn't really matter. She did ring ahead afterall to make sure bike treads could do the job.

To get sworn at repeatedly, especially after pointing out a glaring error for which, lets face it is a fairly simple task, is out of order in my book.

I've got no agenda with Bike Treads. I've never used them so I can't truly comment. I know plenty of people who have used them over the years and have had no problems. But the reason I haven't used them is because of the numerous bad reports I've been told by other people, more often about customer service and to a lesser extent, workmanship. Like any other company, Bike treads will make mistakes, we're all human. But it should be big enough to take them on the chin and make amends, not abuse the customer.

Obviously that is no personal reflection on you Gav, just on the company. I'm sure you are **** hot at changing tyres. Maybe it was the trainee doing the tyres that day.....who knows?

I'm sure bike treads has a huge return customer base.........just think how much bigger it could become with a bit of customer satisfaction. Ain't rocket science.

Price wise..........well everyone has to make a living. it might seem steep but that's the company's prerogative.

Again.......this isn't a witch hunt. I don't know how long you have worked there Gav but I hope you just don't dismiss the complaints but flag them up the chain because if I've stayed away then think how many other people have done the same.

[Snowy]

I can see both sides of this argument but there is no excuse for being rude irrespective of the reason. It's easy to put a front tyre on backwards especially with a twin disc set up which is why I always stick some masking tape on the wheel rim and a big arrow marked up for the direction of rotation.

The problem I had last time was that the fitter couldn't balance the rear wheel since he didn't have the right fitting for a Beemer. Since he knew it was a BMW when the tyres were ordered ( I did order tyres from him) this was a bit dim. This wasn't Bike Treads I hasten to add! However, I think tyres today are much less needy of the balancing anyway especially the rear. I have no discernable vibration from the unbalanced rear tyre although that may just be luck. Then again, as some of you know, I ain't no boy racer anyway.

[Foo]

firstly moaned like hell cause i brought 2 bikes in and 4 sets of wheels and supplied the tyres myself. (1 set of dry ytres per bike and 1 set of wets per bike)

told me I'd have to come back in the afternoon to collect, but i'd rung ahead and was told it wouldn't be a problem as they could do it whilst I waited.

the old guy was swearing at me when I explained this and told them I had to get to Cadwell before lunchtime

had me wait for over an hour for the tyres to be changed

they put the front tyres on the wrong way round then got ****ty (more swearing) with me when I pointed this out and told me I should have told them (huh) and i had to wait another 1/2 hour

and then, to add insult to injury charged me 20 quid per wheel, FFS I can get them done for a fiver per wheel at the track so it cost me 160 quid for 8 tyre changes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OUCH



Oh and this isnt meant as a dig or to get at you, but this is where our problem is...

You would have known you had to be at cadwell for that afternoon....so why on earth leave it till the last possible minute to get it done puttin pressure on people that could have been avoided by some forward planning...
Like i said really not meant as a dig so please dont take offence to it...Gav


im sorry Gave but what has that got to do with the customer service experience I had with Bike treads? I rang ahead, explained what i needed and they said 'not a problem' if they'd explained that they were busy i'd have understood and gone elsewhere with the potential to come back to Bike Treads with further business.

£20 per wheel IS steep, and 4 of the wheels were loose (you stated in a post you have to charge for removing wheels from the bike). They said because it was a rush job that was the reason for charging the premium of £20.

please don't take this as a personal insult its an opinion on my experience when dealing with a company.

[rex_the_sprocket]

Foo - if you walked into my place with four loose wheels demanding 'service' then I would get arsey with you...........................






















cos I run a computer business ;D

[Punture_Pugh]

Just like to say in their defence that I've used Bike Treads for the last 16 years and not had too much to complain about. :)

However, the management can at times be quite surly but they're always open to questions I have.

The only time I've had cause to complain was this;
I asked my wife to take my XS1100 rear wheel to them last year to fit a new tyre. I put it in the boot and said to her to ask one of the chaps to lift it out for her.
On her arrival she asked the old boy if he could lift the wheel out of the boot of her car and was treated to the similar bitching and swearing that Foo was on the receiving end of.

Question is. Is it a woman thing with him? :-/

Price wise, I've always been quite happy with them. I'm sure you CAN get cheaper but I don't like getting my hands dirty! ;D

[Foo]

Foo - if you walked into my place with four loose wheels demanding 'service' then I would get arsey with you...........................

cos I run a computer business ;D

Rex, you'd be wearing the tyres mate :P ;)

[rex_the_sprocket]

ooooh get her......................handbags at dawn. ;)

[Stu]

In light to all the things said about Bike Treads recently I decided to see what the service was like today. New black stuff front and rear. Got there served straight away, bike into workshop within seconds (I did prebook on monday). Tyres changed front returned to me as requested as nearly new..changed to Pirelli! Once done given rec tyre pressures etc and warned about steady riding to start with etc.

All in all I'm more than happy with the servce, yeah bit more than I used to pay but only a couple of quid.