« Evans odyssey

I thought about sharing an ‘interesting’ adventure I had with Evans (Clapham store) last week.

I went there to upgrade my gearset (an old noisy Sora) for a 105. As a decent dude at Evans (London Bridge) suggested, I went to their other shop (Clapham) beforehand to get the bike assessed. 
A kid barely looked at the bike and started clicking on the website ‘blindly’, after a lot of faffing he got me a 105 gearset + 105 pedals. He also booked me in for a 20/30 min service. For 25£. I was a bit surprised, but I thought, well, whatever, that’s a good discount, no way I’ll pay more than 25£ now on the service (I knew they needed a golden service which is 100+)

I called the day before the appointment, as I know they are generally bad at service, a lady confirms that all my stuff arrived, it’s all there, everyone ready and looking forward to fiddle with my bike.

I arrive there at 8~ AM, that’s Friday morning. A dude with a neck injury struggles (and fails) to find my items, he said he will call me later to confirm it’s all good. I talk also to the workshop dude (a good guy) and I say a few times that I really need my bike done by Saturday COP, given that I do nursery rides Mon to Wed.

At about 12 they call me and say they finally found the gearset, the workshop dude is worried about the front derailleur, I said, don’t worry about it, leave it at the highest gear and I’ll be fine, I do need the bike, he says ok, but I’ll finish it on Saturday. I say fine, as soon as it’s going to be ready by COP!

Saturday I get another call, he says that he managed to sort out the front derailleur but at this point, there’s another problem I did order 11 gears and the back wheel doesn’t fit: what why did you figure that out only now?

At this point, the bike is all done but he can’t get on the wheel. He tells me to go to the shop to discuss, so I go, I am starting to lose my patience but I think that worst case, they can give me a test bike for Monday

I drive there, I park, I get in, the guy shows me some Shimano wheels that don’t look too bad and are priced ok, I say, ok do you have any wheels in the shop? No, we don’t. 
I say, hey even something more expensive, at this point, I really don’t care, get this bike done man.

No way, so they search on closest shops, I take the tube and a bus, I go to St Pauls shop, I take a pair of wheels, back to Clapham.

At this point is like 3/4 PM and I get the bike. It looks great, but noway, they forgot to put the new pedals.

I spend another 20 minutes at the till with the office manager trying to find the pedals, I did see them, dude, the guy with the stiff neck showed them to me just on Friday morning.

He finds a pair, probably not my order, whatever, I take them home with a large discount (~100£ off).

I just wish my local shop wasn’t so cheeky asking for so much money for the parts (I could have bought them on wiggle TBF) but also for the service (they were on 150£ I think)

I also think I’ll never go to Evans anymore, especially in Clapham (they score 1~ star on google reviews)

Side note: that gear is great and the breaks are amazing as well, I really went faster this morning, I’ll put the pedals on tonight…