Originally Posted by
mrnedburns
We bought a Huffy EZ Build Rock It (model 51808) at Walmart, pre-assembled at the store by the 'experts'. Before her first ride, the handle bars popped off. I figured out the mechanism and re-attached. During the 3rd or 4th ride, the bottom bracket failed, components fell out, chain fell off,
Not too surprising. You get what you pay for, if you’re lucky.
My own recent Wal-Mart bike story:
An older guy that I see fairly regularly on a MUP recently bought a Schwinn from Wal-Mart. I have reason to think he could not easily afford better, so I kept the LBS bikes are better lecture to myself.
It seemed to be a nice enough bike for the money, but one of the features he showed me was that the front wheel stopped automatically when he lifts the front wheel off the ground.
It didn’t take me too long to see that the Wal-Mart assembler had left the cam lever off the skewer. That allowed the axle freedom (when elevated off the pavement) to drop onto the lawyer lip, which resulted on the brake pads touching the tire.
I let him know that this was not at all safe, and he needed to return the bike for repair right away.
Next time I saw him, it was fixed. He said they didn’t charge him anything. I asked him if they apologized for their mistake, and he said no.