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Buying a bike on Amazon?

Old 11-25-19, 07:34 PM
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Blowup207
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Buying a bike on Amazon?

Anybody ever buy a complete bike on Amazon? My local bike shop does not have specifically what I’m looking for, and I can’t find it in my size and color preference at online dealers. Just to be clear, I’m not looking to buy some cheap low quality bike, but a higher end name brand. What’s your experience with Amazon? Thank you.
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Old 11-25-19, 08:29 PM
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ChesterCounty
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I'll confess to buying a carbon ultegra road bike from Amazon. I know this likely is not a popular decision and trust me a really really wanted to support the LBS, one specifically but they couldn't come close to the price with competing manufacturers.

As for the Amazon process it was pretty clean. Bike delivered the next day from order. Even extended 18 months interest free. Really hard to beat. Fingers crossed though that no issues outside return window as I know I'm looking at no support at all. This is probably the big rub buying from Amazon. You get nothing with it. Luckily I fancy myself fairly handy wrenching so short of some catastrophic issue I figure I'll get it worked out.

Some Amazon bikes do have free returns, some dont list it so and I suspect they may give you grief if you try and return. Just be very clear on what your expectations are. You likely gain cost advantage but your giving up support post sale for sure. This one still troubles me still but dam the price was impossible to pass on.

Good luck and good riding.
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Old 11-26-19, 08:23 PM
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Senrab62 
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I have purchased multiple bikes from Amazon including the first bike I bought that got me back into cycling (heavy hi ten POS single speed) and have had good luck. Mainly bikes for the girlfriends kids or friends.

If you are decently handy, know what size, and know what you want it's painless really
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Old 11-29-19, 09:35 PM
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I wouldn't want to buy a random bike I haven't test ridden unless I am super confident in the geometry and how it will ride. Plus I would rather not support Billionaire Jeff Bezos.

However I am curious what you are looking for that is high end from Amazon. All the bikes I have seen on Amazon generally come in with problems, one had a fork that was crushed in the box (the box was undamaged) others have had similar damage or missing parts or are just poorly made. However maybe things have changed a little at least with bike quality, the way they treat employees and ruined local business hasn't.

As ChesterCounty said you lose out on support and support can be quite handy. As someone who is the warranty manager at a bike shop and also deals with a lot of customers those who don't have support screw themselves and end up spending more when they could have actually had warranty take care of it.

We had one customer recently who came in took all of our advice and time and then bought the bike online from a curtain and duvet seller on eBay. They had a very expensive issue that normally would have been covered under warranty and been really easy to resolve. Now they had to shell out big money to replace something and made us like this customer a lot less. At this point they didn't save much and really hurt themselves trying to be cheap.
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Old 12-12-19, 05:55 AM
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Sorry, I wouldn’t buy a bike from Amazon on a bet! Bike part okay but not complete bikes. Just my $.02 cents.
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