Originally Posted by
Koyote
At this point, my LBS is perfectly fine with customers bringing in parts they source themselves for installation. The shop can’t get certain things from the normal wholesalers, even though the parts may be available from etailers. I’ve done this with a couple parts, at their suggestion, and not paid any kind of surcharge - but then, I have a very good long-standing relationship with them.
We do customer part installations all of the time. Surprisingly folks often pay the same price online as we charge in the shop for the same part, sometimes they even pay more actually. I think for quite a while people got conditioned to think everything is cheaper on line but many bike shops have caught up now and charge the same price as major online retailers for parts. For full bike custom builds we discount parts further.