Koyote

Please provide evidence.

Eric F 

www.lordgun.com

Lordgun is an Italian company. Their Conti tire prices are below what I’ve been able to find from US-based sources. Same is true for quite a few other brands. I’ve bought from them multiple times, and have an order on the way now.

PeteHski

This one is about 15 years old now and doesn’t owe me anything. I rarely wear a watch these days as I wear a fitness tracker on my other wrist. I find those usually die within 3 years, but don’t cost much and the tech is improving quite fast.

Koyote

That's not evidence of price fixing -- which would occur if major tire manufacturers colluded in order to restrict competition and set prices. I can think of several reasons why bike tires (some bike tires, anyway) might cost less in Europe than in the U.S., and none of them involve collusion. Also bear in mind that any form of price fixing is more challenging when the products are heterogeneous, like bike tires. It's easier for large firms to rig prices for homogeneous (standardized) products like, say, 2% milk or agricultural commodities, and more difficult to do it for differentiated products like bike tires, again for a variety of reasons.

Eric F 

I wasn’t intending to prove anything. I was just offering an example of a non-US based company that seems to have more pricing flexibility than we see from US-based sellers. There are many examples - across many different industries - where manufacturers mandate that their retailers sell at manufacturer-determined pricing. I have run into it a few times with other sporting goods products.

Koyote

Yeah, that's resale price maintenance. It's illegal in some jurisdictions, but in the US it is not illegal per se -- rather, it is subject to the "rule of reason," which was the Supreme Court's way of saying (in a Sherman Act case from about 100 years ago) that it's allowable if it doesn't, on net, unreasonably reduce competition. With the internet, resale price maintenance is pretty tough for manufacturers to enforce, since we can shop for the same goods from countries that don't allow the practice. But I don't think that the big bike tire mfrs are engaging in price maintenance here in the US, since it's easy to find different prices for the same tires.

Regarding the lower prices on some tires from European sellers: I used to buy tires from the UK-based online seller Probikekit -- plenty of people on bf posted about it, and this may be where I first learned of the seller. They consistently had tire prices (as well as prices for chains and plenty of other goods) well below anything available for the same tires in the US. The goods would always arrive sans packaging, and on bf there was plenty of speculation that many of the parts were "takeoffs," or they were bought up as unused stock from bike manufacturers, or what-have-you. For all I know, PBK (and Lordgun, for that matter) may just be large firms that buy in bulk directly from manufacturers and hence are able avoid a distributor's markup -- and pass on some savings to customers. Also bear in mind that European customers are paying the rather substantial VAT -- and contrary to popular belief, a sales tax (and that's what a VAT is) is, for most goods, a financial burden that is shared between the buyer and the seller -- the buyer pays more than she otherwise would have, and the seller receives less than it would in the absence of a VAT. When that same seller sends the same goods to the US, the price typically doesn't include the VAT, and that means a nice discount for a buyer in, say, California.

PeteHski

ProBIkeKit is currently in the process of shutting down. ChainReaction has also gone under, so their business model was fragile.

rekmeyata

My newer Tissot automatic is now running within 30 seconds a month, my formerly working Tissot auto that was 47 years old when it croaked forever ran within 15 seconds a month, my dads 1963 Omega auto runs within 15 seconds a month, the crazy thing is I have my grandfather's old Illinois windup pocket watch from 1918 that runs within 5 seconds a month to this day! It runs that good after grandfather fell off a bridge he was working on went into a river with the watch! I think he must had taken the watch in to have it cleaned because it's real shiny inside, no corrosion, nothing. Now I do have a Seiko auto that I rarely wear, it runs about 4 minutes slow a month. I tried to open the back of the Seiko to correct the timing but couldn't get the back to budge.

Any automatic can be made to run as good as a quartz, and sometimes better, just depends on whether or not you take the watch to a jeweler and tell them you want the time to be adjusted so it's darn near perfect, and they can do it, might take a couple of weeks to make that happen, and they will of course charge you. Some auto watches instead of having a small lever that you can adjust the timing with are now coming out with a plastic module that has the timing already set by the factory and you can't change it supposedly, but then I heard you can, but it has something to do with moving a small weight around if I remember correctly. Don't ask me about more detail about the module because I'm not a watch repair person. One of my quartz watches ran about a minute off every month, which that particular watch kept worse time then any of my autos except for that Seiko. Since I don't wear the Seiko I'm going to take a vice grip and thick cloth and clamp the case, then try opening the back again, hopefully it won't break but if does not a big deal since I don't wear it anyway.

mstateglfr 

wasn't CRC/Wiggle sunk due to being loaded up with debt that was legally assigned to them, even thought they hadn't created it?
...or am I thinking of a different recent online bike retailer sinking?

rsbob 

BikeInn has pretty good prices as well. Only a few dollars off.

rekmeyata

Bikeinn is a horrible place to do business, they got an F for customer service.

rsbob 

Good to know. Trust Pilot gives them pretty decent reviews,

PeteHski

You check them that often and keep them all running? I don’t actually know how accurate my mechanical watches are, but I know only 1 of them might get anywhere near 1 second per day, but I kind of doubt it. I know they can be adjusted, but they are affected by all sorts of variables over time, including how you wear them. None of mine are cheap watches either. All high-end Swiss movements. Quartz is just inherently more accurate and stable which is why the COSC quartz chronometer standard is 2 orders of magnitude higher. I only have 2 quartz watches, the G-Shock and Omega X-33 I mentioned earlier and they are both super accurate without any maintenance. I like mechanical watches, but they are more of a novelty today for normal use. I do have one functional dive watch (DOXA sub 300) but I don’t dive so it’s just for show.

Eric F 

My one order from BikeInn took over a month to get to me. I typically get stuff from Lordgun in less than a week. Tires I ordered on Friday are expected to deliver on Wednesday.

rekmeyata

Sitejabber gave them a 1.44 out of 5 stars

And if you live in N America you will get hit with an import tax they don't tell Americans and Canadians about.

Very mixed reviews, some love them and others hate them, read: https://www.******.com/r/cycling/com...einncom_legit/

I think Trust Pilot is a pay service, if a company pays them, they'll not only give them a great rating but will flood the internet with nothing but Trust Pilot praising them. About 3 years ago Trust Pilot gave them a one star rating, now suddenly they are 4 stars? And as I was flipping through the pages almost every single site was a Trust Pilot, page after page after page, Trust Pilot is doing this to shove the bad reviews far away, thus BikeInn is paying for that service. Sort of like mob protection racket.

phughes

Has anyone said bike tire prices are up due to inflation yet? Inflation... because... tires. Inflation?

Duragrouch

I hate to deflate your ego, but this is cirrus business. Though I welcome pneu viewpoints.

genejockey 

phughes

I understand. Sorry, these things are hard to gauge. It's a lot of pressure.

smd4

We need a rim shot here. But I never tire of a good pun. Seems we’re treading new ground though. But maybe I spoke too soon. I’ll retire now…

phughes

Yeah it took a while to get started, but I think we're gaining traction.

Eric F 

This tread is going down the tubes.

rekmeyata

A couple of days ago I tried the grand experiment, I now feel like Tesla... Anyway, I took a Park glueless patch, and regular patch glue, treated the Park glueless like it was a Rema patch, put glue on the tube, wait to dry, applied the Park patch. I put 100 psi in the tire and it's held for 2 days so far. I'm going to wait a week, pull the tube out, and see how the patch looks, then I'll try to peel it off. If this works I may no longer use Rema patches, just their glue, because the Park patch is a lot thinner than the Rema patch.

phughes

Sorry, that probably stems from my earlier post.

smd4

Y'all are on a roll!