livedarklions

Those are not mutually exclusive. Like it or not, our system is premised on enforcing reasonable safety standards by giving lawyers strong financial incentives to go after violations of those standards when injury results,

I actually think the best evidence that the "safety" aspects of this campaign are a bunch of hooey is the obvious absence of any organized bar handling defective bike claims. Relatively healthy adults and children getting killed or maimed by a mechanical failure would be the tort attorney's dream client, with huge monetary damages claims.

livedarklions

Exactly! This is the zillionth time or so that this issue has been argued on these here forums and what I've noticed is it generally breaks down into a screaming match between one side that claims that no one gets anything good out of WM bikes and another that can't acknowledge that some of the stuff WM sells is crap.

But if we're going to start argue about the bikes being dangerous, that's got to have some better data than a couple of anecdotes. The burden of proof is definitely on people claiming that WM bikes are unusually dangerous--if they are, there's every reason to believe someone is out there making that case.

70sSanO

Walmart, as well as other big box stores, will always sell cheap bikes. Walmart can’t possibly inspect their bikes for manufacturing quality. Not even a bike shop conducts any QA/inspection of BB spindles or axles for material defects.

Walmart offers auto services. I hope, although maybe wishful thinking, that the person installing brake pads has some certification to be able to perform that service.

The only thing that can be done is to require a similar level for bicycle assembly. I have no clue how would be done or even enforced, but it wouldn’t be a prohibitive cost driver to have a specific people that are more highly compensated to perform this function.

I don’t think a regulation requiring this to be any more constraining on business than what any auto shop has to do.

John

RayHenry

No kidding. In today's litigious society, it only takes 2 actual cases to hit the courts for someone the launch a class action lawsuit. That aside, any injuries myself, my kids, grandkids, and anyone else I've known, have ever sustained on a bike is due to stupidity or miscalculation. Never directly due to an unreasonable part failure....

cyccommute 

Go read the petition. It’s not long. It’s not aimed at law makers nor lawyers. It is a call to the people making bikes that are unrepairable. It is a call to the manufacturers and retailers to stop cheating people out of their money…which as noted people may not have…by selling them a false bargain. As I noted, this is a fairly recent problem caused by the greed of the retailers like Walmart (they are not the only offender but the biggest). The retailers are keeping the price low by making a product that they know will never be returned and will likely never be used for more than a few miles.

cyccommute 

Go read the petition. I brought up safety issues but the petition is about shaming retailers that use predatory practices that “waste the money of the mostly poor and working class people who buy them.” Bike shops that sell higher end bikes…and $300 is a higher end bike compared to Big Box store bikes…want their customers to have a bike that will remain in good working order long enough for the rider to actually get value out of them. The customer may even come back to either get the bike worked on or to buy a better bike when circumstances warrant that.

Frankly, many local bike shop will tell you way buying a bicycle from a Big Box store is a bad idea. Yes, they are trying to sell something but unlike the impersonal and uncaring Big Box store, they want the customer to be satisfied and to come back. They depend on it! Most local bike shops won’t fix Big Box store bikes because they know they will be cheating the customer if they try and they depend on their reputation more than HelMart does.

Big Box stores don’t care. They know that once the bike leaves the store, they will never have to deal with it again.

Iride01 

Well thanks for being able to better state what the OP fails to do. I might go back and take a look at the links which is something I'm loathe to do if there isn't a convincing reason or sufficient teaser written to pique my interest.

Most of my ire was for the OP singling out Walmart and not any of the other's that sell what I even consider a POS bike. As well, I've had issues with way more expensive bikes coming from actual bike shops. Then of course one has to wonder about all the used bikes being sold and especially ones being sold by flippers. As for such bikes adding to the piles of scrapyards some mentioned, then I'd only point to the big piles of bikes from short lived ride share programs.

So to me, Walmart itself is not the overriding concern. Amazon, eBay, and others have crappy stuff on their sites too. They remove themselves somewhat from being responsible by simply saying they only provided a place for sellers to advertise their products.

tcs

I read about this first on the Bicycle Retailer and Industry News website:

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/reta...s#.YeGwNS2cZTY

I dunno. Seemed reasonable to me. A lot of the complaint traces to metallurgy and industry standard dimension parts, and what consumer is going to be able to check that in the store?

Quality, inexpensive, brand new..pick two!

Perhaps they could augment their petition by rooftop mounting an unrepairable big box store bike and a large signboard explaining all its deficiencies on a vehicle and driving around Fayetteville, Arkansas on the 27th-30th of this month.

cyccommute 

Walmart is just a convenient target, mostly because they sell so many. Big Box stores in general sell 74% of the 15 to 20 million bicycles sold in the US per year. Walmart has a substantial share of that market. Granted most of the bikes are probably for children but they sell a lot of adult bikes as well.

I don’t disagree. The petition doesn’t call out any one retailer. The petition’s point is to call out the retailers who are selling a false bargain.

zandoval 

It's not just budget bikes... Recently I had an acquaintance bring over two new bikes bought from a reputable store in Austin Texas at a reasonable price (600+ USD each). One was perfect and the other not so much. We carefully went over the bikes adjusting almost everything and found that even though the bikes had a reputable name, and were made with reputable componentes, they both were simply assembled improperly.

I was recently impressed with a friend that brought over a bike he had purchased on line. In frustration he brought the whole box over as it was patially (mostly) disasembled for shipment. I was impressed with the componentes, cost, and quality of its frame. We took our time putting back together and corected a few things as we went along. It was FUN...

Further note... I am so glad it did not have Brifters... Ha

Further, further note... There are some people that suddenly decide to go buy a bicycle. And that's just what they do. They go out and buy one, any one, they can find...

RayHenry

Tough one here. 99.999% of box store buyers aren't going to ride like I rode ~25 - 35 years ago. I don't think that anything I owned, no matter how much it cost me, didn't have something break within the first 500 hours. Hell, I can think of a dozen people off the top of my head that would take over 10 years to put 500 hours on their bike. We going for a 10 year warranty now? Is that 500 hours on a bike path? Hard pack? Winter roads? Taking jumps? How do you come up with a standard that determines the right level of riding? That's going to be a tough one to define, and one that perhaps should be defined with the petition.

What defines serviceable? Again, needs to be defined. Hold adjustment? I'm sure I'm not the only one that would LOVE to have a bike where nothing went out of adjustment. Again, a clear definition is needed.

Perfect. Now you have the absolutely impossible task of proving that it was actually MADE to fall apart. The same could be said for much of what we buy these days. Made cheaply and poorly doesn't necessarily mean it was actually CREATED to fall apart.

This whole petition is far to vague. The only benefit I can see from it is the possible exposure created by it. It's going to fall on deaf ears at the manufacturing and retail levels. But maybe some people unaware that box stores sell low end bikes (I can't imagine who they are) will now be aware.

All in all, it's not a good petition at all. It's not properly defined, and in today's throw-away society, not enough people are going to really care.

Leinster

The thing is, the issues that are coming up on cheap Big Box bikes are probably happening at low speed, and are definitely happening at low price points. So no, a kid is not crashing off a $100 BSO at 25mph on a highway and breaking bones. But they are crashing at 10 mph on the MUP and skinning their knees and don't want to ride a bike any more. So there's no major injury worth suing over, but there's a kid who doesn't like riding bikes.

And the parent then takes the bike back to the Big Box, and gets a refund (because that's how Big Boxes do business). Or takes it to the LBS and gets told "it can't be repaired because X", and either way the bike ends up in the trash, and the kid isn't riding anything. But it's a low-dollar item that isn't worth filing a class-action suit over. And the person who quibbles over a $99 bike probably doesn't have the resources to sue the Big Box over it anyway.

So it's no use trawling through legal journals to find what the dollar amount on this issue is, because it's all happening at such a low price-point transactional level, that there really isn't going to be any.

The article isn't about any Big Box store in particular (though one brand does dominate that space, so they get namechecked whenever someone talks about cheap bikes, the same way Rapha and Pinarello get namechecked whenever someone posts about posers with overpriced gear). My 6 year old twins are riding bikes that originated in Big Box stores, but I've stripped and lubed and rebuilt all the bits and pieces, and replaced/removed the bits that were falling apart/superfluous, and they are safe for riding on the bike path. There are decent, reliable bikes to be had at Walmart/Target/Dicks/Big 5, but there are also bikes coming out of Big Box stores that aren't fit for purpose, are built out of cheap materials, and assembled badly (we've all seen the backwards fork in the wild), and it should be not-unreasonably incumbent upon the largest, profit-making-est compan(ies) in the land to ensure a minimum standard of quality for an item that should be considered a vehicle, not a toy. ESPECIALLY because these bikes are targeted at the low-experience/low-product-knowledge customer; its no good to say "parents should do a safety check", about a product that is specifically designed, priced, and marketed at parents who *don't have the knowledge, skillset, or background to do a safety check.*

If certain minimum safety and reliability standards of components and assembly just can't be met at the $99.99 price-point in 2022, then maybe the retailer needs to adjust up to the $109.99 price point and reassess. That extra $10 on the price tag won't price out too many families, but could save hundreds or thousands of customers a $50 repair bill. But it doesn't help the low-income bike purchaser to get a low-quality product for their money, because that customer will become a not-bike purchaser in quick order, and everybody (the customer, bike shops, cycling in general) loses out. Except the Big Box store who have probably pocketed the $99.99.

Numerozero

I've seen many BSO's come though my shop with no lawyer's lips on the forks, AND the assembler threw away the hook washers that prevent the axle from coming off. Can't expect average consumer to even know they should be there.

tcs

Fun fact: Steuart and Tom "Walmart" Walton own majority share of Rapha!

tcs

I'm pretty sure the petition was not intended as the final draft of an industry standard.

RayHenry

How could you reasonably expect anyone to out their name behind something without knowing exactly what they were supporting? Final draft aside, the most pertinent information is missing.

Leinster

I think the 500-mile goal is pretty specific, measurable and realistic. And beyond that, what more do you expect them to do, create an industry standard out of whole cloth?

RayHenry

So 500 miles at 10mph by a 90 lb, 70 year old granny on a bike path puts the same stress on a bike as 500 miles at 25 mph on trails by a 200 lb, 20 year old? Interesting. And how is mileage going to be determined? I actually think that demanding a bike last 500 miles is ridiculous and unenforceable.

bruce19

If you buy a Walmart bike you get a Walmart bike. Congrats.

wrk101

IMO, the crap bikes Walmart sells are much better than the crap bikes box stores when I was growing up (late 1960s). Walmart sells bikes at very low prices. At those price points, manufacturers can't build much into them. And at least in my market, buyers could do a lot BETTER buying USED. People profess a commitment to being "green", but many continue to buy new. So much lightly used stuff out there.

To me, there is a bigger issue with who assembles the bike.

70sSanO

It isn’t 500 miles, it is 500 riding hours. That translates to maybe 5,000 miles. Or it could be 10,000 curbs depending on the rider.

In all honesty I’m not sure some of the lower end Shimano would hold up if that is the minimum.

John

RayHenry

Ah, yes, sorry. Even worse, maybe. Grandma is going to baby that thing for 500 hours. I can trash it in 5. Even harder to enforce.

70sSanO

Maybe I should start a petition… “Built to Obsolete” since manufacturers do not support even high end bikes over time.

Something as simple a early STI hoods renders the shifters pretty useless or at least pretty ugly work arounds.

John

indyfabz

Are you sure it’s not a private equity firm headed by them that owns a majority stake in Rapha?

BTW…I love my Rapha Core jersey and my Rapha wool base layer.

mstateglfr 

All brands care about price point. It's how products are spec'd...to meet a price point.
For kids bikes, it's been shown that the market will tolerate most purchases being under $250 so most bikes are under $250.