Playbook, bike shop
The shop can quote a named job and not the repair it turns into
This is the unusual retail case where an assistant should quote confidently and still refuse half of what it is asked. A bike carries a ticket price. A workshop carries a menu of named jobs at named prices. Both are published figures and both are safe to state. What is not safe is the thing most people are actually asking about, which is a fault they have described in a sentence and which does not become a priced job until somebody has it on a stand.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Two published price lists sit inside one business and behave differently. Bikes carry a ticket price you read off. The workshop carries a labour menu of named operations. Both can be quoted exactly, which is why the refusal has to be aimed precisely at the third thing: a described fault, which is not yet a job with a name.
- A menu price is labour, and the parts sitting on top of it are the larger half of most workshop bills, so a figure quoted without that sentence attached is the easiest argument to start in the whole shop and it is started at the collection counter.
- The price of a new bike usually carries things nobody claims, the check over after the first few weeks of riding being the common one, and a rider who never hears about it either pays somebody else or rides a bike with settling cables.
- Under a cycle to work arrangement the figure the rider pays and the figure reaching the shop are different numbers with a scheme fee between them, so the same request for a discount means something different depending on how the bike is being bought.
How it arrives
- whats your hourly rate in the workshop
- how much to fit a gear cable
- is the first check over included with a new bike
- will you fit a part i bought somewhere else
- how much does a wheel build cost
- do you knock anything off for cycle to work
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The workshop labour menu, job by job | Named operations with their labour price, written so each line reads as labour rather than as a total. This is the document that makes the assistant useful here, and most shops have it printed on the workshop wall and nowhere a customer can read at ten at night. |
|---|---|
| What the ticket price of a bike includes | The build, the handover, any check over afterwards and how long the rider has to take it. Written as an entitlement with a window on it, because the value is real and the claim rate is low purely because nobody was told. |
| Your policy on fitting parts bought elsewhere | Whether you do it, what you charge, and the jobs you decline outright. Shops differ completely on this and the ones that have never written it down have the same doorstep conversation every week, usually with somebody holding a box. |
| The cycle to work arithmetic in your own words | Which schemes you take, the certificate limits, what happens when the bike costs more than the voucher, and whether accessories can go on it. Procedural, asked constantly, and the thing riders most often have wrong when they walk in. |
The reply
I can give you the labour figure and not the bill, and the gap between those two is the point. Fitting and setting up a gear cable is the price on our workshop menu, and that is labour: the cable itself, and the outer if it needs it, go on top [1]. What I cannot do is turn what you have described into a total, because gears that will not shift cleanly might be a cable, or a bent hanger, or a worn cassette, and which of those it is gets decided with the bike on a stand rather than in a chat window [2]. If you want a number before you commit, drop it in and the workshop will look at it and tell you what the job actually is.
It quotes the figure that is genuinely published, so the reply is not a wall of refusals, and then draws the line exactly where the shop's own knowledge stops. Listing three possible causes without picking one shows the question was understood. Ending at the stand rather than at a form is right here, because the answer the rider wants only exists once somebody has the bike.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks what a described fault will cost, asks for a figure on a job not on the menu, or asks what a voucher will leave them paying.
I can quote the menu but not your bike, and a number given now is the number you will hold us to. Leave your name, an email and what the bike is doing, and the workshop will price it properly.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never total up a repair from a described fault, because what the job is gets decided with parts off the bike and the first number said out loud is the one the rider remembers at collection.
- Never quote a menu figure without saying it is labour and that parts sit on top, which is the sentence that prevents almost every argument in this category.
- Never state what a rider will end up paying under a cycle to work arrangement, since that turns on their employer's scheme and their own tax position and is not the shop's figure to give.
- Never price the fitting of a part the shop did not sell, because some of those jobs are declined outright and a price implies the workshop has already agreed to do it.
Questions
- Why is the labour menu safe to quote when a repair is not?
- Because the menu prices an operation and the rider has described a symptom. Fitting a cable has a price. Gears not shifting does not, until somebody has decided it is a cable. The assistant is safe for exactly as long as it stays on the side of that line where the job already has a name.
- Should we publish the labour menu at all when competitors read it?
- They already know your rates, and the people it actually helps are the riders deciding whether to bother. A shop that publishes job prices gets fewer phone calls asking for them and more bikes arriving with the owner already expecting to pay.
- Can it work out what a voucher leaves us with?
- No, and it should not try. That is arithmetic across a scheme fee, a certificate limit and somebody's employer, and every number in it belongs to a third party. It can say which schemes you take and route the rest.
Keep reading
- Everything for a bike shopFrame sizing, service turnaround and whether a part fits are the daily questions. Safety critical repair advice is an escalation.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- What an estimate can honestly bound on a machine still assembledThe deciding facts sit behind parts that have to come off first. What an estimate can bound, the inspection charge, the uneconomic repair.
- The delivery date and the collection date are different datesA bike arriving is not a bike being ready. Allocation seasons, the workshop build queue, and the lead time that became a promise.
- Boxed, built, or ridden out of the doorBoxed or built, and the battery that is restricted freight. Plus the collection that fails because a bike will not go in a small car.
Try it on your own material
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