Village Cycle - Chicago, IL Review

I have a love/hate relationship with Village Cycle.  I have purchased two of my bikes and two bikes for my kids there.  I like their wide selection (10,000 bikes in stock!) and their location which is on my way home from work.  I really want to like their staff because they are all young and seem to be passionate about the bikes.  I have two problems with them.  One problem is that they exude a bit of an attitude if you are not a "real" biker dude.  That is just annoying to me. 

My second issue is that their work has been spotty.  A few years ago I took in my sons bike to have training wheels put on it because the first pair had broken.  They did such a sloppy job and paid so little attention that the training wheels fell off as my son was riding the bike out of the store.  They were sheepish about it, but ultimately offered nothing to make up for such a gross and careless mistake.

Then today, I dropped by because I had been hearing a very weird cracking every time I pedaled my Trek mountain bike.  Because I stopped by at 5pm on a Wednesday, they were pretty fast.   They promised to have it ready in one hour.  When I came back, it was indeed ready, but they had not fixed the problem.  What is annoying is that they did not even bother to ride the bike the 10 feet that it needed to go to know that they did not fix it. I took the bike back in the store and to their credit they disassembled the crank shaft, lubed it and 20 minutes later I was back on the road with a much improved and very smooth riding bike.

I don't blame the guys who work on the bike because they clearly are well trained and know what they are doing.  I blame the owner for not stressing quality enough and not suggesting that they actually ride the bikes they fix.

As big as Village Cycle is, they could be a lot better if they lost the attitude and took the time to offer better service.