I've bought quite a bit of cycling kit since I last wrote here; some absolute pants, some fantastic. But before I get onto the kit itself, a word on the purveyors of all things bike.
Last weekend I had to go shopping on Saturday and Sunday in real stores with real people. It gave me a rash. And this is my excuse for conducting retail therapy online. Enter Google Chrome, enter bookmarks - make hay.
Price comparison is fantastic and across the UK I love pitting Wiggle, Chainreaction, Evans, Fudges and Planet X against each other. In SA its Buycycle versus CWCycles - voila, simple the landscape is still bare. And when it comes to the US everything is measured against RA Cycles. Of course the best bit is comparative shopping across the 3 continents and I can generally get my fill by either select ZAR as the currency, or running everything through OANDA for currency conversion at credit card rates (interbank +/-3% if I'm not mistaken).
All good. Like with like. Not quite.
I recently bought from Planet X whose prices kicked butt. However, could anyone tell me where my delivery was? Could they sort it out when challenged? Nope and nope. A good ol'gripe on Twitter did the trick. My delivery had been at my local post office for 6 weeks. My happiness at finally getting my gear was short-lived: the top of the range SRAM PC1091 was OEM - not what it said on the site and they were missing an inner tube - nothing major, but no correction either.
As much as Evans & co can frequently bust a price wide open - if you want it to get to you, be able to track it and be able to get something done about an error, it's Wiggle and CRC all the way.
CWC is making the SA turf their own and it's no wonder they were in a showdown with Yuppie Chef for the best SA online retail site. Just need their prices to come down a tad...
Click on.
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