John, I wouldn't sweat it. The information you received is an unfortunate side of the bike industry. Many of the bike shops (employees) out there seem to operate on the belief that if it's not in the Quality Bicycle Products catalog it doesn't exist. And when QBP decides not to carry something, their online ordering windows show the item as discontinued.
I've been working in shops on and off for the better part of 15 years and it never seems to change. Many times employees are only shown one option for ordering and therefore never venture outside of that, or just don't even know they can. Sometimes the shop owner won't allow ordering outside of places like Quality and J&B because they have established credit lines and or terms. Problem is SO many times the items wanted are out of stock, back-ordered, or discontinued. So instead of picking up the phone and calling Velocity, or finding another distributer, you get the "sorry dude, discontinued". Our shop is extremely married to the Quality/JB ordering and only like to place orders when there is enough to qualify for shipping discounts. So regardless if I need a part today, I might have to wait 2 weeks. Consequently I do a lot of shopping outside our store. It is a real let down to see some of the attitude that exists in some shops. I grind my teeth when I see one of our employees blow off something and not dig deeper. I will do my best to scour all of our sources and figure out a way to make it work for the customer and the shop. Yea, sometimes to place a special order for one item will come with a surcharge, but as long as the customer is aware and agrees, then make it happen! One of the things I love about bicycles is the innovation of it all. Even if I am not into their aspect of cycling (ie recumbents), I am still eager to figure out a way to do, get, build, modify whatever they want. It's a bike!! I have a rule of thumb to gauge a shop by. Will they mix Campy and Shimano if asked? Or do they believe that will cause the fabric of time and space to fold in on itself? If the latter, I don't expect too much. Anyway, that was a long winded reply. I had my dander up about this exact same thing with our shop not looking past their noses when a customer asked about 650b tires. "Sorry dude" ugh.... Brad On Jan 22, 9:40 am, John McMurry <[email protected]> wrote: > On Jan 22, 10:23 am, Jim Thill - Hiawatha Cyclery > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > This was what Velocity told me: > > "That is not true at all. QBP is not carrying the 650 synergy anymore > > but > > there is no way we are gonna stop making them." > > Yes. Again, to all of you who I freaked out with this false alarm, my > sincere apologies. > > It's pretty clear that Velocity will continue to make 650b rims for > now. > > It's also pretty clear that my sources of information need to be > improved. > > John McMurry > Burlington, VT --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
