Cheapest Full Suspension Mountain Bike Comparison! Is BikesDirect.com any Good! Polygon Siskiu Wins!
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Some BikesDirect.com Reviews
It's not a scam. It's a business that passes on savings by pairing cheap component specs to commodity frames and doing minimal assembly and QC before shipping to you. It can be a good deal if you know what you want and know what you're doing.
They have titanium bikes with Dura Ace and Mavic wheels, so it isn't always cheap component spec. They have a full range, but their pricing scheme really starts to make a "value" argument above $800ish. I completely agree that it isn't friendly for newbies, but if you can read a geo chart and have familiarity with components, you can get killer deals.
Yes - they are legit and honest. Their customer service over email is very good. I got my wife her 'cross bike there (a 2011 Fantom Pro) and it was an incredibly good deal, and it's a nice bike overall. BUT I'm a competent home bike mechanic and it took a good day's work to get the bike ready to ride, to my standards anyway. You basically get a box of parts, and you assemble it. The one major BS on the site is the estimate of how ready to ride the bike will be. Be prepared to true the wheels, adjust all the bearings, etc, in addition to assembling the bike.
Also, on their low to mid range bikes they use a lot of generic parts, including the seat post collar on the Fantom Pro, which snapped one day. To their credit, Bikes Direct were super responsive and sent a really nice Salsa collar as replacement, with no fuss.
I would buy from them again.
On the internet, you can find virtually anything you want, but not all is as it appears. That on-line dating profile… says he or she is 39, but actually 43. Stretching the truth a bit. But what if they’re 56?. Today’s lesson- The “Grab yours NOW at our special price of $299 from $695 MSRP” road bike (Mercier Galaxy SC1), courtesy of bikesdirect.com. This is the 56 year old claiming to be 39.
Advertised as a $695 MSRP bike selling for $299, this is the internet, so anything goes! It never ever sold for anything close to $695, and would be worth, assembled, maybe, $400. It’s not spec’d anything like the bikes it claims to compare to.
This bike came to my attention when I received an email from someone, asking for assistance in setting it up for him, saying that the manufacturer says it should only take “25 minutes.”
If you pull it out of the box, throw on the pedals, tighten the handlebars and inflate the tires, yes, it might be just 25 minutes, and you’ll end up with a K-Mart quality bike with a few nicer parts.
But if you build it the way we (and most other competent bike shops) do, it will involve removing the tires & tubes to make sure the rimstrips in the right place and the tire & tube were correctly installed, lubricating all threaded surfaces (why they don’t come this way from the factory is something I don’t understand), truing the wheels laterally and inspecting them for deformities caused in shipping (happens more often than you think), making sure all bearings are properly adjusted, replace “factory” chain lube (which is often the consistency of light tar) with something that will allow it to shift better, ensure there are no kinks in brake or gear cables & housing and replace as required, and finally, the simple stuff like installing seat, pedals & handlebars. And then it needs to be test-ridden to settle things in, and checked again. And double-checked by another mechanic. That 25 minutes bikesdirect.com quotes just became two hours.
And the bike still isn’t fit properly to the rider.
Besides frame size (the easiest thing to figure out, but not as important to proper fit as what follows here), you’ve got stem length, handlebar height, handlebar width and handlebar reach. Because people come in all manner of shapes and sizes, and it makes a huge, not subtle difference, getting things right. Bar width should approximate shoulder width. Stem length should be set so the rider is in a relaxed position when using the brakes. Forward reach should be very short for those with smaller hands. Drop from seat to bars is determined partly by rider flexibility. All this stuff comes into play when a decent shop sells a road bike.
But the bikesdirect.com model has 40cm wide bars on the smallest frame (too wide for just about anyone who’d ever use a bike that size), and a 90mm stem (too long in nearly every case). Minor stuff compared to what comes next.