bicycle service – Rat Race Cycles

In the bleak midwinter

04/12/202004/12/2020by ratracecycles

It feels like – with nowhere else to go – we’ve all been physically present in our communities
more than ever this year, and yet it’s still so easy to miss what’s right on our doorstep. Far
from being the most wonderful time of the year, many people in our community are finding
it hard just to feed themselves or their families, never mind buy Christmas presents or
decorations.

This month, we wanted to help lift up two amazing local charities and bring them to your
attention. Firstly, the wonderful people behind the Tenants and Residents Association of
Nunhead’s Rye Hill Park Estate, who have been running a food bank throughout lockdown.
Demand for it has only increased as the months have passed, and as volunteers they have
struggled to keep up. When we asked how we could best help them, it turned out that they
were in need of somewhere that was open longer hours where people could drop off
donations, as currently they’ve only been able to collect for a few hours a week.

So, starting right away, whenever the shop is open, you can drop donations in with us.
We’ve got a poster on our window showing the kind of things they most need, and you can
get more details on their insta too – @ryehilltra.

But if you find it hard to get here or just want to help in a different way, they also need
financial support. If you’d like to support them in this way you too can do so via their
JustGiving page at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ryehilltra.

We’ll be giving them 5% of all our takings this December.

If neither of these things are within your means, but you’ve got something else to give
(time, skills) and want to help, you can find them online or on socials at @RyeHillTRA.

We’ll also be giving 5% to another local charity; watch this space for more details.

We’re staying open this time round too!

05/11/2020by ratracecycles

As England enters a second lockdown, we’re very thankful that once again bike shops have been recognised as providing an essential service. We’ve been honoured to keep so many people riding during the summer, and to help get new some new riders up and running too. We love making people’s bikes run as reliably as possible so we’re very happy we can continue to do so.

We’re going to keep our current opening hours for now, although we’d appreciate hearing from you if you’d like us to change. That means we’re open:

Monday: 08:00 – 18:00
Tuesday: 08:00 – 18:00
Wednesday: 10:00 – 18:00
Thursday: 08:00 – 18:00
Friday: 08:00 – 18:00
Saturday: 09:00 – 17:00
Sunday: closed

…and we’ll still be encouraging people with small jobs like punctures and replacing brake pads to come down first thing any morning except Wednesday to take advantage of our unbooked walk-in service. It’s first-come first-served so it’s often a good idea to get here as early as you can. We focus on doing the more major pre-booked services later in the day but will still try and fit in small jobs if we can.

And we’re still not allowing customers into the shop, sorry. This is to make sure we can keep you and ourselves safe and maintain social distancing – we’ve got a big awning out the front so you should be able to find shelter if you need to!

We’re really grateful to our customers for their patience and understanding and we hope to keep as many of you running smoothly and enjoyably as we can through the winter!

£50 of free money?

05/08/2020by ratracecycles

On Friday the Government rolled out the “Fix Your Bike Voucher Scheme” and its website promptly crashed several times over the following day(s) under the demand.

Full details are via https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fix-your-bike-voucher-scheme-apply-for-a-voucher and / or https://fixyourbikevoucherscheme.est.org.uk/ but, in short, the scheme is aimed at helping people afford to get a bike back in working order and it grants a voucher worth £50 towards getting this done at a local bike shop.

We’re happy to be part of this scheme, and voucher-based enquiries are coming in thick and fast, so this post aims to answer a few questions:

Vouchers are valid for repairs to get a bike back on the road only. Vouchers can’t be spent upgrading parts that don’t need replacing, and they’re only for jobs involving labour to replace the parts.

Vouchers are valid for adult and children’s bikes; electric-assist bikes are eligible but only if they’re road legal (i.e. not home-built or modified).

Vouchers can’t be claimed on work that’s been carried out in the past.

Vouchers can’t be part-refunded or exchanged if the job costs less than the full amount of the voucher.

Vouchers are valid for 60 days from the date they’re issued.

We can’t give other discounts on jobs with vouchers allocated.

When we take the bike in, we need to see:

– a valid voucher code

– a photo ID: driving licence, passport or residence permit

– a recent (last months) proof of address: utility or council tax bill, mortgage statement, benefit book or council / housing association rent card

The voucher is valid for a specific bike; we have to submit a photo to prove that’s the bike we’ve worked on when we redeem the voucher.

Only one voucher per job.

Only a maximum of two vouchers per household.

We need to collect, and keep, details of the customer’s name, phone number, email address and address. The customer needs to approve this, because GDPR.

The first wave of vouchers have all been granted, so if you already have a voucher you’ve got 60 days from the date of voucher issue to book a bike in. As I type, our workshop diary’s pretty much full up to the second week in September, but that still gives plenty of time to book in. Or, of course, we’ll accept vouchers if you’re using our walk-in service first thing in the morning for smaller jobs (a new pair of tyres can easily cost over £50!).

Keep an eye out on the website(s) at the top of this post for announcements about further waves of vouchers being released if you were unlucky this time.

Time for a meeting

03/07/202003/07/2020by ratracecycles

These are exciting and busy times at Rat Race Cycles – we’re doing all we can to keep as many people rolling as possible, and it’s been great to see so many new cyclists as well as many familiar faces.

We’ve taken on a couple of new team members – hi Alex and Joe! – in the last month too, and as our team grows it’s getting all the more important to make sure we’re working well together and keeping the shop standards high.

Busy workshops get grubbier and more disorganised quicker, and we all need some time to learn and to make sure we keep improving. So we’re going to be changing our opening hours again: we’ll open at 10am on Wednesdays instead of the current 8, to give us time to have a team meeting, to do some training and also to have a bit of a deeper clean.

We’ll be in the shop, but we’ll be closed, so we won’t be running the walk-in service on Wednesday mornings. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes – we chose Wednesday because it’s been our quietest day on average for walk-ins so we hope this will affect the fewest people.

For people who have bikes booked in on Wednesdays we’ll be encouraging them to drop bikes off the night before or after 10am; we’ll try and notify everyone who’s already booked in over the next few weeks and make things work for them.

One of the things we’ve been discussing is extending our opening hours, now we have more staff to cover this, so watch this space for a further update! Thanks for your understanding.