bike service – Rat Race Cycles

Why are the prices going up again?

17/04/2023by ratracecycles

We’ve resisted it for as long as possible but – and you probably saw this coming – we’re reluctantly raising some of our labour prices. I hope I can explain that it’s not us being “less nice” to our customers, but being “more fair” to our team, ensuring that we can pay them a decent salary for their hard work and skills.

We’ll continue to try and keep the costs as low as we can. We know times are hard for everyone at the moment, and we’ll always do our best to make sure your bike is safe to ride at minimal cost if you really can’t afford a service. But as the costs of running our shop have risen, and our team’s costs of living have risen, we need to increase our prices so that we can keep paying them fairly.

Our aim has always been to be the best bike workshop in London. Over the last ten years in Nunhead, we’ve built up a strong and loyal customer base, from everyday commuters to leisure riders to keen (and now professional) racers. We take pride in having excellent technical skills, and delivering superb customer service.

We’ve always striven to keep our prices as low as possible because we’re proudly part of our community and we know plenty of our customers rely on their bikes as an economical way of getting themselves and their families around.

From the start I’ve always wanted to make sure we look after our staff well, too. The bike industry is notoriously poorly-paid and mechanics with years of expertise often earn little more than the minimum wage. Many national chains’ floor staff are on zero-hours contracts and tiny salaries, so the industry as a whole tends only to attract people who either have a second job or other means of financial support, or are so enthusiastic about cycling that they are willing to compromise earning a fair wage. I don’t think that’s fair, and I’m very proud that we were the first bike shop in London to become part of the Living Wage initiative. Thankfully, there are others now following suit.

Rat Race Cycles has always sought to employ the best people. We know our customers (and all customers!) deserve excellent service, and we know our technical experience, skills, specialist tools and training keep us able to build and service the latest and greatest components.

Over the last year we’ve seen many of our shop’s running costs increase, and later this year the renewal of our energy contract will see that bill more than treble. We know that this is happening for everyone, including our team, and the real Living Wage rises proportionately with living costs. I feel strongly that we want to keep in line with our promise to pay our team members the London Living Wage, and in order to do this I need to increase our prices.

I’m sorry if this news feels like the latest in a long line of hits to your wallet, but I hope you understand the reasoning behind it. If you are really struggling to make ends meet, you rely on your bike to get you around, and find yourself unable to afford a basic repair (a puncture or similar) do come and see us. If we can help, we will. I should also add that if you are in the fortunate position of being able to help others, we have a ‘pot’ where you can put money towards our emergency repair fund for those in need.

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.

Stocktaking

09/06/2020by ratracecycles

We’re going to be closed on Thursday 11th June, for a much-needed (and slightly overdue) stock take. This means we won’t be able to answer any enquiries at the door or on the phone, though you can still email us with enquiries or to book bikes in.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes! Business will continue as normal from 8am on Friday 12th.

Changing how we do things, again!

17/04/202020/04/2020by ratracecycles

Hello from the workstand once again! I feel like I’ve written more blog posts in the last few weeks than I have in all the years of the shop being open.

We’re still here, still open, working as hard as we can to keep everyone riding. I have to be candid though, it hasn’t been easy; there are two big challenges and we’ve had to change the way we work to adapt to them. If you’re short on time, please scroll to the break for what it means for you. If not, here’s a longer explanation:

The first problem is, of course, COVID-19. We’re keeping the door locked most of the time so that we and you can keep our distance, and when dropping a bike off or picking it up we’ll be setting it in the stand outside the front door and disinfecting contact points like the saddle, grips and levers. We’re wearing gloves practically all the time and disinfecting those gloves, our tools, work surfaces, the phone, the card machine, the iPad… that’s all to protect both you and ourselves and minimise transmission as much as we can.

The second struggle, however, has been coping with how busy we’ve become! Obviously, it’s a great problem to have; we’re very glad to see so many people getting on their bikes (and we’re especially grateful for all the messages of support and encouragement we’ve been getting, thank you!). But this busy-ness, combined with the new ways of working we’ve had to adopt for COVID-19, means that at times we’ve been so busy answering enquiries at the door, answering the phone and trying to reply to emails and messages in a timely manner that we’ve had very little time to actually work on people’s bikes! It’s a perfect storm.

Although we’re all experienced and methodical mechanics, there’s a certain lag that comes from breaking off in the middle of a service to answer the door or the phone, and then coming back to the bike and getting back to whatever you were working on before. It’s not a lot, but it starts adding up when it happens many times over and a 20-minute job stays in the workstand for two hours because there have been so many interruptions. It also means the bikes that customers have booked in aren’t getting our undivided attention, which doesn’t seem very fair.

We’ve always had a policy of trying to fix people’s bikes on the spot if it’s a minor task – you’d usually only have to wait a few minutes if you have a puncture, for example, and we try and do most small jobs as quickly as possible to avoid booking bikes in and filling up the shop. But unfortunately, we have to change that, at least for now.

From Monday 20th April we’ll only work on walk-in jobs before 10am. If you’ve got a puncture, if your wheel needs truing, if your brake pads need replacing, that sort of thing, please get down to us as early as possible and we’ll try and fit you in that morning.

Otherwise, our workshop will be appointment only. From 10am onwards, to make sure we can give booked-in bikes our full attention, we won’t be taking in any un-booked jobs. Not even punctures – sorry! To minimise interruptions, we’ll also be letting the phone go to voicemail, and calling people back regularly throughout the day.

We’re very sorry for any hassle this might cause you, but we hope you understand that we’re trying to be fair to as many people as possible, and making sure we can focus on getting as many bikes properly serviced as we can.