WHY BUY YOUR NEXT BIKE FROM CHAIN REACTION?
The articles below will give you an idea of why so many people have been happy with their Chain Reaction bikes! We really do a lot of things that surprise people, and we really do care about you & your bike long after you've handed over your credit card and we've given you the owner's manual. There are significant differences between various bike shops, and you'll pick up on this if you've visited a few. Fortunately, we're in an area with a number of reputable, caring bike shops. It's not too hard to figure out which are good & which aren't. Perhaps the best question you can ask yourself is this- Is this a shop that's going to take good care of me if I come back a few months down the road with a gear issue, or maybe need some help with getting rid of a pain I get in my shoulder on longer rides?

And what if you didn't buy your bike from Chain Reaction Bicycles, and something's not quite right about it? We try to do whatever emergency repairs we can to keep people on the road, but the honest truth is that, if we were to bring in for repair every bike possible, we would quickly have a three week backlog and run out of storage room. The busy times of the year tend to run from March-October, meaning that we can generally take in repairs during the winter months. We can highly recommend a gentleman named Eric Fetch, also known as THE BIKE DOCTOR. For quite a few years he's run a mobile repair operation, offering pretty quick turnaround, high quality and reasonable rates. Call him at 408 202 8833 to set up an appointment, or email him at efetch@yahoo.com.

Does it seem strange that we're advertising a competitor for bike service? Perhaps. But we have an obligation to the cycling community that we take seriously, and if we can't take care of something ourselves, we're very happy to find someone who can.

For bike fittings, we can do a very limited number of bike fittings (on bikes purchased elsewhere) weekdays between 1:30-3:30pm in our Redwood City location. These have to be scheduled ahead of time, and are available only as staffing and business conditions allow (during the busier time of the year, typically from mid-March-September, we may not be able to do them at all). The cost is $40 for the first half hour, and $15 each subsequent 15 minutes. A typical fitting will involve taking your arm, shoulder, torso, inseam & foot measurements, and then making changes to your bike according to recommendations from the New England Cycling Academy's FitKit. We will then look at you on the bike, because measurements are just the beginning. Depending who is doing the fitting, you may or may not be set up in a trainer (I would rather observe someone doing laps in our parking lot. It's my feeling that people tend to "perform" when set up on a trainer, trying to figure out what I'm looking for. When outside, after just a minute or two people relax and I'll see things I otherwise wouldn't. But that's just me; most prefer to set people up on the trainer, feeling it's a more controlled environment and easier to work with. --Mike--).

Just to be clear, when you buy a bike from Chain Reaction, there is no charge for fitting you to that bike, including subsequent reassessment down the road. On bikes we have sold, such service is included with the sale of the bike. This includes swapping out stems during the period of time where we're getting things dialed-in (provided changing the stem doesn't involve re-cabling the brakes and/or gears, as might be needed if someone were to go to a dramatically-taller stem than a bike would normally come with).

It would be nice if there was enough time to properly take care of those we've sold bikes to, and everyone else as well. But I've found over the years that, when we take on too much, quality (and the time you're without your bike because it's in the shop) invariably suffers. Others may have mastered the art of scaling their business; I haven't, and we're not willing to lower our standards, even though doing so might result in more dollars in the cash register. Our goal, when we sell a bike, is to do everything we can to make sure that bike is everything it can be. We want someone to be thinking, every time he or she walks past their Chain Reaction bike, gee, I want to get out and ride! And doing that takes time & effort on our part. It's worth it.

Thanks-   --Mike--