A special offer from Halfords in Wrexham?

I went into Halfords in Wrexham this week to buy a bike. Enticed in by the ‘£20 worth of accessories free with every bike bought’ I was hoping to take my bike home with me, along with my free goodies. But that was not to be.

Apparently, presumably to make transportation easier, bikes delivered to Halfords from the manufacturer are not fully made up, they have to have the gears, brakes, wheels etc added instore. In the run up to Christmas they are of course getting more bike orders, and they haven’t got a stock of ready made up bikes and are having to make them up as the orders come in, with customers getting on average a three week wait. Haven’t they ever heard of preparation? You’d think that they would have anticipated the extra Christmas sales and got a load of the bikes made up ready.

I was told that I wouldn’t be able to have my bike until 12th December, and being as I’d set my heart on this particular bike I agreed. But…even though I was paying in full for the order they told me that I couldn’t have the £20 worth of free accessories because I wasn’t collecting the bike before the 22nd November. But I wanted to take the bike today I argued… it’s not my fault that you can’t put it together in time…

It wasn’t until we overheard another member of staff on the phone to an angry customer wanting to know why their bike wasn’t ready yet, and being placated by the words ‘Sorry for the delay, yes it will be after the special offer ends now but yes, OK, we’ll still let you have the free accessories’ that they relented and let me have the free goods.

So dear Halfords, I suggest that it’s not a good idea using special offers to lure people in if you can’t supply the goods - either honor the offer or take the signs down.

This entry was posted on 18/11/2008 at 05:17 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.