I like the idea of supporting my local shop (I’m an early 30s MTBer, the target of much of this article’s justifiable complaints however I would have happily bo

I like the idea of supporting my local shop (I’m an early 30s MTBer, the target of much of this article’s justifiable complaints however I would have happily bought that inner tube if they’d just pumped my tyre up like that and probably gone back to me a larger purchase) but my shop doesn’t deserve my support. Slow, rude and one ran up a £250 repair bill when I asked them to do an investigation with an initial cap at £50. There is a guy running a repair shop locally though who I recently discovered, he charges slightly more than I would like but he does a good job, has gone above and beyond for me on one occasion and really knows his stuff. He I will happily give my money, the local shop not so. Now I think about it, there was a great shop where I lived up north who would regularly not charge me for small jobs. Nothing I did persuaded them to charge me. Their stock was really low end due to being in a poor town so I used to just buy a box of CO2 canisters and a couple of inner tubes, I’ve got dozens of the damn things kicking around still, they must have wondered how I got so many punctures!