Why Free Tune-Up for Kids?

For, closing-in on 2 decades now, we’ve had the unfortunate privilege to see a lot of dysfunctional families dragging their drama into our shop. One of the milder, yet most pervasive manifestations of poor family dynamics, displayed in our presence, routinely plays out like this:

A kid’s parent/grandparent sees a Bicycle Shaped Object (BSO) at a “Discount” store, while they’re buying groceries, automotive supplies, or maybe a TV. They make the common mistake of assuming that they are buying a “New Bike” and therefore will be purchasing years of trouble free fun for their little nipper.

What they don’t realize is that BSO’s sold at these non-bike shops are NOT the same quality as real bikes sold at bike shops, and often they are not correctly assembled.

Or perhaps the same parent/grandparent finds a “Deal” online and decides that they can assemble a bike out of a box themselves, after-all they once assembled a gas grill, “How hard can it be?”

Then, their child is given this thing, that looks much like a real bicycle, and it disintegrates beneath them as they ride. (This is where it gets ugly) The hapless child is then blamed, “You are too rough on things! This was a brand new bike!!”

The child gets the blame, and is confused, “Maybe I am just a bad person?”

The parent does not understand that they have set-up their kids to be blamed for this failure.

This child-blame happens a lot, we’ve seen it. Kids are expensive, that’s why most families make their own, but beyond that they are costly to maintain as well. Once a BSO is correctly assembled it will function OK, it just won’t have the trouble-free longevity of a Bike Shop Quality bike.

Because we are weary of children being blamed for the unreliability of the bikes they are given to ride and we want them to have fun on their bikes, we now offer free Tune-Up adjustments on kids bikes that come in for other service, so the kids aren’t caught in the cross-fire between ignorance and cheapskatedness. **We are NOT, however, offering to correctly assemble bikes for free that have been slapped together in ignorance. For such kids bikes we offer a discounted-just-for-kids Reassemble Correctly service for bikes purchased elsewhere.

There are toy’s that are just trinkets of cheap entertainment, then there are “toys” that are instruments of developmental progress. A bicycle is a catalyst for multi-faceted learning and life-enhancing experience, hardly just a “toy.”

We hope the bikes you buy in the future, for the kids in your life, come from West Trails Bicycles, where we sell bikes that are correctly assembled, and will last not only for the first child on it, but also as a hand-me-down to the next little-adventurers. Meanwhile, we want to help your little one to have fun and to spare them the undeserved blame that a gift of a BSO usually brings.