Bike Nashbar was once the catalogue with the best deals and service. I just had an experience that perhaps signals a serious decline in quality and service. I bought a pair of Sun off-road rims with XT hubs for my dirt ride. After my first ride every single spoke on the rear wheel became so loose they flexed a half inch. Of course the wheel wouldn't turn either. I had a shop retighten the spokes to the tune of $20. I e-mailed and sent a letter to Nashbar explaining what happened, providing the repair receipt and requesting a response. They totally ignored me, zip, not even a tough luck or stick-it reply. Perhaps this is Nashbar's new attitude and approach to quality and customer service. Beware!

Nashbar was bought by Performance a few years ago. I think they fired all the old Nashbar customer service folks and let the Performance customer service department handle all the calls. They don't seem to care very much about the Nashbar customers.

Not to be an ass, but let me get this straight: You bought a wheel set over the internet, put them on your bike and then rode them BEFORE checking them out?!? Come on man, flex that single rotating brain cell and think about it: they are about quantity, not quality. Sounds to me like you should have checked things over before taking them for a spin. That way, if you did find an issue, you would have some recourse. However, since you have already mounted them, sounds like you're out of luck...

theyre not like they use to be ,Ive been with them for about 20 years & in the last 2 years havent ordered anything from them,the sales tax thing didnt help either,the sales are usually junk & odd sizes& parts they couldnt sell .

I had a positive/negative experience with them a couple of months ago.

I called up to see if they had the outside cover to the Nashbar pedals (which I'd bought 4-5 years ago at least), as without it, the pedal travels more side to side. I really didn't expect much to be honest. The guy on the other end of the phone was pretty abrupt: "Yes", "No","Right" were pretty much the only words he used grumpily in quick succession. You know how it is, you get the feeling you're being yessed to death -so I asked him if I could repeat what I needed: "No", and then he put the phone down on me. I really thought that was the last I'd hear from Nashbar.

To my delight and immense surprize, the right part arrived at my house less than a week later! Just goes to show....

I did not know Performance now owns Nashbar. That explains why they now charge sales tax. I had just the opposite experience with Performance Customer Service. I have a Performance house brand work stand i bought over two years ago. The bolt that holds the clamp together finally stripped. I called the tech dept. looking to buy a replacement. They sent me to Customer Service. CS volunteered to send me a whole new top end to the work stand with no charges. I'm impressed.

Curious about the whole Performance-bought-Nashbar rumor, I grilled a customer service clerk on the issue last week (while negotiating an exchange - the guy was clear and helpful though perhaps slightly less than ebullient). He explained that the owner of Performance bought Nashber, not that one company had bought the other. Apparently, this titan also owns Supergo. The customer service clerk, at least, was quite insistant that Performance and Nashbar still compete with one another.

Would any of you lawyers out there be willing to provide a primer on anti-trust law? I don't mean to cast aspersions, but... Particularly, could you charge someone with anti-trust violations when they control a segment of a segmented market? Though though there are pretty obvious economic consequences to lack of competition in the mail order/interenet segment of the market -- with hypothetical PerNashGo keeping prices just below LBS levels but still reaping some monopoly rents -- does the law acknowledge this sort of market segmentation?

performance, which is owned by Mr. Woka, is also owned by Nashbar. if they were the only two games in town, you'd have an effective monopoly. it's no different than having two companies under the umbrella of a holding company.

sd

Nashbar prices still beat my LBS. It's great to find cheap parts for my used bikes. I have returned a ton of things that I did not like, or the quality was not what I expected with no problem. In fact, I'm about to order from them later today.

Bike Nashbar was once the catalogue with the best deals and service. I just had an experience that perhaps signals a serious decline in quality and service. I bought a pair of Sun off-road rims with XT hubs for my dirt ride. After my first ride every single spoke on the rear wheel became so loose they flexed a half inch. Of course the wheel wouldn't turn either. I had a shop retighten the spokes to the tune of $20. I e-mailed and sent a letter to Nashbar explaining what happened, providing the repair receipt and requesting a response. They totally ignored me, zip, not even a tough luck or stick-it reply. Perhaps this is Nashbar's new attitude and approach to quality and customer service. Beware!

Would any of you lawyers out there be willing to provide a primer on anti-trust law? (1.) I don't mean to cast aspersions, but... Particularly, could you charge someone with anti-trust violations when they control a segment of a segmented market? (2.) Though though there are pretty obvious economic consequences to lack of competition in the mail order/interenet segment of the market (3.) -- with hypothetical PerNashGo keeping prices just below LBS levels (4.) but still reaping some monopoly rents -- does the law acknowledge this sort of market segmentation?

1. Antitrust hornbooks are 300+ pages. More authorative works run several volumes. So probably not. Usually Anti-trust attorney's only work in that field as its quite specialized.

2. Not unless you're the Justice Department.

3. All depends on what the segment is defined as, and where the political power of the moment is wanting to influence things. See the flippy flops on Satellite TV mergers for an illustrated point on this. But, remember if the speciality retail bike market as a whole was used as a segment this may have not even received a second request (assuming it hit the threshold for review in the first place).

4. Not for long- see Shimano's Internet Reseller's policy ect for the trend of the future.