Government Fix Your Bike Scheme

Yeah, you can never have too many politicians.

Not all of us did😬

S’funny, I was always totally against Independence, but seeing the way the UK government has acted recently, starting to have second thoughts.

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“ Vouchers are being released gradually to reflect our appetite for fraud which we are only just starting to realise after organised crime took all the free-money-vouchers in the first five seconds. More vouchers will be made available when we are shamed into releasing them rather than admit our mistake by the press.”

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Didn’t mean the specific you, but Scotland has devolved powers over Transport which I think this comes under.

I say think because it could come under Health (also devolved) or just government willy waving (definitely devolved).

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It gets a bit messy sometimes with who has responsibilities for what

Managed to get one of the vouchers as the website is back online.

Snagged two.

Seems to be offline again :frowning_face:

They’ve all gone from batch 1 now…

…still, looks like some people got in there to get their old dusty Cervelo from the back of the shed fixed :wink:

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Don’t make people redundant before the furlough scheme ends

and my old rusty Bianchi :grin:

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I am
Only jealous

Took my two bikes in. Maybe I’m not used to LBS pricing because I do most of my own fixes but it did feel expensive even with the voucher.

For anyone who missed it first time around, it’s back. This time limited to one voucher per household and if you got at least one before you can’t do it again.

https://fixyourbikevoucherscheme.est.org.uk/

Saying all vouchers allocated now.

How do you even register? Only when there are vouchers available?

I can see a log in but no register option.

“Fraud capacity limit reached, we will start printing money for organised crime at a later date.”

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I don’t think you’re far off. I got one to get my original old bike back on the road. So many people are cycling (I’ve sourced bikes for both my gf, and now her sister, since Covid happened) that I was sure it would get some use.

My local Evans were the only one’s with “availability”. I supplied my own 8sp cassette, own 8sp chain, got charged £20 extra for the brakepads they put on it (which are like butter), and a few weeks later I realised in clamping the seatpost, they’d removed the old rear light on it and that’s now lost. Other than literally wiping it down, I have no idea what they did. When I picked it up and all the cabling was still old and tatty, I demanded they change those, so that’s about the only thing that is “new” that I didn’t actually pay for myself.

I have no idea what the government got for their £50 at all.

I’d never use Evans for any issues I couldn’t solve myself on my nicer bikes, and this has reinforced that such a mindset is entirely appropriate.

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I used one for my daughters bike. It had new brakes, cables, pedals, wheels checked and a general service which came to around £70 in total, so £20 for me. This is my LBS and not one of the nationals. Bike runs nicely now and we got her moving from balance bike to pedals so I’m pretty chuffed.

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Think this is key, not all LBS are equal and not all chains either. I used to live near a Halfords that was really good, basically because the staff new their stuff and cared. Another one down the road I wouldn’t go near with a bike but if I wanted a loud exhaust…

Not all LBS are good, but probably a bigger hit-rate than the nationals. I know some LBS were not taking the vouchers because Joe Public were expecting them to fix a wreck for £50 and not even pay a £20 contribution. Those are probably the guys you want, if they refuse to do a bodge job for £50 when they know it will take £100 to do it properly.

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