Bike Barn Mt Maunganui

For a new business in a sector that generally has a very standard of high customer service, this place was extremely poor.

Being in the market for a new road bike, I went in to see what they could offer for my reasonably sizeable budget, only to be essentially ignored by what appeared to be the manager there. I walked in and the 'manager' was talking to what seemed to be a friend of his and he called the bike mechanic out the back to come and assist me. The mechanic was very nice but, by his own admission, had very little expertise in the area of road bikes. He pointed me in the right direction to their limited floor stock and showed me the price tags and told me that road bikes were the 'managers' thing and he would help me out with a bit more in depth information about what they had or could get in. I wandered around the shop for about 10 minutes waiting for the manager, who was still talking to his friend, to see if I needed any help, and at one point I even heard his friend ask him if he wanted to go and help me out to which he responded "no, it's alright". In the end I just left, manager still talking to his friend, and went to another store and purchased a $4500 bike.

Given the prices seemed to be on par with most other shops in the Tauranga area for like-for-like equipment, they are essentially competing on customer service for sales. Based on the experience I had, this a battle they are currently losing.