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David Hinde

Posted: 14 Nov 2011, 10:37pm
by Teddy Two Teas
I was considering buying some wheels and potentially one of their bikes but a search on Google reveals lots of negativity.
I also asked in my LBS about him and got a 'no comment'.
They are quite near me and the prices seem to good to be true.

I hear bad things about the man but to be honest i dont want to go for a night out with the fella - i just want to buy some stuff of him.
I dont intend to use them again after i have bought the goods so am not really bothered about their reputation for customer service. I will also probably visit in person and see the whites of their eyes so the bad things i hear about their mail order 'service' wont be an issue.

Like i said - not really interested in their previous bad reputation - just interested to know how good their wheels and bikes are.

Anyone with any experience of David Hinde - good or bad?

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 7:50am
by philg
Plenty of experience over on yacf - search "Hinde" :shock:

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 8:08am
by eileithyia
Well he looks like the type of bloke you would not want to meet in a dark alley, having said do not know of his recent reputations. Dave used to race in many events i rode in the 80's we often chatted and he seemed like a genuine guy as far as anyone could tell.
What I do know is that his wheels seemed to be OK, after all he raced on his own wheels and anyone that size would have to trust his own wheel-building.

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 9:07am
by phil parker
I placed an order with Dave Hinde once - and it was the worst service I've ever had from any retailer!

The prices are good, which is what attracts most customers in the first place. After a few days of my order not arriving I phoned them to ensure it had been dispatched. It was an assistant I spoke to and it was clearly obvious that somebody had forgotten to send it or even process it, but instead of apologising and saying 'we will post tomorrow' the assistant became aggressive and insisted on using pathetic and ingenuous excuses insisting he had sent it and why I had may have not received it. It did arrive 2 days later, posted the day after my phone call on 24-hour delivery.

This was back in 2006 - and after my experience I researched others' experiences to find out exactly the same and on another cycle forum there became on long running thread on the difficulties and bad experiences of other customers, which included badly made wheels. They also had an eBay shop, which had lots of negative feedback, but they also used to give bad feedback back to the customers before eBay changed the rules on that - and when they did, their eBay shop changed their name! I don't know if they are still trading?

I would certainly not recommend them to anyone based on mine and others' experience especially if you mail order or may need after-sales service. Their prices are competitive and they must have a good turnover as they spend a lot on advertising. Dave Hinde did have a reputation as a hard man many years ago in the cycling circuit and things may have not changed - it's a pity he doesn't channel that aggression into business acumen!

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 4:53pm
by The Mechanic
I believe his latest ebay venture is fastpartsforbikes

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 5:12pm
by asterix
What I do know is that his wheels seemed to be OK, after all he raced on his own wheels and anyone that size would have to trust his own wheel-building.


Ah, now I understand :idea:

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 5:32pm
by Teddy Two Teas
Thanks for that.
Anyway - i had nothing else to do today so took a trip down.
The lad who i spoke to seemed very nice. There was a little bit of hard sell but nothing over and above any other retailer trying to flog a product.
The bikes looked good quality.
From your descriptions i think Mr Hinde was in the shop and 'dealing' with another customer. I was trying to overhear the interaction.
From what i could hear I think Mr Hinde needs to work on his soft skills maybe but otherwise the bikes seemed in good order.
As i have said - i wont be using mail order and have no intention of wining and dining Mr Hinde so will give Dave Hinde the benefit of the doubt for now.
Most of the online criticisms seem a couple of years old. Perhaps things have changed?
Would still like to hear from someone who owns one of his bikes - to me that is perhaps the most important thing for now.
I appreciate he has upset lots of people in the past but perhaps he has turned a corner :arrow:

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 15 Nov 2011, 9:32pm
by phil1965
i have used dave hinde.service was A1 had two bikes off him, mavic wheel snapped.he replaced free ....left hand sti broke replaced free nice group of lads work there and helpful

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 18 Nov 2011, 8:00pm
by Hastinger
I know you are going ahead anyway, so this is mainly for others who come across this thread. I too live near this shop, and did go in there a handful of times. Once was just to buy gloves (uneventful). Once to seek advice/buy a tool to help get a tyre on that I just couldn't fit by hand. He told me all tyres could be fitted by hand and I didn't know what I was doing. (Luckily a fellow customer in the shop came to my rescue there and then and showed me how to do it - even he said he had never come across such a tight combination, and yes he did in the end resort to the tyre lever.) The last and final time was to ask why he had built me a wheel with the spokes in the 'wrong' holes (ie crossing to the wrong side of the hub from the spoke hole), again he said I clearly didn't know what I was talking about and would'nt even look at the wheel in my hand! I had suffered loads of spoke breakages at the nipple end. I had enquired at a shop in Coventry (called John Atkins Cycles at the time) when I was down there with the bike, they took a quick look and showed me how all the spokes were leaning the wrong way and were obviously under strain at the nipple, and they showed me a wheel that had been properly built too and suddenly it was obvious. (I had no wheel building experience at this point, so it was all new to me. )So he left me high and dry. I was prepared to have a go at rebuilding the wheel myself as it was the cheapest option, so got a cheap jig, found some instructions from a magazine I think, and re-used all the spokes and built my first wheel. I used it on my commuting bike for over ten years heavily laden at times, bumping up and down kerbs, and suffered no more broken spokes. I was staggered at his rude attitude. Now I'm a good 15 years older I realise I should have gone down the trading standards complaint route, but that's life for you.

At work people often seek out my advice on cycling matters just because I am the token cyclist, and I reckon I must have now successfully steered about 4 purchasers of serious money bikes away from him. In addition none have ever gone there even for parts/clothing as a result of my tale.

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 18 Nov 2011, 9:52pm
by g00se
I bought a pair of wheels from fastpartsforbikes - before I heard about the reviews. If I had read them before looking for wheels, I probably wouldn't have bought them.

However, they came really quick, and have been fine. The good thing is that they were Hope RS Monos and I think they were mis-priced at £130 rather than £270 they were selling others sets for...

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 19 Nov 2011, 1:54pm
by Ontherivet77
I bought some Mavic Aksiums via mail order from Hinde and co, initially they were polite while taking my money, but after waiting 4 weeks and attempting to cancel my order I realised that they were a bunch of ****. If you buy a bike from them you better hope that you do not have any problems with it because in that case I think you will get the runaround. Also, in the long term it won't hold it's value as well as a Spesh or Trek etc, which means a big hit if you sell it later on.

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 20 Nov 2011, 5:21pm
by Teddy Two Teas
On the whole it seems the negatives are outweighing the positives.
I think Ribble or Dolan may be getting my money instead.

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 26 Nov 2011, 2:39pm
by Trikeyohreilly
I had an M3 (about £1100) from them a long time ago drawn by the impressive package for the money they wanted. It was about 1999 possibly 2000 and I didn't know half what I now know about bikes. I rode it for possibly a year, year and a half before the rear wheel would come out of the dropouts under heavy acceleration. There attituded seemed to be "we are awsome, you a worthless, pointless customer. Leave us alone"

Unfortunatly none of my three LBS could fix it. Said it was bad design. Had to strip it for the parts and put the frame in the bin. This hurt less than there attitude.

I would never go near them again.

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 26 Nov 2011, 3:11pm
by Steve Kish
Dave Hinde caught me for a minute in the National 25 on the Southend Rd in 1985. I thought I was going well until he came past me in a 135-inch gear!! :mrgreen:

Since then, and not knowing that he's behind fastpartsforbikes, I've bought a couple of bits from him that arrived promptly and were just as described.

That having been said, I've also seen a few bad posts about fpfb.

Re: David Hinde

Posted: 27 Nov 2011, 6:16am
by Tonyf33
FPFB wheels are of variable build quality from what I've heard/read but you can bag some bargains. Bought some cheap hoops for a friend last year for a shade under £40 posted, they were out in places and the hub need a tweak but at that price you couldn't grumble. I would however be a smidge annoyed if the same process were applied to more expensive wheels. Given all that I've had some very nicely built wheels that came to me 2nd hand in the past.

if people aren't happy with a product I can never understand why they wouldn't want to address that issue to its ultimate conclusion???