Summer Service is Busy!
Our online calendar is nearly fully booked for the summer
Hello and happy summer! It’s July, we’ve got the door open and the fans on, and our service schedule is nearly fully booked. As of today, we are booking full services more than three months out, a la carte smaller projects eight weeks out, and the 60-day calendar is fully booked through the next three months.
First off, we are sorry! This is not what we are hoping for either; we want everyone to be able to get service as soon as they need it, and we know the long wait puts a lot of people in a tough spot. We appreciate your patience and grace while we try to accommodate as much of the high demand as we can.
Second, we are happy to refer service to other shops in town. There are many other shops able to handle many of the types of service we do, and we are happy to help triage and redirect to where might have better availability. It is our priority to make sure your bike is working for you, so we understand having work done elsewhere is often necessary to reach that goal.
A little more on getting in for service in the busy season
We have offered a fairly conservative appointment calendar in our scheduling tool for the upcoming months due to our expected staffing, the number of new bikes we have to assemble, and because of feedback we received in the past about how slow the turnaround was once the bike was received in the shop. We hope that, while the wait will be long before dropping off, the bike will spend as little time in the shop as possible. This is our first summer with our new booking tool and we are continuing to work on how to make this better in the future.
If you haven’t yet checked out the blog post from earlier in the year on the new scheduling tool, I recommend you start there.
But for now, I wanted to drop in with a few clarifications and tips for getting service this summer:
Check back often: This tool does not offer any sort of wait list. This is a bummer. When someone cancels their appointment, it automatically reopens on the calendar for first-come/first-serve, so we recommend you check back on the calendar and rebook a new appointment if something opens up. The calendar is also opening new slots on a rolling basis, so the farthest-out appointments will continue to open on a daily basis.
Emergency Calendar: If you are experiencing a specific issue, check the “Emergency Service” calendar. We are trying to keep these appointments available sooner to address specific surprise issues.
Unrideable: If your bike is unrideable to you or you think you are experiencing a warranty failure, send us an email at service@familycyclery.com. We can bring in these types of services with no guaranteed timeline, but if it’s going to sit in your garage, it might as well sit in the shop. This is especially pertinent for warranty issues which are time-sensitive claims, and we end up getting a lot of those parts shipped from Europe, so it’s best to at least get the claim filed before it has to wait.
Walk-in Flats: If you just have a flat tire, we can accommodate that as a walk-in with estimated ~24 hour turnaround. If you have a flat on a conventional or other bike we are unfamiliar with, we can accommodate a tube replacement but may turn it away if it needs a tire due to stocking issues. If you are hoping for a while-you-wait flat, we recommend calling to check in first to see if we can accommodate it.
When in doubt, call/email: If you’re unsure which calendar the type of service you need, give us a call or email and we can help advise. We also are happy to look at your bike quickly to help assess how urgently the service is needed. We prefer a heads up if you are planning to drop by so we can be best available to help you, but if you are in the neighborhood already, feel free to try. We are also available to provide resources and tips on how to monitor your own chain, brake pads, etc at home. We are here to support you!
Any further questions? Drop us an email service@familycyclery.com