Halfords Review

Overall Rating

They stock everyday car parts (bulbs, windscreen wipers, etc. )...normally ?

The employees I dealt with didn't seem to know anything about the products they sell and very little concerning the department they're on.

Review of Halfords - 1. Having experienced a bottom racket problem with my bike, I went to Halfords to ask what could be done to solve the problem. With apparently no idea of how to solve the problem the employee just said that the bike would have to be taken in for a week so they could make the repair. Something that's not particularly useful when you use your cycle to commute everyday. Another LBS was was used to sort this problem.

2. A special promotion by a cereal company was running, enabling purchasers of this cereal companies products to get a free service maintenance. Once again, returning to Halfords for this offer, my bike would now have to be taken in for 2-3 weeks.

3. Most recently I went to Halfords to ask if they knew how to remove the V-brake posts. The employee who i had discussed about removal of these posts didn't know but instead contacted someone else who said that it wasn't possible on this particular bike.A decent LBS later explained these parts could be removed and how to remove them.

These are just three incidents that I can recall from the top of my head and one may say that the booking-in period may be due to other work to be performed by the Halfords Bikehut employees. However, having worked at Halfords several years back on a different department as a temp, I witnessed this very attitude by the bikehut employees then and the workload then (which is probably the same as it is now) was very little. I'm not sure why Halfords like to book in bikes so readily due to the fact that their workload doesn't appear to be heavy. What's also quite amusing is how the bikehut employees have a bike maintenance stand with bike behind the counter giving the facade that they are actually doing work.

Upon asking questions about cycle parts, no information about these parts seemed to be actually known by the employee I asked and that was even before I specified the brand of the parts I was querying. I would advise that to find out information about a product Halfords sell, to either read their display (this may be slightly risky as not all the details appear to be correct) or to just do your own research about a particular product before you buy. I feel the latter case would be more beneficial as you're definitely likely to find a product that is better than the Halfords sold alternative at not much greater expense.