Ugh... Trek. Had a guy come into the shop on Saturday, of course I was the only one working. He was looking to buy two hardtail 29ers. One he wanted either XT or higher, or SRAM X9 or higher. The other was for his female companion and was looking for basic Deore or X5. Either way, he'd already been to Trek and Giant pricing bikes.
First question he asks is what our bottom prices on mountain bikes is - no specific model or description yet. Tells me he's already been to Trek and Giant. At that point I know I'm screwed. First he was pissed that we didn't have any floor models - because we don't have the budget to stock 10 $2k mtn bikes. So I show him our catalogs for the three brands we carry - KHS, Felt, and Kona. He'd never heard of KHS or Kona, and he immediately eliminated KHS even though they have the largest selection of the three. Kona didn't have anything with XT or X9, just X7 in a hardtail 29er.
So I go into Felt's catalog and find a bike with full XT. Now remember, he's just looking for components and not comparing anything else on the bike. Someone at the other shops had already convinced him that he should be looking strictly for components. I find the Felt Nine Race - pretty sweet bike. Retails for $2300. I work out a price that's around $2k. Save this guy $300, anyone should be thrilled with that. He throws the freaking catalog back at me, says Trek was way lower than that on, I'm assuming, the Superfly AL. Something like $1560 from $1870 MSRP... which was less than cost on the Nine Race. So I took off about the same amount of money as Trek did.
Two huge differences between the Felt and Trek: the Trek uses a Fox Evolution fork and the Felt uses the RockShox Reba fork. The Reba is more adjustable and has a lockout. The Felt also uses WTB wheels and the Trek uses FCC wheels. The WTB's are better. I also noticed that the Trek uses just Deore shifters, not XT like he was looking for.
The whole ordeal was just ridiculous.
He also busted out the "aren't all frames and bikes made in the same Giant factory anyways?" question that Steve, the guy at Giant pitches to every customer.
/rant
My wheels came in on Friday but they're for disc brakes and I'm using v-brakes so I'm swapping them for some WTB's laced to XT hubs instead. Now I just need a fork, headset, brake levers, possibly a front derailleur, crank, bottom bracket, front XT brake, and rear cassette. Haha... This is going to be fun (and expensive).
