I ordered a Vado 3.0 on Nov 28. The bike was delivered to the local bike store on DEC 4. Called the local bike store and was told the the bike "may be ready" on DEC 8... why it takes 5 days to assemble the front wheel, handle bar, saddle and few minor items? Why Specialized would not ship the bike to my house? I can assemble the bike myself like I did with my other bikes!
Like most service departments they perform the job based on first in, first out, or last come, last serve. That makes sense. Most likely there are other jobs (customers) that are in line before you. I asked my bike store to build a wheel for me. I gave them the wheel and the hub. They said come back in two weeks based on their service backlog. I questioned the length of time. Then they showed me the bikes in the warehouse that have been already dropped off for repair. I chose to learn how to build my own wheel instead. I built the wheel while watching a Netflix movie.
As far as shipping to your home. Trek/Dealer would lose quality control, and while you may be a reasonable person, imagine all of the unreasonable customers they might encounter on the phone with at home assembly problems that are created by the customers lack of knowledge, tools, experience, or downright dishonesty, not to mention manufacturer related problems.
Trek dealers have a good reputation to maintain as a retail store. Drop shipping to an end users home for assembly could hurt their reputation and bottom line. Witness all of the complaints on this board of on-line purchased bikes drop shipped with damage, missing parts, non working parts, missing options, etc. Add to that scenario incompetent and dishonest customers.
If I owned a local store, and had possibly a few hundred thousand invested in my store, I would not want to hurt my local reputation and increase my customer service load/complaints by drop shipping. Zero advantage to that.
