Specialized Warranty Service Ride
My last Thursday started early in the morning when I discovered I had no coffee capsules and no milk. I'm a coffee addict; since Nespresso capsules are expensive, I buy Carrefour branded ones (they are excellent and very cheap) but these can only be bought in a store that is 8 km/5 mi away. To make the morning ride more interesting, I took a longer route for my Vado SL aka "The Bike". Just nice 20 km ride. I was in hurry because I was expecting a visit from a DHL courier (the DHL base is the next door, and I'm getting shipment from them early in the morning). Indeed! When I was back from shopping and just sat in front of the PC, the courier knocked on my door
Now, let me tell you about Specialized Warsaw brand store. A fantastic place, fantastic people. As they don't sell anything cheap:
- They are extremely polite, helpful, and make you feel good, willing to return; and the personnel makes you addicted to Specialized bikes
- They always have time for you, and servicing is done fast, often immediately
- They have almost the whole collection of Specialized bikes on sale, and a big stock of spare parts, something unusual nowadays. (Not that you could get any bike you needed)
- They offer daily rental at low price because they know you would buy such bike sooner or later (if you can afford taking financial consequences of rental it means you can afford the bike).
And the buyers can be found.
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A week ago, the Spesh WAW salesman told us the obligatory warranty service should be done "after riding 200 km but no later than three months post-purchase", to which my brother replied: "For him? That would be in a week!" How true! I rode to Specialized LBS in a week after I bought the Vado SL. (Of course, I made an appointment in advance, so the warranty service could be done on the spot).
Upon reaching the LBS, standard procedures including firmware update were carried out on my
Bike, and I had some half an hour to explore the store in detail.
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The white bike is Specialized Sirrus, the traditional sibling to Vado SL. Notice how similar to each other the two bikes are!
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Specialized Chisel, an XC bike. If I were a healthy person, I could think of buying this bike. (The other option would be the Specialized Diverge, a gravel bike, not pictured here).
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Specialized Epic, a racing XC bike. The cheapest model is priced at the level of say, Turbo Vado 6.0. Carbon fibre, of course.
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The brother of Turbo Levo, or Specialized Stumpjumper. The prices range from entry-level to some taken from the Outer Space (The RETÜL room at the right hand side is for matching bikes to competing cyclists, and for bike-fitting).
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I think Specialized do not see their future with fat bikes and leave that market segment to the Chinese (I hated the looks of Fatboy).
When I got my Vado SL back, I paid a symbolic fee of 35 PLN (less than US$10) but I still stayed inside the store.
There was a new customer who got a presentation of Turbo Levo SL from the leading salesman. The presentation was so good the client made a booking for the e-bike, and then he left. The salesman smiled at me, mounted the bike, demonstrated the suspension quality to me, smiled again, and then asked: "Want to rent the demo bike?"
Good, good salesman! He knew so well how to get customers hooked! We had a chat. I learned the bike cost PLN 28 grand (USD7350), and that Spesh people were offering fitting Levos with less aggressive tyres to urban customers.
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As I burn a lot of calories on the Bike, I had to eat on my trip (which is untypical of me). Sausage and bun, it's Poland, right? (There is a grocery store in Łady that is at the ideal distance to stop there on my trips eastwards of my place).
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Full power e-bikes taught me to ride for long distances and fast. I emulate that on Vado SL, which means a lot of effort to me. Actually, I return home exhausted! (The total distance for Thursday was 93 km).
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