To Buy or Not To Buy

She's a social rider. She likes to do charity rides and group stuff of med-long distance, but her current bike is an old steel touring tank. No matter the engine her old bike would be hard pressed to go faster than 15mph. If she gets something that's not holding her back the hope is she can get out for more group rides.

AND...it will match our uniforms/bike shirts!! (If she wanted one).  That's really the most important thing about a bike for me. Haha!

I think she should go for it! She will enjoy riding SO much more!

The picture is a link to the page, but here's the specs table:

The original bike I bought was from Bikesdirect.com. You cannot beat the bang for the buck. Period. Unfortunately, the bike I wanted was out of stock for the next 4 months and I had to shop around the LBS's instead.  Go figure, the BEST deal I could get was at Motobecane Store (Cycle Spectrum).

Get it.   

If you do a search about Bikesdirect.com here on BT, you'll see numerous threads, and the overwhelming opinion is that they're a good, reputable company. They refunded my money immediately when I told them I didn't want to wait 4 months for my bike.  One thing though is that you can't call them. They're VERY good with email though.

Do they still do the fitting in the store if you buy online? Their brick and mortar shop is near home. I may stop tonight to ask more...

I bought from them too- Bikes Direct/Cycle spectrum have stores valleywide. They do a free fitting and free tune-ups. I use the store in Glendale and they are awesome & very patient! I paid less buying in-store, the same bike on their website was $300 more.

My hubby bought a Motobecane MTB and really likes it.

OK we bought it, at least ordered it from the local Bikes Direct LBS. They were able to match the Internet price. I wasn't aware that BikesDirect.com and Bikes Direct local shops are just separate franchises of the same business. The .com just is the franchisee of the Internet. They don't cooperate at all. They just order from the same distribution, so they can mostly get the same bikes/prices.

We figured the $70 in sales tax is worth the effort to build the bike and tune/maintain it for life, so it should be ready in 2 weeks or so.

Thanks everybody. I knew the poll would be weighted pretty heavily on the buy side (given the audience) but some of the advice was good guidance.