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Capitol Hill Bikes
Hello & Welcome
Capitol Hill Bikes first opened its doors in May, 2000. Co-owners Denise M. D'Amour and Laurie A. Morin, both Hill residents at the time, saw a great need for a bike shop to serve the community after Metropolis, the last bike shop on the Hill, unexpectedly closed its doors. Denise and Laurie, both novice cyclists, founded Capitol Hill Bikes as a bicycle shop accessible to all. You do not need to be an enthusiast to visit Capitol Hill Bikes. We'll welcome you to the Capitol Hill Bikes family! Yet, for the enthusiast, our staff is second to none in their knowledge of the latest cycling equipment.
We are the only independent bike store on Capitol Hill, and we work hard to meet all of your cycling needs. In addition to a large selection of bikes, we carry many accessories and cycling apparel. This web-site provides just a sampling of the products we carry. We hope you will drop by soon to see more, and meet our friendly, knowledgeable staff!
Shop Summary: CH Bikes is a decent shop, but I've found it lacking in stock and a bit in customer service. I've been looking for an entry-level road bike now for nearly a month. I was looking in August, when many '08s have been sold. The shop had nothing in stock in my size, which wasn't too surprising, but what was surprising to me is that they told me on 3 occasions that they could no longer order any more 08s, and that I'd have to wait until October to buy a bike. I found this strange, since 4 other shops in the DC area were still able to order plenty of 08 models. Also, for some reason, they have an extensive online catalogue that lists many many bikes that are not in stock and cannot even be ordered by the shop.
Customer Service: The area in which I find CHBikes lacking most is in customer service. The problem I've found, in general, with bike shops, is that with a lot of small shops like this, the employees tend to be bike elitists - that is, they seem to think they're doing YOU a favor by selling you a bike, rather than you doing THEM a favor by forking over your money to buy a bike from their shop. I've spoken with a handful of salespeople there, and it is hit or miss. Some are very nice, not pushy, and dont act like you're an inferior being since you dont want to spend $4000 on a bike. Others are complete "bike elitists" and seem like they dont feel like spending any time with you if you're only going to spend around $1000-$1400. In the most recent case of this, a saleswoman actually told me that if I was only going to spend around $1200, I'm going to end up with a "crappy bike like that sequoia over there, which sucks for you." I left and went over to Conte's in Arlington, where they had many road bikes available, many more available for ordering, and the salespeople were great, and told me some of the entry-level road bikes like the Specialized Allezs were great bikes.
Other Comments: If you're going to shop here, make sure you get a good feel for the salesperson dealing with you right off the bat. If they seem like a-holes, they probably are, and you should find a more friendly, personable salesperson, 'cause there are a few there. Nothing worse than an elitist a-hole salesperson when you're about to spend a hard-earned thousand bucks or so. And there are a few of those people at CHbikes, too.
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Shop Summary: As a Hill resident, I like the idea of a shop in this location and have had decent service from this shop but the prices are way too high.
I went in for a basic tune up and they wanted $80 plus parts plus cost of installation of parts. The work was done right and the turnaround was good (less than a week and it's early spring), but doing some research you can get tune-ups in most DC shops for around $40-50.
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Shop Summary: Every time I go into the shop I am rewarded for doing so. The place is full of great knowledgeable people that go out of their way to make sure you get what you want. My only problem with the place was the small service center and now they have a whole building five stores down to deal with just service. I've had my bike worked on there and they also built me a wheel that I have abused and beat and it is still perfect. I go there when I need a part, they might not have the part I need in stock but they ask the right questions to make sure that I get the part that will fit my bike. I have have been to bad bike shops in the city (revolution) and the only reason revolution is still in business is capitol hill is on the other side of the city. Buy your first bike here and your next one.
Customer Service: Great
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Shop Summary: Briefly, I want to say I've shopped for bikes at Capitol Hill Bikes several times in the last two years and have always found the workers to be helpful and responsive. They have a decent selection of bikes and have bent over backwards looking for solutions in my ongoing quest to fit my wife with bikes. Although I've ultimately only purchased one bike from them, they spent plenty of time trying to get a proper fit before and after the purchase. Their choice of accessories is good and I haven't experienced steering toward more expensive items.
Having purchased several bikes in the last three years (road, mountain and commuter), I've been in most every shop in the DC area and a great mountain bike shop in Davis, WV. There's nothing remarkably different about the prices, level of staff knowledge or technical capabilities of the staff that sets Capitol Hill Bikes apart from the others. If anything, I would say they are overall a more knowledgeable shop than the dominant Trek dealer in the city and actually listened when I told them what I needed from a commuter bike. Give them a try if you are shopping for a bike. But, as with any purchase of expensive and complicated equipment, arrive with some knowledge about what you want and what you can spend.
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Review Date January 19, 2007
Overall Rating 3 of 5
Customer Service Rating 3 of 5
Technical Expertise Rating 3 of 5
I visit this shop: Once a week
Visitors rate this review 1.00 of 5,
1 votes
Reviewed by: Adam
,
Weekend Warrior
Shop Summary: Full disclosure: I work here, so I'm giving the place an overall 3 burning peppers (what it currently is averaging anyway) to avoid contaminating others' reviews.,, just want to address a few points already made.
We stock bikes from Fisher, Cannondale, Specialized, LeMond, and Bianchi. We're trying to emphasize 29ers when it comes to mountain bikes; we've got Ritas, the new Caffeine, Cobias, X-Calibers, Rigs, and a Supercaliber or two in stock right now. For helmets, we've got Bell, Giro, and Specialized; for shoes, we stock Specialized and Sidi. Our stock tubes come from Specialized, as do our logo'd water bottles. Clothing lines include primarily Specialized and Descente, with a bit of Borah thrown in. We pride ourselves on proper fit, and guarantee any of our fitting jobs - $75, unless you buy a bike from us, in which case it's included - for as long as you own the bike.
Customer Service: We get more smiles than otherwise, but I'll let y'all judge that. If you think something's fishy, please bring it up! General manager is Chris, sales manager is Travis, service manager is Patrick. If the right guy to talk with isn't around, their cards (with e-mail addresses) are right on the front counter. Absolute worst-case, shoot an e-mail to denise at capitolhillbikes dot come... she owns the place. We'll try to take care of things -- and we just plain don't know you're unhappy unless you say something. Most of our weekend crew are folks with day jobs who know & like bikes. Nobody's in the biz for the money; we want to introduce newbies and support the sport we love.
Other Comments: WalterN, thanks for posting the original info on the shop!
I've no idea why we said it would take three days on a rubber swap unless the tires in question had to be ordered. We'd rather do repairs while you wait whenever possible due to severely limited storage space. We're opening a new service department five doors down at 719 G Street SE. With the increased capacity, we expect peak turnaround times will drop from over three weeks to less than a week. Tire and tube issues will continue to be done on the spot.
We go by the clock on our wall for opening and closing. It happens to be the same as the clock on my cell phone, so it isn't like we're twenty minutes behind. If you get there before we open and we've got a few mniutes to spare joking around with the door locked, please keep in mind that hey, we aren't open yet.
Thanks for drawing my attention to things that might need changin' and making your opinions known, even if not to store management in time for us to try to fix the issue. If you do swing by, tell P.A. you saw his review on mtbr!
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