BEWARE IF RESERVING CARBON ROAD BIKES
My husband and I planned to do a 100 mile bike ride up the Empire State trail and reserved our bikes at Unlimited Biking through their website.
Two days before our reservation I called and spoke with the support team to make sure we had the right materials and were ready for the ride. We purchased our own tire repair kit, multi use tool, etc because they didn't provide those options. We asked for the pedals to be removed so we could use our clip in pedals for the longer ride. They assured us the bike would be ready.
We arrived at the Columbus Circle location at 9:15 AM (store opened at 9 AM) and were told the bikes are 10 minutes away. Well... 60 minutes later we're still sitting at the pick up location waiting for the bikes to arrive. When they finally arrived, the pedals were still on and the employee had a line of people waiting for their bikes. We asked for the tool and tried to get the pedals off. Seemingly fused to the bikes, the pedals could not be removed.
They asked us to ride our bikes to another location where they had more tools and people to help with the pedals. After arriving at the new location, someone spent the next 30 minutes changing our pedals.
I took off around the block to make sure my pedals were working properly and thank goodness I did. Halfway around the block my pedal fell out. I walked the bike back to the location and 20 minutes later tried to ride the bike around the block again. Same thing- pedal fell out. Back to the store for adjustments. One final time around the block and the pedal didn't fall out, but it was put on crooked so I knew it would eventually fall out.
Over an hour after arriving to the second location we were instructed to go back to the Columbus Circle location to switch out our bikes. We arrived back to Columbus Circle and they didn't have another bike in my size. I had to get one that was smaller.
They sent us around the corner to a bike shop to get our pedals put on professionally. Finally after 3.5 hours of back and forth, we were off on our ride.
At Columbus Circle, Christina apologized for our experience and said she wanted to make it up to us. She offered to let us keep the bikes overnight, but we had no place to store them nor had any desire to use them the next day. We declined and said we'd appreciate further discussion on how to rectify our experience. She said we could discuss when we returned the bikes later that day.
Upon our return, we couldn't get the pedals off again and had to walk to the bike shop around the corner for the pedal removal. Christina was not at the location anymore when we returned so I left my phone number asking for a call so we could discuss a resolution to our nightmare experience from the morning.
The next day I didn't hear from the company. I called the following day and they asked me to send an email so the solution could be escalated to their management team. I did that.
It's now been 10 days since we rented bikes and I had to reach out again for some resolution. They informed me that since we had an all day reservation and had the bikes for 6 hours (not the 10 that we had expected) the company wasn't going to do anything for us.
I'm a pretty reasonable person and I understand things happen. But to treat your customers like this and then say sorry- we're not doing anything for you is just terrible business practice.
I'd highly suggest someone renting road bikes in NYC go elsewhere.