The Importance of Buying Bikes From People Who Have A Vague Idea Of What They're Doing

In Britain, the Argos retail chain can expect to make more money than most of us even realised exists over the Christmas period as millions of people queue for hours for goods chosen from the in-store catalogues and the over-worked staff (strange how they only seem to have six people working at the busiest periods) try their best to deal with the maelstrom.

A fair bit of their revenue will be coming from the bikes they sell - there are several in the catalogue, ranging from the ultra-cheap to a few hundred pounds. But customers should be wary: Argos is categorically not a bike shop, and it doesn't employ bike mechanics able to assist purchasers when it comes to setting up the flat-pack bikes. It does, meanwhile, provide handy little sections full of information in the catalogue. They'll tell you everything you need to know, surely?

Er - perhaps not. Argos are currently running an advert featuring a Raleigh "mountain bike" (it's not really a mountain bike, though Raleigh do produce such things - it's a bike-shaped-object). The trouble is, they've put the forks on the wrong way round which is going to make the handling, well, interesting. So the moral of the story is: if you really must buy a bike from Argos, don't believe a single word in the catalogue when you put it together - and if you don't know enough about bikes to be certain you've put it together properly, wheel it down to your local bike shop and ask for their advice.