2016 Diamondback Sorrento Mountain Bike Price: $269.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 1-2 business days (Friday, Sep 11 to Monday, Sep 14) + transit Condition: New
no better, price or quality, than what you can get at target or walmart. but at least at those stores you can easily return it. the major problem of buying at the store is that they usually have a clueless person assembling the bikes. so you really need to go over the bike before using it.
I’m not sure about the slower shipping. I have Prime and just ordered something on Woot - it arrived 3 days later (over the holiday weekend) in a mothership-branded box – surprised the hell out of me! I haven’t ordered much from Woot lately so I don’t have a good reference point (other than the old days when it would take a week or two, or three).
I’ve been a pretty avid cyclist for 30 years and I’ve worked in a bike shop. Here’s what you need to know about buying a bike online:
(I’m writing this for a casual cyclist who doesn’t have a great deal of experience with assembling/adjusting/repairing bikes, as someone who does have this knowledge doesn’t need this guide)
The pros:
It’s probably cheaper than buying one at your local bike shop. [there are extra costs, though. See “cons”]
Teaching yourself to assemble the bike will absolutely help you with repairing and adjusting it yourself, and can guide you to a lifetime of working on bikes.
The cons:
Assembling it is non-trivial. Figure on a long afternoon (at least!) to do it right. If you buy a bike at a local bike shop, they’ll set it up for you, adjust it, fit it to you, and almost definitely say “bring it back in 30 days and let’s make sure everything’s still good”. This is because over that 30 day period, cables will stretch and everything gets broken-in, and it will need adjustment. If you take a mail-order bike to a local bike shop, figure around $60 for assembly and $50 for adjustments. Don’t even bother asking about fit – a proper bike fitting will take an hour and cost at least $75, and at that point you’ve negated any savings from buying the thing mail-order.
You’re on your own for repairs and warranty issues. I think the industry standard is 1y for parts and labor, lifetime for the frame (when bought through a local bike shop). If you do have a problem with the bike, that 1 year Diamondback warranty… you’re probably going to have to eat at least part of the shipping cost, and may have to pack it up and send it off to Diamondback for repair.
OK, so you’re still reading and really want to tackle this…let me give you an idea of most of what’s involved in getting a bike “road ready” from the box. This is from memory, so I may be forgetting something. You’ll need a full set of Allen wrenches and some open-end wrenches.
Unbox bike and make sure everything is clean and not missing. (20 minutes. There’s a lot of packing stuff)
True wheels and inflate tires. (This is one of the more technical tasks. The wheels can get “out of true” - basically, when you spin them, you’ll see a “wiggle” in the rim. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll make it worse when you try to fix it. As a casual rider, the only thing to do is live with it. Pump up the tires and make sure they hold air. (5 minutes. Don’t worry about trueing)
Install wheels. Now it’s starting to look like a bike! Make sure you have something to lean the bike on, because it doesn’t have a kickstand. A repair stand would be handy here, but since you don’t have one of those… (5 minutes)
Install handlebars and stem. This is pretty straightforward, but you’ll need some allen wrenches and to be careful. Look at pictures online to figure out what it’s supposed to look like. You’ll probably be redoing these later when you fit the bike (20 minutes)
Install seat to seatpost, seatpost to bike. This is just the install, you’ll adjust later. (15 minutes).
Install pedals. Note that one of them is reverse threaded. A pedal wrench would be helpful here, but some combination wrenches are thin enough to slip between the crank and the pedal. Make sure to grease the threads before you install the pedals. (10 minutes)
Adjust derailleurs (aka “the gears”). Go to http://www.parktool.com for some REALLY good tips here. This can be frustrating for a novice. Take your time. (45 minutes)
Adjust brakes. (same thing as the derailleurs) … 30 minutes
Test Ride. (5 minutes). Shift through all the gears, try stopping, make sure everything works OK.
Adjust fit. Do some googling for this. Make major changes, see how it feels, then make minor tweaks (1 hour).
…and there you go. About 4 hours to assemble your new bike. And in a few weeks, the derailleurs and brakes will need adjusting again.
And I want to be clear about two things:
First – This isn’t to dissuade anyone from buying a bike online, though it probably comes off that way. I just want you to know what you’re getting into.
Second – no, you don’t have to exercise all this care and go through everything when you assemble it. If you’re reasonably mechanically competent and hustle, you can probably slap it together in an hour. And you’ll have a bike that squeaks and wobbles and sometimes won’t shift when you want it to, and sometimes shifts when you don’t want it to … and you’ll ride it, but probably won’t be happy with it, and it’ll gather dust in the garage for a few years, then you’ll sell it on Craigslist for $50.
Excellent information!
I bought a bike online and was surprised how complicated it was to put the bike together (and I had done it many times before). I finally gave up and took it to a bike shop as you say. I was also surprised to find the wheels were not true and needed to be straightened (also as you stated). But after the bike shop “fixed it” for me, I was happy with my online purchase.
It depends largely on who is doing the shipping; Woot or the manufacturer. A lot of times these are shipping direct from the manufacturer/supplier, so Woot has no control of when they truly ship out.
Yeah, looks like they lowered the price $20. Might just buy it from Dick’s since I’ve got a coupon somewhere. After reading the post above about assembly, I’d rather leave the headache to someone else.
![[Preview 1]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/mediaservice.woot.com/44700481-2b71-40d4-8659-f380b3724e50._SY441_CR15,0,558,441_.jpg){kind=link}
