Victor Pizarro Project Organizer Plan B, The New Orleans Community Bike ProjectOn 3/27/2013 10:20 AM, troy neiman wrote:
We have had this problem over the years also.
We have developed a 1 bike a year policy to try to avoid this with occasional exceptions for stolen bikes, etc.
We also have a max on our work trade credit that people can earn of $160. We figure that people can get a good, quality bike for that kind of money but they cant work off the full price of really fancy bikes that we need to sell to help pay our overhead.
We dont really have a limit on how much parts people can work for. We have such a high demand for our Work Trade program that we try to get everyone that needs a bike or a repair the opportunity to do so but if people seem to be abusing that then we will give others the priority for work credit over the abuser.
We do also sell used parts on the super cheap. We have had minimal problems with this over the years. We have a few people that fix up bikes on the side and come to us to buy parts and bikes. The problem with this is that they often scoff at our already super low prices because they are wanting to make a profit which is not our problem. I will often times give people working on their bikes a much better deal than these guys that are repairing for profit but if they are willing to pay for the parts then we dont really care what they do with it. The other problem is these garage repair guys will come in and try to buy all of our best parts for rock bottom prices. For example, our kickstands are $1 but this guy would come in and buy all 10 of our long aluminum kickstands and then we have only crappy steel and too short kickstands for people that live on their bikes with all their gear and need a good kickstand. So now its sort of a one kickstand, 2 tires, etc at a time and nicer parts and better condition cost more (steel kickstands+$1, Alum=$3). Seems to work pretty well because its still a great deal for people that need to fix their bikes and we get a little more cash flow from these guys even if we have to listen to them whine about the prices.
Then there is the ebay crowd which probably made a lot of money off of us for years but now we either sell it in the shop for a still cheap but more fair market value price or we will sell some vintage campy whatever on ebay ourselves and have more cash flow for our programs.
----- Original Message -----
From: Edward Kirkwood
Sent: 03/25/13 07:51 AM
To: thethinktank@lists.bikecollectives.org
Subject: [TheThinkTank] Policy on Profiteering from Community Bike Shops
I am curious if any of you have had problems with folks using community bike shops to run their own repair business? We currently have some folks who are abusing the privilege of purchasing parts with sweat equity volunteer time and then selling those parts to folks outside the shop. How does your shop police that?Allen Kirkwood
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