swishcycles.co.uk

Steer clear and pedal away from Swish Cycles.

I ordered a Cinelli Hobootleg Geo from Paul at Swish Cycles at the end of July, 2019. It was finally sent out in September of 2019 and I received the unassembled bike in October 2019. It was advertised as being a stock Apex 1 build of a Cinelli Hobootleg GEO. The only way to pay for the bike was by direct bank debit. Naively, I went ahead with the payment. I had to insist, for weeks, to get an official invoice.Paul started giving me reasons why he couldn't provide the parts in the stock build (Apex) - as it was advertised on his site. This worried me a lot as I'd already paid. It took more than two months for him to send the (unassembled) product and I started to think that it wasn't going to happen. I was so worried that I enquired with my bank about forcing a refund, which almost went through. But Paul insisted that I do not go through with it. He gave many reasons for delays: parts were unavailable, he was ill, etc. etc. When the bike was finally boxed up, I was asked to pay hundreds of pounds in extra postage, well over the advertised rate. When I finally got the disassembled bike in a box, I started going through the parts and realised that this was not a usable collection of parts. Now, it's true that I'm more familiar with older bikes but something was seriously wrong here. I took it to my LBS and they looked it over and told me what was going on. It seems that it was worse than I could imagine. The 11-46 tooth cassette was too large a range for the freehub. The crankset sat too close to the frame. The 2.95 knobby tires were MTB Trail tires. The rim tape was barely wide enough to cover the spoke holes. The headset was incomplete!It seems like a bunch of random parts have been thrown into the box with what is quite an awesome frame / fork combo. Some of the parts were good quality, but they were just completely wrong. I've had to replace the entire drivetrain, the headset and both tires. Paul refused to offer any compensation and tried to convince my local bike shop to swap parts with him. I live in another country and this was not realistic. His emails became increasingly long and evasive. My local bike shop mechanic became very frustrated with Paul and told me, personally, that "this guy doesn't know what the **** he's doing." Luckily, my local bike shop was very helpful and worked with me to resolve most of these issue, as cheaply as possible. But I still ended up literally paying for Paul's mistakes.I was deceived and ripped off by Paul from Swish Cycles. I attempted, several times, to say to Paul that, "If he didn't have the know-how to put together this bike, that's fine, just let me know and I'll get a refund." But he refused. Dealing with Swish Cycles made me feel like a complete sucker.I have been ripped off. I can't speak for any other staff that might work at Swish (I was told that it was a one-man operation at the time of my purchase)....But - I can say, with utmost clarity -....Avoid This Business! Be wary, please.

Date of experience: Feb 09, 2020