2006: A SHIMANO ODDESSY

A few months ago, I decided to upgrade o the 2006 Dura-ace 10 speed drive train (shifters, derailers, cassette, and 10 speed chain). Now this would sound pretty easy and it started off that way. I picked up a new cassette for a very good price but then I started looking at the shifters. Now when you start dealing with high-end just about anything, the prices get well, up there. For some reason the dura-ace shifters are quite a bit more expensive than the Campy Record shifters (retail $375 compared to $430.99).

Now as I was looking around ion the internet at all of the major bike retailers, I noticed they had one thing in common, the shifters were always $430.99 while the price on the record varied from site to site. Interesting. So I went down to my LBS (where I spend most of my money) and let’s just say the price they were told to charge was more than $430.99. Now I’m not a cheap person and I spend my fair share of money on bike stuff, but one thing I don’t like is getting screwed. There are certain places I don’t shop anymore because I got royally screwed for quite a while, but that’s another story completely.

Back to the internet and a breakthrough, I found a site that had the shifters for $384.99. Not bad but when I went back to the site the next day, boom, the price was $430.99. Just what the hell was going on here? The answer is not one anyone wants to hear, price fixing. If you don’t know how price fixing works, here goes. A manufacturer gives a dealer a suggested reail price for a product they make (MSRP). Now you’ll see this on most things you buy, there’ll be a MSRP and the price the retailer decides to charge you. If they go below the MSRP, they’ll make less profit but they’ll probably sell more volume and in the end make more money. In the case of price fixing, if a retailer decides to sell a product below MSRP, the manufacturer will “blacklist” them and deny them the ability to sell any of their products. This forces the retailer to sell the products at MSRP or risk being cut off from the distributors if they find out. This would be a big problem for a bike store because the two main manufacturers of bike components are Shimano and Campagnolo. If you lost on of them, that would not be good. A good article on this can be found here.

Now I’m pissed. I feel like whatever I do, I’m getting screwed. I could switch over to Campy, but my wheels already have Shimano hubs and as a friend of mine found out, that opens up a whole world of problems trying to mix and match Campy and Shimano. With that out of the question, my only other options were to pay the high price or try going global. Dealing with web sites from other countries brings its own set of problems. Most of the time its in other languages plus you’ve got to convert the prices to US dollars. In other words this has become a big, epic, pain in the ass.

This story does have a happy ending (for me at least). Thanks to a German website, I got a ridiculously good deal on the shifters. $305 and that includes shipping!!!

In fact you could get an entire group set for about $1000 depending on the exchange rate. I’m still pissed at Shimano for forcing me to go to Germany to get my bike stuff (not that there’s anything wrong with Germany but I would have preferred to buy my shifters stateside) So in the end I screwed Shimano buy getting an amazing deal but I had to go to Germany to get it. Unfortunately, I also screwed my LBS by not spending my money there (I tried to make it up by using my $125 savings from the shifters to buy some Kestrel Handlebars from them)

I wish all of this could have been avoided but I had to do what I had to do to prove my point. All that Shimano accomplishes by “regulating prices” is annoy everyone involved.

IF YOU WANT TO STICK IT TO SHIMANO AND GET A GREAT DEAL GO HERE