Aspen Velo Bike Shop Review

Dangerous mechanic and irresponsible and dishonest owner. Brought my mountain bike to fix a chain falling off sometimes. Left bike for my wife to pick up since I had to return to my home town. While she was wheeling it home the wheel came off. We called the mechanic and he quickly acknowledged it was his fault. Apparently the hub assembly had come out. She of course, could of been seriously injured if she rode the bike. Mechanic supposedly looked for the missing part but couldn 't find it. Said he would call me back and didn't. When I reached him he says: "Yeah, what do you want." I spoke with the owner. He suggested I find a dealer who sells the part and he would reimburse me. When I couldn't find the part where I lived, he responded we aren't going to to do anything about. Reported them to the Better Business Bureau. The owner lied and said he didn't know of me or the bike. Therefore, what a dangerous mechanic and irresponsible, dishonest owner. When asked to be responsible they seem to have an awful, spiteful if I may suggest, attitude towards customers. Stay away for safety and aggravation! In my view, a store with their level of irresponsibility should be closed down for public safety.

These guys are friendly - they are knowledgeable, mature, affable, and experienced road riders and professional retailers. The two bikes that we rented were new and in excellent condition. I inadvertently left my peddles at the shop, and they tracked me down and shipped them back to me with no hassles what-so-ever.

We stopped for some local info on the mtb trails, they didn't know much but were very friendly.

Great experience overall. The owner was extremely helpful and courteous.

We ve been renting bikes from Luke @ Co for years. They ve always treated us like family, and have been extremely helpful and accommodating.

Their gear is top of the line and constantly updated. Even have strollers on site if needed.

The guys are experts on all things bike, and go above and beyond with trail tips and recommendations.

Highly recommended!

Went to fix my bike , they say one price and when I went to pick it up they tell me other price . So rude . Didn t like it at all .

Pretty terrible. Asked about the capability of one of their hard-tail demos (looking for things like fork travel, headtube angle), and the guy responds
"depends on the skill of the rider. I have customers." And then hung up. Sounds understaffed, and lazy/rude.

Immediate greetings. Aspen Velo, has welcoming and friendly staff that offer assistance instantly. Their location is easy to find and very accessible. I choose, Velo, for any of my bike repair needs. Thanks for being great!

Fast, friendly service--and the lowest price in all of Aspen (for the thing I needed done).

I've owned hundreds of road bikes and I travel often--and have homes in three states--so I've got more experience than the average Joe when it comes to (a) working with a lot of different bike shops and (b) having a bike boxed and shipped--or received and assembled. Because I've had these two things done hundreds of times.

I recently bought a bike from a guy who lives in Aspen... and I live in Hawaii at the moment--so I needed the bike--an $8,000 Trek Madone 6.9 SSL Project One--boxed up for shippiing. (The shipping part is super easy to arrange on your own via shipbikes.com once it is boxed and ready.)

One thing I've learned from doing this so many times is that bike shops try to charge a super wide range of prices for this super basic and super easy thing--so you always want to check around by phone to find the most reasonable price. (I've paid as low as $20 to have this done in the past year--but $40 to $60 is really a more fair and common range for boxing a bike--which shouldn't take someone who knows what they are doing more than 15 to 30 minutes--and the box and the packing materials are all free to the shop (since they receive bikes in boxes every single day from their bike vendors). MOST of the boxes and packing materials end up in the landfill from these new boxes--so boxing up used bikes for shipping is the #1 way to recycle those materials.

Unlike a big, spread out city (like Houston or Los Angeles), Aspen is a small, restort town in the mountains... that happens to have a very high concentration of bike shops. So every shop in town was an option. I started with a couple of the bigger / more well known shops in town:

The Hub was my first call. Spoke to a guy named Jeff. Told him exactly what I needed... and he said, "We charge $100 for the bike box--and $100 to pack the bike. $200 total." To which I mediately replied, "So, wait a minute: Are you telling me that you charge $100 for a box and packing materials that you get for FREE?" "You're welcome to use another bike shop," replied Jeff. (So I did.)

Aspen Bikes was also super high (literally and figuratively) @ $150. Next was Ute City @ $125. Scotty at Aspen Cycle was a bit more reasonable @ $85--as was Patrick at Aspen Bicycles.

But Cool Hand Luke at Aspen Velo was the winner--both for price and customer service--@ $75 total--which, though a little high on the national level--is apparently rock bottom in Aspen. :) And unlike most of the other places I called, Aspen Velo did not have a long, pandemic-related wait time. A couple of placed told me "next week"... they did it the next day.

To sum up the process: (1) buy bike on ebay or other site, (2) call around in the city / area where the bike is located and find a good, fair price on boxing the bike up, (3) get the bike box dimensions from the bike shop that boxes it up, (4) go to shipbikes.com and set up and pay for the shipping, (5) email the shipping label to the bike shop to have them print it and tape it to the box, (6) FedEx comes the next morning and picks up the box and ships it--which usually costs $65 to $75 for a typical road bike.

In my experience, a shop that over-charges for boxing up a bike is probably going to over-charge for everything else. If I had called the same bike shops in Aspen and asked for a price to do a tune up--or re-tape my bars--my results would likely be exactly the same--or very close. The reality is that some people just don't "shop around", so a well known / established bike shop can often get away with this type of thing.

Half way down the Hunter Creek trail, the seat came completely loose. Made for a rather uncomfortable "rest of the way" to Basalt. Thought they'd offer something but only said, "must have come loose on bump." We have visited Aspen for 30 years. Going somewhere else.