On, April 18. 2009, I rented a rollerblade from a shop called "Spokes" at the corner of Denman and Georgia street near Stanley park. When I tried it on and rode it, left front wheel seemed to be a little shaky, at the same since I did not know much about rollerblades, I thought it was normal. My skills in rollerblading is in my opinion, is above intermediate, I dont fall, i dont hit anything.
About 1/3 point through stanley park, I was resting with my friends and checked my rollerbalde. The front wheel almost came off, I shook it a little bit and it came off easily. Now, I decided to go back to the shop, and I walked on the grass part of the road since it was hard to walk on the hard part of the road. I did not want to take off the rollerblade since I did not want to hurt my feet and I did not have my shoes at the moment (left in the car near the shop). Who knows whats on the road?
I reached the shop finally, I showed and explained what happened. This lady who was at the counter, did not say anything to me, just took it to the back with that bad facial expression on her face. A man came out, seemed to be the owner of the shop, and told me its my fault. He kept saying that he knows about the rollerblade and these rollerblade is brand new and things like this cannot happen. His argument was that the wheel came off because I hit something since the front part of the rollerblade near the wheel was bent. This metal part holding the front most wheel was bent during when I was walking on the grass part of the road when I was returning to the shop. He said It cannot bend unless I hit something. But think about it, 70kg male pushing down the rollerblade 'without' the front wheel is going to bend.
I did not want to pay for the repair fees since it is not my fault and why should I pay for the things that happened because of their lack of maintainance. Me and my friends stayed in there saying that we did not want to pay. He pointed me and my friends one by one asking if you want to pay or not. One of friend does not speak English and he nodded when he was asking, I did not know that at the moment. Just after that the owner just charged on my friends credit card, the whole amount of time we rented and the repair fee.
We were shocked that he just charged on the credit card. We had no choice but to cancel the payments on the credit card (that month's limit was max) and paid with cash. We wanted that money back since then wheel came off because of their lack of maintainance. The owned called the police and we were forced to leave the shop since "we were no longer customers since we paid all" and owned did not want us to be in that property." told by the police man.
It could have been a diaster if the wheel came of when I was riding down heel. They did not feel sorry, did not ask me if I was ok, just ripped off customers like that. One bad, unsafe rollerblade in 100s of rollerblades could risk one persons life. I doubt their maintainance job and services to customers. At least they should try to listen to the customers not repeatedly saying how many years they were in thie business and say like they know much better then us. Really bad business and we are never going back there ever again.
jaepil
burnaby, British Columbia
Canada
0 comments