Retailer Name: Performance Bicycle
Website: www.PerformanceBike.com
Continue reading for my thoughts and opinions on Performance Bicycle, a brick-and-mortar and online retailer for road and mountain bikers, and triathletes… (Yes, there’s a special Triathlon Store and even a Commuter Store in there.)
Table of Contents
Product Selection and Availability
As you’d expect from a bicycle retailer, Performance Bike has a good selection of most mainstream bike parts and accessories. You’ll find component groups from SRAM, Shimano, and Campagnolo, parts from Ritchey, Thomson, Michelin, clothes from Pearl Izumi and Sugoi, plus tons of other stuff.
Compared to Nashbar.com, Performance Bike has a better selection of newer and high-end parts. If you want it, there’s a very good chance that Performance has it.
Also, Performance Bike makes great clothing. I highly recommend their jerseys, and their bib shorts have won the Bicycling Editor’s Choice Award. (I absolutely love the “Performance Classic Short Sleeve Jersey” – it looks plain, but it’s very comfortable.)
Pricing
The pricing is pretty standard for an online retailer. There are good prices on regular stuff (right on par with Nashbar), but Performance Bike doesn’t have the “closeout” deals that Nashbar does.
Performance clothing is always a good deal though. The Classic Jersey is listed at $30, but usually on sale for $20-25. The Elite Bibs are listed at $75, but usually on sale for $65.
Overall the prices are simply “good.”
Discounts & Coupon Codes
To get the best deals at Performance Bike, you want to use their coupon codes. There is almost always some sort of discount, and sometimes it is a “20% off orders over $100” which I love!
I’m also a member of the buyer’s club called Team Performance. To join, all you have to do is pay $20 per year, and you get two great benefits. First, you earn 10% cash back on all purchases (in the form of points that can be applied to future orders.) Second, you get a free upgrade to FedEx 2-day shipping on each order.
Team Performance is awesome! If you spend close to $200 per year, it is very worthwhile to join. (Just join sooner rather than later, as it could take a couple days to process your membership.)
If you time your orders right, you could end up with an effective 30% discount and cheap shipping!
Ease of Use (Website and Shopping Cart)
From a design perspective, the Performance Bike site looks great. There is a lot to take in, but I love the clean white and blue color scheme, and the navigation menu is nice.
The navigation menu is slightly different from the norm, with categories like Build, Wear, Train, Maintain, and Equip, but it makes sense once you scroll through it.
When you click through to a list of items, it’s usually sorted by brand or by price (high to low.) But you can click links right above the list to change the sorting method to something like price (low to high). It’s easy.
But I have one complaint with the item lists, and that’s that the items aren’t listed. Rather, it’s more of a thumbnail display, and when I go to click on a link, the photos I accidentally scroll over enlarge for a preview, and then I can’t see the link.
Once you get to the product detail page, things are simple. There is a big picture and an item description. Additionally, each page includes a product review function where customers can leave product reviews right there.
The reviews tend to be pretty helpful. And I have seen a wide range of reviews (from one to five star ratings,) so I don’t think they censor the reviews.
To finish things off, the shopping cart and ordering process are simple and intuitive.
Overall I like the website, as there is just one little issue that bugs me.
Shipping & Handling
Performance Bike offers pretty standard rates – from $5.75 to $12.50 for standard ground shipping. (The free 2-day upgrade from Team Performance is great. It’s like $5 free each time you order.)
Order processing is always super fast, and I’ve never had an issue with late arrivals or wrong items in the past 10 years of ordering from them.
Customer Service
As with most retailers, I’ve heard of a few horror stories with shipments gone wrong and all that stuff. But I’ve never had a problem with Performance Bike.
Once I did have to ship something back to Supergo (now defunct, but was owned by Performance) because it broke within a month, and I got 100% of my money back after one short email.
And I have a friend that buys a lot of clothing from Performance and returns stuff if it doesn’t fit (since the process is so simple).
So I’m going to keep ordering from Performance unless I have a really bad experience that turns me against them.
My final verdict is…
Performance Bike is a great place to shop for cycling gear. They usually have everything I’m looking for, and it’s the best value for me because of my Team Performance membership. If they carry the items I want, I always choose Performance Bike unless another merchant has a ridiculously better deal.
Just find what you want, wait for a 20% off coupon, and then buy it. Like I said, you could end up with a 30% discount plus a great deal on shipping.
Official website: www.PerformanceBike.com
Company: Performance Bike
Product: PerformanceBike.com
Reviewed by: Coach Levi
My Rating: out of 5
Date last updated: 2015-01-01
CoachLevi.com Advertiser: No.
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Levi Bloom is an experienced endurance athlete who has been training and competing for over 17 years. A former Cat 1 road and mountain bike racer (professional class on the regional circuit), he is now a cycling coach (USA Cycling Level 3 Certified) and sports nutrition coach (Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certified).
Performance can be hit or miss. Their “Team Performance” deals can be great, with 10% back on all purchases and the 2-day shipping. I’ve earned back a lot more than the $20 I paid with only a few orders.
Sometimes e-mails from them are slow but as long as the service is alright instead of bad, I’m ok with them.
Customer service was great back in the day (apparently 2008 and earlier before this review was written,) but has now gotten sad. They screw up your Team Performance points, don’t ship very fast, and simply don’t care to be helpful when you call.
I used to be a regular performance customer. I still wear a Performance Cycle fleece vest I purchased over 20 years ago. When the CoachLevi review was written they still offered good quality clothing and some decent deals.
However, they have gone downhill since then. In 2015, I find their regular prices are no longer competitive and their sale prices aren’t great either. Almost across the board, I find other online retailers to offer better pricing. Do yourself a favor and check out Bike Nashbar, Jenson USA, Backcountry, or Niagara Cycle before spending your hard earned money at Performance Cycle.
@Durango
That’s a bummer! 🙁
Performance bike is great. I traveled to their event a couple years ago and experience is good. Next time also will order.
PerformanceBike.com is horrible! It must be costing Performance Bike a ton of money for the horrible website and incompetent customer service. I was trying to place a simple online order. The order can’t be updated even 1 minute after the order was placed. There is no way to cancel the order. It takes about 2 days between emailing the customer service and get a response; a response that simply asks me to call customer service. I then replaced the order through a customer service rep; and even with my request for verbal confirmation from the CSR for the item, the wrong item was placed in the order. I am then started with square zero again. In the meantime, the cost is 3 days and counting and multiple manual efforts from the company to address my issues. And the simple order is still not done.
It feels like PerformanceBike.com is still operating in the early 90’s eCommerce.
Did performancebike.com pay CoachLevi.com for this review? It is so different from my experience.