A-bike in Currys.
A-bike made its debut to London’s high street at Selfridge’s department store and Hamleys toy store sometime ago. These venues provided A-bike to have good amount of exposures to shoppers who had never heard of the fantastic bike before. The downside of these bigshot stores is their premium price tag. It’s £10 to £30 more than the A-bike distributer, Mayhem UK. And now, another bigshot joins the club. It’s UK’s major electrical appliance retailer Currys (and Currys digital). Surprisingly, they don’t ask for the premium. It sounds a good deal. Well, at least from consumer’s point of view.
If you look at Currys online shop, it says we cannot reserve and collect at your local store, and A-bike is only available for home deliverly. However, some Currys stores actually do have stock in store. I heard a report from a Japanese girl bought her A-bike at Currys (digital) near Bank tube station. So, why don’t you give a call to Currys branch near you to find out? You might get lucky and be able to bring one back home on the day, who knows? (Oh, don’t forget to buy shock-pump with meter.)
If you are ordering your A-bike online, by combinig those cashback services (e.g. quidco), you can get it even cheaper.
While real A-bike slowly spreading its market in UK, Asian fake counterparts never waste any moment. For example, A-Ride, one of the biggest players in chinese fake A-bike market, manages to infiltrate Japanese Amazon before real one does.(see above pic.) By the way, In the photograph in the amazon dipicting a pair with A-Rides in a train (pic below), can you see the girl is carrying the bike naked? Um…. It’s not allowed in Japan. Over there, folding bike has to be carried in a bag when the rider takes public transport with it. The boy’s doing alright in that sense. (I’m not sure about the thing in his bag though.)
Not sure about authenticity of the A-bike your saw in online shops and eBay listings? Ask in A-bike Central Forum. A-bike owners from all over the world will help you to figure it out!!
