I previously posted regarding unsupported e-bike systems being booked into our workshop.

We are currently having a lot of people booking bikes into the workshop that have e-bike motors and batteries that we don't support. The problem with this is we have no way to tell how safe they are, and so to protect our staff, customers and stock we have decided not to accept any e-bikes into the building that have any motor/battery system that we don't support. The problem is there is no way to prevent these bikes from being booked in, short of manually contacting every customer that books a bike in (which defeats the point of an integrated workshop booking system). Because of this we have now had multiple occasions where we have had to turn customers away at the door, leaving them unhappy and damaging our reputation as a shop, and can end up putting our staff in unpleasant situations with unhappy customers. On our own website we have stated that we will cancel workshop bookings on unsupported bikes or if they do not include bike details, however it is possible to book bikes in through BMBI directly, without visiting our website.

There is currently no way to regulate what is being booked in, and there is no way on BMBI to clearly show our terms and conditions of workshop bookings, or any way to confirm customer agreement to these terms. That coupled with the bike information field being optional rather than mandatory, allows people to book bikes in with no information, meaning we either have to manually contact every customer, or turn people away at the door.

The ideal solution to this would be to have the option to display a list of terms, along with a check-box for the customer to confirm that they have read them. This could either be a document to upload or a custom text field. This would cover our backs, meaning if someone still brought in a bike that was unsupported, we could refer to it and prove they agreed to the terms. Additionally having the ability to make the bike information box mandatory would help a great deal, so we know what bikes we have booked in and if we are able to work on it or not.

This is a matter of great importance to us, as we have already had to deal with multiple very unhappy and unpleasant customers who have turned up with their bikes, but the only alternative is to accept potentially dangerous bikes into the shop, which could cause harm to staff, customers or start a fire, which in any scenario is not a good outcome, but given the number of other bikes that we keep in stock, the results could be catastrophic.