We're all used to the lottery of how long it takes to buy something at Halfords, what we call the 'Halfords wait'. Tills are often left unattended whilst staff seem to be too busy doing something else than taking money. But this morning was particularly interesting when i took my bike into Balham brank for a pre-booked bike service (there was a 3 weeks lead time for this) only to be told that this booking was an assessment of what service was needed, not for the actual service. Aside from the ludicrous and customer time-wasting nature of this approach (unique in bike servicing as far as i can tell) my particular frustration is that this is far from clear on the booking page. The manager confirmed that they had a lot of customers coming in completely unaware of this. And that they only employed 1 mechanic so there was an 8 week (8!) lead time for doing any work. Needless to say i have now found several other bike service centres who can do perform the work - that Halfords seem to find so difficult :) - within a week. Perhaps Halfords might consider (1) employing more than 1 mechanic (2) telling their customers clearly about lead times and what they are actually booking. It's hard to imagine a retailer surviving for long at the moment with the sort of service that Halfords provides. I, at least, am no longer a customer.