Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop — Local services in Bar Harbor

TL;DL. The entire staff was freaking awesome, from the bike mechanics to the children workers helping out customer. However, I cancelled a children's trailer the morning of my reservation, but the company did not want to fully refund me. Manager/Owner ended up being rude after I told her it may affect my online review of the company. See below for more information

Suggestions for company: Please put in your agreements/acknowledgements that the children's trailer does not attach to the gravel bike.

This would have gotten a 5 star review....EXCEPT the unprofessionalism of the owner had changed my mind. I reserved a gravel bike and child's trailer for 4 days a couple of weeks before coming to Acadia. I only found out the morning of that I could not attach the trailer to the gravel bike and asked to cancel the reservation, which was obliged by the individual helping out with the rentals. I rode my bike for the next couple of days, but did not have the time to ride it the 4th day and returned it that morning, albeit paying for that day.

I asked the rental service assistant if my cancellation went through, but she had informed me that she needed to charge for the 1st day day since I had not cancelled 24 hours in advance according to their policy. She also told me that their website states that gravel bikes can not be attached to children's trailers, so no exceptions there. I have attached screen shots of the rental process that I completed on my phone, where the stipulations I agreed to never stated that I could not attached a gravel bike to a children's trailer. I was sent to this rental site without any information about their policies.

The owner/manager then got involved and I let her know that this will likely affect the google review of her business. Instead of being cordial, she immediately reprimanded me by saying something to the effect, "How dare you...etc, etc." accompanied by a non-cordial tone of voice. I did not stay much longer as she continued to speak down to me, and as I left she stated "these kids are working so hard". I actually completely agree with her, so I left a tip for the shop workers as some of these workers are probably working their butts off for a low summer wage.

In the end, she did eventually refund me the amount....which would have lead to a 5 star review based on the professionalism, but that was derailed. I did return the bike a day early, surrendering my $80 dollars and, in addition, a multi-day rental actually benefits the company as bike servicing is not necessary until after I return the bike. However, these facts were not considered during the confrontation. The only other argument from the owner/manager that I could understand is that my cancelled reservation prohibits the rental opportunity of the children's trailer for other customers. But based on the reservation calendar (see attached), there does not seem to be a shortage of...

I'll start with the positive: the staff we interacted with were helpful and friendly, even during the crush of bike pick-ups around 9 a.m. when they open. We needed help learning how the bikes worked (different shifter style than we were used to) and adjusting the seats (several needed a hex key). There was a decent selection of bikes and they were flexible in fixing a small mistake (we had ordered one extra small bike but the bike set aside was definitely NOT extra small!).

What was off-putting started with reserving the bikes online. The online portal does not make it clear what time frame you have reserved for each bike (we reserved a total of 6 bikes). This resulted in one of our bikes being reserved for a week but we only needed it for a day (oddly, the other 5 bikes of various types were correctly reserved for one day each). This was promptly fixed in person - thankfully.

The bikes themselves were in a mix of conditions. Two of the three e-bikes had soft brakes. One squeaked fiercely and my father-in-law didn't think it would have stopped had he needed to make a quick stop. (He owns a nearly identical bike so he is very familiar with how it should feel.) Two of the regular bikes also had soft brakes - the brake levers had to be squeezed almost completely just to engage some braking effect.

Two of the regular bikes also had misaligned derailleurs. The hybrid bike I was riding only had access to the smallest two (out of three) sprockets on the front and the largest five (of seven) in the rear. The front wouldn't shift at all to the largest sprocket and the rear would make a constant clicking noise if I shifted to the 5th largest sprocket (and wouldn't even get to the last two). My son had a similar experience with...

RENTERS BEWARE! Every year, my family and I spend a few days prior to the start of the new school year in Bar Harbor. Our annual tradition is to ride the carriage trails to the Jordan Pond House for popovers on the lawn. This year we decided to go light and left our bikes at home and planned on trying e-bikes. On our last day in Bar Harbor, 8/10/2022, we walked up to Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop in the AM from our hotel to see if we could rent e-bikes for a 1/2 day to continue our Jordan Pond House tradition to close out our 2022 Bar Harbor vacation. The line was out the door, but we decided to see if luck was on our side and jumped into line. After a 20-30 minute wait, we were able to reserve 4 bikes. I told the employee (Luca Rosa) that we needed to go back to our hotel and we would be back shortly and Luca recommended when we come back and give our rental slip to the employees outside who would then get our bikes. My kids were really excited to try the e-bikes on the carriage trails. When we got back, I handed the employee our reservation slip and they looked a bit perplexed and the employee asked Luca if he had pulled the bikes aside that we rented and he nonchalantly said “no”. We quickly discovered the store had rented the bikes that we had already reserved and at that point they were out of e-bikes to rent. The employee apologized while Luca just sat there and didn’t even look up from behind the desk. My kids were heartbroken! In summary, if you are headed to Bar Harbor and are planning on a bike rental, my advice would be to avoid the Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop! You don’t want to be left with a vacation day of ruined plans from a group of apathetic teenagers inability to manage...