Bike to Work Scheme Not Partnering With All Stores

Jonesy101

note: biketowork.ie / cyclescheme.ie / travelhub.ie are a middle man that process this for your employer. They seem not to partner with all shops and charge you or the shop admin fees and can take 5 weeks to process.

My large American employer partners with biketowork.ie aka travelhub.ie to process the bikes, but they do not partner with all bike shops and therefore I cannot get the bike that I want, there is also about a 5 week waiting period to get a one4allvoucher which is restricted to the shop you buy it from.

All shops are eligible in the EU such as wiggle.co.uk, chainreaction, decathlon, halfords etc but biketowork chooses not partner with an online shop and halfords does not partner with them probably because of the massive wait time and pain in the arse.

Has anyone else either lobbied their company to pay the shop directly through payroll which is what smaller companies would who dont have masses of processes and redtape or gotten around the biketowork.ie middle man somehow, it seems very frustrating that a company appearing to be good to its employees but actually reducing/restricting a government led initiative by partnering with one of these for profit middle man compaines.

the official list of shops that are eligible can be found at the Office of Government Procurement site.

thanks in advance!

MojoMaker

The alternative could be that they don't offer the scheme at all, so be careful what you wish for.

Not every employer operates it (sadly) and there is no obligation upon them to do so.

What specialist bike can you not get from more than one provider? Boutique brand somewhere in Europe?