In spring 2016, we stayed 9 blocks from the shop and wanted road bikes for staying in shape before…read morea big "sportif."
We couldn't believe we'd found a nearby shop carrying road bikes at a decent price (45E the first day and 20E after). (A specialty road-bike-rental competitor was way on the south edge of town & 60E/30E.)
AlloVelo isn't really a road-bike store (all-purpose neighborhood bike store), so the selection isn't huge, but it got us through (1-2 each 49cm, 52cm, 55cm, etc.). Sadly, they didn't carry any extra stems, so there was no swap available to adjust the fit.
The owner was very generous about what hours counted as a "day" (take it the night before, return it the morning after) and very flexible about duration ("keep it longer and pay me the rest when you return it").
That said...the bikes were not well-maintained.
God bless the owner for keeping a bike shop in the neighborhood, but I think he has emotionally "checked out" of his business. Many aspects of the business had a low-cost, low-effort vibe.
The tires on both bikes were dangerously bald and pockmarked.
The tubes (conventional pump-up) had, for some reason, been glued into the tires. (To get more life instead of throwing the tube away?)
We had our first explosive flat within the first 2 miles. (Pinch flat.) The glue didn't exactly make changing the tube easy.
Then there were the slow leaks. More like medium leaks - "get to the Bois de Boulogne, pump up, ride, pump up, limp back into town, pump up..."
But you never know when lack of maintenance on tires and tubes can develop from a nuisance into a danger, which is why they should be kept better-maintained.
And the dirt on the chains ... wow. Chains should be kept silver, not black like ours. It takes a lot of work, but that's part of why rental bikes cost a lot of money.
We took our bikes in mid-rental for a cleaning and were told they weren't dirty. Someone gave them a quick dash of lube and one or two rubs and insisted they were clean.
So we bought oil-based lube from them and said we'd do it ourselves. We got the chains silver again but turned two hotel washcloths completely black (sorry!).
You know the size dirt-clump that comes out of the treads of your shoe after you've gone hiking and let the mud dry? That's the size of black grease-debris clump falling out of the chains as we rubbed them down with a rag.
As a testament to the bikes and what maintenance the shop does do, they shifted tolerably before and reasonably well after the cleaning. The brakes worked.
We got through! And you probably could, too, if you don't mind doing the maintenance the shop didn't.
But if this sounds like a bit much for you, sadly, as of early 2016, AlloVelo is probably not the road-bike rental store for you.
(Also, funny story...as we bought the oil, we asked if they could sell us water bottles. They brought us two for free. Neat! And...asked us to return them with the bikes. At which point we realized they were "rental water bottles" and, given the state of the chain cleaning ... eww. We thanked them, took the bottles with us ... and bought some grocery-store bottled water to carry in our back pockets. All around, we got the impression that AlloVelo's idea of good customer service meant "low cost to the customer." They're nice folks ... they're just not for people who are finicky about their bike rentals.)
Note: 3 reviews about the shop itself (all 1-star & in French) are marked hidden. I suspect the owner may have flagged them as "inappropriate." I read French fluently, and they're not vindictive reviews - just dissatisfied. Similarly, I'm giving honest feedback because I genuinely want the neighborhood to have a shop people can be happy with. I would have given this review 2 stars (at road speeds, particularly while group-riding, bike chains and tires are a matter of safety), but am hoping that 3 stars will give my feedback a better chance of survival. To the owner: I bear you no ill will and hope that this review will stay up and be the beginning of some changes to make customers happier. Good luck in your endeavors.