I feel your pain ... After trying to deal with shops to repair/build wheels (long story, won't bother with details), I decided to rebuild my own wheels. Came across this website, where you can buy a book (guide) teaching you to do it properly. Bike shops make it sound like rocket science, but actually it is not that difficult. I see you struggle with a MTB wheel. Somewhere in the guide the guy (Roger Musson) explains that factory build wheels tend to go out of true quite quickly. He recommends rebuilding the wheel ASAP to not have problems. He states as well that a well built wheel won't "buckle" easily . He builds wheels for the some professional DH teams, so I figure he knows what he talks about. Check his site at http://www.wheelpro.co.uk One last thing is spoke prices. My LBS qoutes me R10 a spoke (which can be whatever brand they have lying around), which works out at R720 if I need to rebuild two wheels. So I saw on Chain Reaction Cycles, that you can buy DT Swiss Champion Double Butted spokes at R3 per piece. Add the P&P and I bought it in the end for around R5 per spoke. (OK, I did buy some other spares as well, but it also worked out way cheaper than buying local)
