OK, we were trying to take the
high road here and hoping that this rather touchy subject would cool off by
itself, but it doesn’t look like it will.
So, we’ve decided we might as well tackle it head-on.
For those who don’t know, here’s
a quote from a review left on our Facebook page:
“Be careful where you
go! This dealer quoted me a price last month to replace the broken final drive
belt on my 1993 Heritage last month. Then when I just called to drop it off I
was informed that they only work on models less then ten years old in the
spring and summer! It may have been a good idea to mention that LAST MONTH when
i got the quote! I buy all my aftermarket parts and supplies from them!
Customer loyalty means nothing there I guess! Its OK tho, I'm sure the dealer
that does fix it will have no problems taking my money for the new Trike my
wife is going to buy!”
Now, we did respond to that with
a short explanation of the reasoning behind our policy, hoping that an honest
explanation would at least partly resolve the problem. Unfortunately, this being the internet and
all, it did not. And we understand that
there are probably quite a few of you out there thinking, yeah, that policy
sucks! That’s ridiculous! But, for
every one of you who doesn’t like that policy, there are probably 5 of you who
don’t even realize you benefit from it.
How? Well, read on.
This situation is a classic no-win for us as a dealership. You have to believe that we don’t enjoy
turning business away – it’s simply not something we’d choose to do under
normal circumstances. And in the winter,
during non-peak season, we don’t. As he
says, he called during the non-peak season and was given a quote. But he
didn’t bring it in then.
Every winter, it’s the same
thing here. We offer incentives to bring
your work in early. We beg and plead,
even offering free pick-up and delivery in some instances, to try to get your
work in in early. And every year, we go
from being almost same-day turnaround to being 3 weeks out, instantly, on the
first day the weather goes above 50 degrees.
Right now, for basic service
work, we are more than 3 weeks out. We
are confined by the linear nature of time and space to the fact that there are
a finite number of hours in a day, and of days in a week. That dictates how many hours we can book, and
how many customers we can service.
That being said, on a bike that
is 20+ years old, our experience has been that the original customer concern
can be the tip of the iceberg as to what’s going on with the bike. The OP on this topic has never had his bike to our shop, so we have no experience with
HIS bike. (If, in fact, we had some
service history with the bike, we’d know what kind of shape it’s in, and the
conversation might have been different.) But our experience with other 20+ year
old bikes goes something like this:
The bike comes in for
something that seems simple. We schedule
it for 2 hours. The tech gets it open
and finds something rusted/seized/missing/broken/etc. This leads to a bunch of other problems, and
now this 2 hour job is a 10 hour job, sitting on a lift, waiting for parts that
aren’t normally stocked (because the bike is 2 years away from QQ plates.) When we do finally get the parts in, and get
the bike rolling, a good portion of the time, the owner is still upset with us because
it took so much longer than he was originally quoted, and we STILL have an
unhappy customer at the end.
When this happens in the winter,
it’s no biggie. When this happens in the spring, it can tie up a lift and impact the
scheduling of 5 or 6 other people, each of whom have waited 3+ weeks for their
appointment. NOW, we have 6 or so
angry customers, all saying how much we suck.
This has led to our current
policy, the one that the OP is so annoyed with.
And we understand his frustration – even share it – because as I said,
it’s not our goal to create unhappy customers, and to turn away business. But during peak season, we need to get as
many people on the road as possible, and taking in a bike that may very well
become a project bike during the spring is something we decided we weren’t
willing to take the risk on anymore.
Does only taking in bikes less than 10 years old guarantee that the
above situation doesn’t occur?
Absolutely not. It’s a numbers
game; it’s an attempt to improve our odds.
So go ahead and flame away if
you must. But at least now you hopefully
understand that this policy is not an arbitrary thing we do to be mean – it’s
an imperfect solution to an imperfect situation. (And if
anyone knows any technicians looking for a job, we are hiring! Please send him or her our way!)
