J&M's Customer Service

[JCTulsa]

I want to post my experience with J&M and John. I'm not suggesting anyone not buy from J&M but beware of the customer service if you do. I purchased an Elite headset for my 05 Ultra. Used it off and on for about 90 days. The first thing I noticed when I used it the first time was how tinny the speakers sounded. I had a set of helmet speakers I took out and they sounded great. John says this is either because the 05 sound system isn't as good as later models or the other speakers were closer to my ears. Don't know about the quality of the 05 system. All I can say is my other speakers sounded just fine. Took the Elite speakers out and put my old ones back in. Plugged them into the rear passenger outlet and the mic into the front outlet. Worked great but a pain to reach back to turn volume up and down. This leads me to think it's not the sound system causing the problem. I emailed John and after about 4 messages he quit responding. About the time I asked if he would consider store credit or a refund. Then I thought about sending him a PM on this forum. He answered but again after 2 or 3 messages he stopped responding. To this day he won't answer an email or PM. So that leaves me out $300 because of the cheap sounding speakers in this headset. I paid $70 for the other sepakers I had. I expected the headset speakers to sound at least as good as those. Needless to say I'm very disappointed with John and his company. To make matters worse, he's a sponsor on this forum. I'm not disappointed because the headset didn't work out. I understand from time to time things like that happen. What I'm truly surprised about is that John chooses to treat his customers as he does. I learned my lesson and he got my 1 time purchase but definetly will not be a repeat customer.

This ad is not displayed to registered and logged-in members. Register your free account today and become a member on HD Forums!

[pajoe]

I am sorry about your experience with J&M, ours is a different story. Sound interpretation is an individual thing, much like exhausts, one person may prefer a particular sound to another, so I don't suggest anything at all about sound quality, I will let that to the people that specialize in telling others what they should like. But will take the time to post our experiences using J&M products.

We currently have 4 different, working headsets from J&M, two were pre-installed in KBC shorty helmets and two were sets for full face helmets. These were the older 174 ? models they no longer sell. I don't think they even sell KBC helmets anymore. We also use the portable intercom which we keep in our tourpak to allow us to feed the gps sound in as well. We keep a spare set of lower cords along, just in case we need to use the stock Harley intercom again - but to be honest it has been so long I am not sure it even works. The J&M stuff is great for older bikes that just don't have the modern electronics with all the inputs for the various items we use today.

The only problems we had is that after a year or two the thin wires for the mics would some times give us trouble, from bending too much the wires probably broke inside, and the mic would drop out, you reach up and wiggle the connector and all was well again for a while, usually several rides. We dropped our bike one time and in the process smashed one of the J&M extension cords as well as the lower cord, or maybe the lower cord was messed up when the wife stepped on it by accident, not sure anymore, but when we replaced those we also replaced the one mic that gave us a lot of trouble. Everything is seperate, so replacing parts is a simple, just plug in the connector and away you go. I can't say too much about the headset speakers as we only had J&M to use, I do know I had to put some foam in to push the speaker closer to my ears when using the shorty helmet. We also had to wire the portable intercom on a switch going directly to the battery as using the voltage from the cigar lighter was not steady enough on our '90, having it feed from the battery keeps the intercom working better.

We never really had to deal much with J&M customer service, we purchased our J&M products through Sierra-MC and their service is has been excellent. Looking back we have our J&M headsets about 5 years and over 50,000 miles, but the portable intercom is only about 3-4 years old. We used the ultra 4 ohm J&M replacement speakers for a while, but I like the 2 ohm Infinity Kappas better. We never even considered the headsets for music.

The first place I look is J&M, but I have had so much good luck with Sierra-MC I will probably order through that J&M distributor. I was pleasantly surprised to see J&M as a sponsor of the Evo Classic section, and have visited the J&M web site for ideas, maybe this winter I will replace our shorty helmets with the new J&M setups they are currently selling, 5 years/50,000 miles was a fair amount of time for the old ones to be in use.

joe