As far as having "their **** together" I'd say not exactly. I recently had a set of my bags warrantied. It took a lot of calls and emails and i didn't hear back so I just kept sending emails saying "please call me so I can warranty my bags". I sent that email about 40 times literally because I wasn't letting them off the hook, they finally called me but wanted my old bags back first, which wasn't an option cause my bike was my only source of transportation and I needed to be able to carry my belongings. After a lot of arguing they agreed to send me new ones without a part return. Viking bags are cheaper so you can expect somewhat lower quality. They work for me, but the leather doesn't last much more than 8 months without cracking. I bought my bags directly from Viking though. Boosted boxer is right, I know you don't want to hear that as his response obviously offended you, but if you buy from a third party, it's their responsibility to rectify the problem. And you can be sure they will tell you it's not their responsibility, and that you have to contact the manufacturer directly. Both the manufacturer and the third party will always try to pass you off to the other it's just the way it works. With that being said I completely understand where you're coming from. I agree that Viking should have and could have simply sent you the bracket since the product came from them without it anyway. It would have been a good move on their part since they're a company that obviously has a larger amount of customers with negative experiences with their customer service than satisfied customers.

I figured not but it's easy to a post and interpret it as an attitude because you only get words, not the expression or tone that you get in normal conversation so it's easy to have misunderstandings. Any way, as far as Viking bags goes, they've been this way for a long time. It doesn't appear it's going to change anytime soon. Anytime there's a negative thread about them they post the same bullshit story about how they're sorry/doing their best/a growing company blah blah blah. I think they posted it on this thread when it was first started, and I've seen it repeatedly. They continue to make excuses for their poor customer service and hijack threads about saddlebags to advertise their own. It speaks very poorly for their company as a whole.