Lots of horror stories about HD Service. I've got mine and I hear lot's more. I think it is time to state the story and list the dealers responsible for how their Service Managers run the shop.

Hopefully, the moderators will allow this. No name calling, just the facts. If someone has a good shop, list it as such.

 

hmmmm INTERESTING.... I'll pass cause I could start oneon bad customers too.. I don;t work for a Harley dealer butI do for a car dealer...

 

See this site
http://www.stealer-dealer.com/
or you can see olut own personal list here on the site.
https://www.hdforums.com/m_231961/tm.htm

 

why not change it something more positive like:
Good service, name the shops! This might motivate some of the bad to do better. There's no point telling us where not to go and it is better to know where to go cos if you have a problem, you need to find a place not avoid going... Just my $0.02

 

Would certainly be a much shorter list!

 

Ok! I can do that. What I'm trying to avoid is anyone else getting the shaft for something the service department did while my/your bike is in the shop.

Basically, careless work that leaves us footing the bill. Here's a couple of instances of mine.

1) I had a problem with the gas gauge on my Dyna coming on at 1/2 tank. Took the bike in for the 1K service and for the Stage 1 upgrade. I explained to the parts guy what I want in mufflers along with the other stuff. Well, my bike came out with a gouge in the console next to the gas cap & moped sounding mufflers. No Refunds & it came in that way.

2) Had to fight like heck to get the motor mount change because of vibration. That only occurred after my wiring bundle got chaffed through to the bare wire and the mufflers had worn through where they were not separated by a spacer.

3) 5K service. The shop left the brake reservoir cap loose. Brake fluid stained the case covers; cam cover, inner & outer primary cover, the cylinders, and took the paint off the the reservoir cap and my front motor mount. The reservoir cap was replaced, under warranty, but the staining was my fault, probably ran through some battery acid on the road and the damage to the covers is cosmetic and not covered by warranty. My @ss!!!

I've done all the talking, writing, complaining, and gripeing one can do about crappy service department work. $700 bucks or so worth of parts is not enough to get an attorney involved.

Needless to say, I'm looking another shop. After talking to other bikers in my area, I hear the horror stories - the most damning being how the shop screwed up a 95" build and it damaged the engine beyond repair. That was enough money involved to warrant an attorney.

I do a lot to my bike and buy lots of accessories, clothing, and parts. My buisiness goes elsewhere.
Now, you try being positive when this crap happens to you.

I've not named the shop yet, just trying to get opinions.

 

Here's one that really pissed me off!

Before I got my dyna I had a sportster and I took the bike in for some reason ( can't remember )and the next day they called and said it was done. I go get the bike and pay out the ***! OK so I'm riding home and the bike starts to act funny and dies. As I guessed it's outta gas so I reach down to put it on reserve and hummmmmmmm it's already on reserve, oh **** I'm in the middle of nowhere with only 1 house in site.... OK maybe there's some gas in the on position! Nope they must have run it outta gas and put it on reserve which is ok but they forgot to tell me! I ended up walking a little ways and I was lucky there was a guy mowing his grass and he sold me 1/2 gallon of gas for 5 bucks.... That's right 5 f-ing bucks! Worst thing is they bike ran no better then it did before I took it into theshop to start with..... Boy I'm so glad I got rid of that puppy!

Donnie

 

Although I admire Stealer-Dealer.Com's purpose and intent, IMHO it's overwhelming
lack of timely, accurate, and relevant information, renders it basically worthless.

For instance -

At my last count, there were 48 active H-D dealership locations in my state (FL), with only 45 of them currently listed by S-D.com.
The information for 24 of those is so old that it is designated as "Please check the archive page for comments."

Of the comments that have not yet been archived, only 8 were posted within the past 12 months, and only 5 in 2007.

Regarding the information that is available, the "pro" and "con" comments are mixed together in chronological order,
requiring extensive reading to glean any useful information about a particular dealer.

Business conditions are in a constant state of flux. "Bad" dealerships can inprove, and "good" dealerships can falter.
Dealership personnel (general managers, sales managers, salespersons, wrenches, parts people) all come and go.
The fact that a dealer threw in a wash and wax with the 5K service 4 years ago is not relevant today.
The fact that a wrench didn't tighten the oil plug 5 years ago is not relevant today.
The parts person with a crappy attitude 3 years ago is not relevant today.
Most, if not all, of the employees involved have long since moved on.

In the majority of cases, incidents that occurred over 24 months ago should be considered "ancient history"
and purged from any database that is attempting to supply useful, e.g. timely, good/bad dealer guidance.

As for reporting only "good" dealer experiences:
This is definately problematic in that it removes the context of the positive comments.

Using this method, dealer "A" with 5+ and 10- comments would, on the surface, appear to be
better to deal with than dealer "B" with 3+ and 1- comments. (5+ vs 3+)
The fact that dealer "A" has 10x as many negative comments as dealer "B" is lost.

As I originally stated, "I admire Stealer-Dealer.Com's purpose and intent."
BUT.. the task has overwhelmed them, and every other collection of customer comments that I am familiar with.

The scope of the task:
There are approximately 842 H-D dealerships in the CONUS, and another 13 in Alaska and Hawaii.
Each dealership comprises at least 3 major sub-departments: sales, service, and parts.
Its a well known fact that some dealerships excell in some areas and fail miserably in others.

For instance,
An honest and knowledgable sales staff -
but a service department that you wouldn't take your worst enemy's bike to. (well, maybe I would)
-or-
An excellent service department -
but a parts department that ignores the customers and refuses to give the time-of-day.

For these reasons, dealerships should be rated separately on sales, parts, and service.
Many of us have more than one H-D dealer close enough to conveniently do business with.

The dealer that sold me my bike is NOT the one that I use for parts and service.
Since I travel extensively around the country, knowing which local area dealer to use
for service or parts would be extremely valuable.

Unfortunately, this type of information is not easily nor concisely conveyed in a Forum type format.
Even if each of the 855 dealerships had a "thread" dedicated to it, one would have to read through
many legitimate postings and any number of post ****** while attempting to get any useful information.
Humans are visually oriented creatures by nature, and being required to read 10 pages of posts to get
a little meaningful information just isn't going to happen most of the time.

How many here would rather "read" the book, than "wat

 

06FXDBI you have effectively conveyed a great idea and have expressed my intent better than I.

And to further break this information into a more manageble chunk of data, this could be done by state and area. However, we first need to collect the data. And this forum may not want to publish the data once collected.

I could benefit from a data base (Consumer Satisfaction) that could pressure these businesses to improve their lot or at least what happens to their bottom line.

In my instance, the dealer would recieve an A+ for sales & parts, but service and customer satisfaction would receive a negative input. In your example, one or two disgruntled customers would not affect the overall rating a dealer would recieve. I'm sure others get great service from this same dealer; it may have just been my turn for the gremlin to appear. Now if others have also experienced similar issues with this dealer, then the rating of customer satisfaction, dependent on sales, service, parts would be reflective of a more accurate assessement of that particular dealer.

This would eliminate the gripeing and complaining, which I am guilty of at this point and provide a useful database to the consumer of HD products, sales, and servicing.

 

I purchased my Dyna the last week of september, last year. About 21/2 weeks later, i brought it in for the 1K oil change.
It took THREE freakin weeks!!!!!3!!!!! It wasn't even bike week, aound these parts=which i could excuse... (and happened to me one year @ another mechanics....RIP Kirk...

my 5K will be in no time. perhaps i should call ahead!!!![:@]