First off, I have to say I've always talked up Gerbing like it's the best since sliced bread and have bought a ton of their stuff and turned a lot of people their way.

But my friends wife calls the other day and want s me to buy him a set of heated gear for Christmas. So I have a couple of questions I want to by the folks a Gerbing about. So I call them the other day and get a recording that says their having a high volume of calls, to leave name and number and they WILL return the call. So a couple of days goes by and no stinkin call back. So I call several times today and hear some crap about phone answering machine is full and no further number or action I can take.

My buddies wife calls asking about my progress and I have to tell her that this GREAT company I yacked to her about wont even take my phone calls. What the crap is wrong with these people. Must be resting on their laurels or something. Thus....my vent!

 

They are probably completely overwhelmed by the volume of calls, requests and orders. On top of that, they make the HD heated gear for the MoCo.

I'd say well intentioned, but swamped. That's my guess.

 

and they probably laid off some American workers so are short handed.

 

Try this email, sara@gerbing.com

 

the wife recently had a problem with her new liner and the person she talked with said this is always the busiest time of year for them.

 

I'm sorry, but being busy is NO excuse for poor customer service.
I mean, no ****, Christmas is the busiest time of year for a retailer? Who woulda guessed?
Hire some folks to help out with the call volume.

 

Actually they used to have some of their products made in China at the urging of Harley Davidson because of volume and pricing issues. Gerbings opened a second factory in North Carolina this year specifically to bring the work back to the USA.

It doesn't matter what company you deal with the bottom line is eventually we are dealing with people. People aren't perfect and people make mistakes. It's 12 days until Christmas and if you can believe the press it is a good holiday season for retailers. I think a little chaos can usually be expected this time of year. But maybe I'm just getting mellow in my old age.

 

Well if they KNOW this is their busy time of the year, this is the time they should have extra help hired. Weeks ago, all retailers were advertising for seasonal workers. Im not here to bash them as they make a good product. But how is there bottom line going to end up if this customer neglect ends up pushing customers to other heated gear makers.

 

Ya, who would think, winter time is the busiest time of the year for a company that sells heated gear? I recently ordered Gerbing's hybrid gloves through a retailer. The gloves arrived about a month and a half ago. The battery packs are still on back order. This is a poor business practice not have all the inventory lined up by now. Since I don't plan to hook up the gloves to the bike battery, I was counting on the batteries to get me through some local runs for December, January, and February. I'm sure the battery packs will arrive in time for summer.

 

I had an issue with the connectors heating up. Got through to customer service the first call (this was about a month or two ago). The rep gave me a simple fix of spreading the center pin to provide better contact. Seemed to fix the issue.

They are not the only maker of heated gear though. I've read good things about Warm&Safe and PowerLett seems to get good reviews as well. Even tourmaster is not bad although they are slightly cheaper quality wise and don't have the great warranty of the others they are also a lot cheaper in price.