OK, here's another question about your local dealer's policies/practices:

When you take your bike in for shop work at the dealer, do you specify which tech you want to work on it? For those of you who have never done this, does your local dealer even allow customers to make that choice?

 

I don't know if they let you choose at the dealership I go to. The service tech that I first talked to, is the one I go to now when I take it in. Him and the service manager. As for who works on it, I don't have a clue. Or care.

 

that would depend on the dealership. i am sure there are certain techs that are really good at some things, and normally get assigned all of those repairs. i would think you could get a certain tech if you made an appointment several days in advance and were willing to wait if he had not finished the bike ahead of yours. other wise, the first available tech should get the next job. an experienced service writer should also know his customers, and assign the job to who he thinks can handle it best--job and customer.

 

My choice of would be me.

When I was a kid, I worked on bicycles in a bike shop. People used to ask for certain guys to work on their bikes. Sometimes we'd accommodate them, sometimes not depending on how busy we were.

 

It also depends on the type of work being done. Newer techs have to prove they can do certain types of work without the bike coming back. So a brand new tech fresh outta school is going to be doing A LOT of tire changes... then he'll start doing some 1k's and 5k's, where all the bigger more time consuming jobs will go to the lead techs... at least this is how it works at the shop I used to work at.


If you request one of their lead techs to do your 5k or whatever, and they've got other jobs like motor builds or inner primary jobs, or ape hangers, they're not going to pull a lead tech off of that type of job to do your 5k, they're going to give it to a tech that needs to being doing a 5k... again this is just my experience after working at a shop for a few years.

 

I don't have a great deal of time to wrench on my bike so for routine maintenance or any major repairs I take it to the dealership. It happens to be the dealership I purchased the bike from. Everyone there from sales to parts to service knows me. Both the service writer and service manager know that I prefer a particular tech. They will assign my service to that tech if I request it. To facilitate this, I will call them one to two weeks ahead of the service (if routine) so they can make the appropriate arrangements on their end. Fortunately, my bike has not required any major repair. If it did, I would leave it at the dealership as long as necessary so that particular tech could work on it.

They haven't let me down yet.

 

I always request myself, I just have to schedule in advance (with the wife) sometimes it takes a few weeks to get in but it's worth it.

 

Good luck with that...LOL. They usually don't even complete what's required...My advise, get a manual and do it yourself and find a good local indept. hd mechanic who you can trust...i have 2 around me. Half the money and it's done and done right...

 

As a dealer tech, I know the policy of the dealers I have worked for. If it's a job that 'you' are paying for, you can request a tech of your choice. If it's a warranty job, you get whoever is assigned the job.

 

No, even if I did they wouldn't pay any attention to your request.